The Awakening Book Summary

The Awakening is drama-based novel. Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening was released in 1899. The novel, originally titled A Solitary Soul, tells the story of a young mother's battle for sexual and personal freedom in restrictive postbellum American South. The novel opens with the Pontellier family Léonce, a New Orleans businessman of Louisiana Creole heritage. The Awakening's heroine yearns for this kind of bodily autonomy. She is adamant about gaining control over her own person. The Awakening explores one woman's desire to find live fully within her true self. Her devotion to that purpose causes friction with her friends and family, and also conflicts with dominant values of her time. Edna Pontellier's story takes place in 1890s Louisiana, within the upper-class Creole society. Edna fights her husband's objectification, describing him as looking at her "as if she were a valuable piece of personal property." When Robert says that she is "not free" and needs to be "set free" by her husband in order for them to be together, she questions him. The narrative of Edna is rich in symbolism. The sea is possibly the novel's most essential symbol. Baptism, cleansing, and rebirth are all symbols associated with it. Chopin constructs the sea as a space of liberation in The Awakening, a zone outside and away from patriarchal society.

Edited at 2022-08-23 08:38:08