The Self-Inflicted Crisis of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Department of English & Linguistics), language: English, abstract: In 21st-century America, women fulfil many different roles in their lives: they are daughters and sisters, they are colleagues and friends. Women can be wives and mothers. They can choose freely whether they want to go to university which offers them a wide range of subjects. They can become doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists, writers, artists, engineers or the next president of the United States of America. Women can determine their future and are free to change the paths they take. To refer to a common idiom: every woman is the architect of her own fortune. For Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of Kate Chopin's short novel "The Awakening", which was published in 1899, there are only two roles in her life: the role of wife and mother. She gets lost between the social structures of patriarchy and her willingness to develop her own social identity. Although it seems at first that Edna's conflict with her expected roles of being a wife and a mother has blocked her way to emancipation, I will argue that it is in fact Edna's own lack of capabilities and responsibility that provokes her downfall.