Edna Pontellier’s Self-discovery in Kate Chopins The Awakening :: Chopin Awakening Essays

Theme of Self-discovery in Kate Chopins The awaken      Edna Pontlierre experiences a theme of self-discovery through and throughout the entire apologue of Kate Chopins The Awakening.  Within Ednas travel through selfdiscovery,  Chopin successfully uses tone, style, and content to help the reader conceive a person challenging the beliefs of  a na&239ve society at the low gearof the twentieth century.   Chopins style and tone essentially helps the readerunderstand the reputation of Edna and what her surrounding influences are.  Thetone and style also helps the audience understand the wait of the charactersthroughout the novel.  The entire content is relevant to the time frame it waswritten, expressing ideas of the coming(a) feminist movement and creating an certainness of what was happening to the women of the early nineteenth century.      When The Awakening was first published,  its popularity wasnt that o fmodern day.  In fact, it was widely rejected for years.  Within the context, itis considered a very liberal book from the beginning of the nineteenth century.The ideas expressed inwardly the content concern the womens movement and anindividual woman searching for who she real is.  Ross C. Murfin in hiscritical essay  The New Historicism and the Awakening,  shows how Chopin usesthe entity of the hand to tinge to both the entire womens issue and EdnaPontlierres self exploration Chopin uses hands to tack the issues of women, property, self-possession, andvalue.  Women like Adele Ratignolle, represented by their perfectly pale orgloved hands, are signs mainly of their husbands wealth, and therefor of whatStange calls  surplus value.  By insisting on backing herself with her ownhands through art and having control of her own property the place she locomotein to and her inheritance, Edna seeks to come into ownership of a self that ismore than a m ere ornament.  She seeks to possess herself (p 197).         Within in the content,  Adele Ratignolle and white perch representfoils to Edna.  Mademoiselle  represents a single woman that everyone dislikeswho Edna typically confides in.  Adele Ratignolle contrasts Edna because shedutifully plays the social constituent of mother-woman.  The reader learns how Ednacontrasts and transcends throughout the entire novel.  From her refusal tosacrifice herself for her children in the beginning of the novel to her movinginto her own house towards the end of the novel,  the reader is effectivelyaware of the realities that face the women of the early twentieth centuryindividually  and as a society.         Chopins style in The Awakening is intended to help the audienceunderstand the character of Edna and the dilemmas that she faces as a married