The Awakening Essay, Research Paper

The title, The Awakening, implies that a rebirth from a stupor into

self-awareness is something good. One would expect that someone who was once

sleeping is better off and can see more clearly when he is fully awake. But this

expectation is exactly opposite to Edna’s condition. She is not awake. She is

eventually drawn by the sea and drowns herself. She was deceived. Edna fails to

see that the connection of a mother to her children is far more important than the

enjoyment of a passion which experience has taught her. By the title of this book,

Chopin is glorifying Edna’s fatal situation.

Edna does not exist and never will. It is useless and perhaps dangerous to

make judgments about these characters. Assuming that their situations and the

outcomes of their behavior are applicable to our own lives is risky. Her characters

are fictional. The combinations of their actions and outcomes are entirely an

invention of Kate Chopin reflecting what she wants to teach her readers. If Chopin

has successfully convinced a reader that the characters are real or that they could be

real, the reader is likely to apply what he has learned from this fable in his or her

own life. With these assumptions in mind, one must apply the task of figuring out

what she wants people to believe and how to behave as a result of reading her book.

Edna, whose husband has held her like a piece of furniture, a piece of

personal property, suddenly becomes aware she is a human being. Leonce certainly

errs if he only values his wife as a piece of furniture. There is nothing wrong if he

believes her to be his most prized possession. The difficulty is that Edna does not

look at him in this way. They should have appraised each other?s value with mutual

respect.

I would recommend this book to others. It was well written and did not try to

cover up the truth about the life of a woman in an extra-marital affair.