The Layered Significance of the Title

Literary genius of Kate Chopin (1851-1904), who is now a recognized classic of American literature, has attracted the attention of researches relatively recently and such belated interest can be explained by rather problematic creative destiny of the writer, including misunderstanding of her literary heritage. Moreover, it can be mentioned that “discovery” of Chopin’s genius was made at her homeland in 1969, when many of her works were published on the wave of attention to women’s literature, and presence of feminist criticism. Analyzing historical evidences, we see that the reason for such a long oblivion of the art of one of the most talented American writers of XIX century was obviously related to the scandal caused by the publication of her novel “The Awakening” in 1899. Kate Chopin was accused of immorality, while publishers being scared by avalanche of criticism refused to continue to work with her. Although the novel “The Awakening” has not been fully banned, its exceptionally hostile criticism led to the fact that Chopin almost stopped writing.

Nowadays, historical justice has been restored, and the name of Kate Chopin has been included in the canon of American literature. However, her enforced silence at the beginning of the new century was a real loss to American literature, comparable to the untimely death of Crane and Norris. Thus, the main aim of the assignment is to explain the layered significance of the novel’s title because the author put many interesting senses in it. And the thesis is the following: the title of Kate Chopin’s novella is significant and multifaceted because it refers to the many ways in which the main heroine begins to awaken to the world around her, including both individual inner feelings and her characteristics as a sexual being. It is a truth that there are many different examples of awakenings throughout the novel, thus we are going to explore several of them for the purpose to tie them with the overall meaning of awakening in a general sense of the concept.

At the beginning, it is good to mention that the turn of the XIX century turned out to be a time when ideological movement for women’s equality that gained its strength in those times has led to a change in the notion of femininity, which inevitably required new comprehension of the concept. A so-called “new woman” became one of the major cultural phenomena of those times literature. This is evidenced by a simple fact that more than one hundred novels were devoted to a “new woman” in the period from 1883 to 1900. Although Kate Chopin is considered as a cult figure in American feminist literature, she characterized novels about a “new woman” of her period as a general passion for hysterical, unhealthy and insincere pictures of life, which some English women brought into fashion in literature (Hoder-Salmon, 1992). Moreover, like every original artist, Kate Chopin originally and fast conceptualized topical issues of her time. Therefore, it is important to trace originality of the author’s interpretation of the theme of female awakenings in her works, especially in the novel “The Awakening”.

Chopin’s novel “The Awakening” opens several ways how woman can change her views on the world around her by changing own thoughts and realizing that the world is not limited by some domestic things to do, or love to family and husband. Firstly, we can state that the main heroine began her awakening from the fact that she understood that her life is limited by specific frames and she does not find herself happy because living in domestic world of her peers, Edna realized absence of new feelings and actions in her life. Moreover, the problem of women’s self-consciousness sharply influenced the society, and artistic means of translating the “female theme,” and especially its interpretation in a recognized masterpiece of a prose writer, made ordinary people to be worried about their destinies and the way how they live their lives.

To specify, there is nothing strange in the fact that Edna’s awakening begins with immersion in the world of Creoles, which became her world too after her marriage. For instance, we see that a woman, being educated in the spirit of severe Puritanism (Edna was originally from Kentucky), experiences a total shock of free speech at the table (where different novels are discussed) and generally accepted coquetry. Others do not see anything wrong in a situation when a young man flirts with a married woman. However, the same hard patriarchal way of life is hidden for this external relaxedness. A new feeling to Robert promotes emancipation of the heroine, but freedom from social conventions carries not only the harmony of life, but includes a danger. Dormant natural instincts are hidden under this shell, and these instincts pushed Edna into the arms of local Lovelace Alcee Arobin.

Exploring the novel, it becomes obvious that in the novel “The Awakening”, everything works to create the overall effect. For example, such components as setting, characters and symbols, the atmosphere and tone of the narrative, parallels and contrasts allow the reader to plunge into the novel with all the necessary feelings and details, becoming almost an active participant of the described events. We see that poetics of contrasts between “natural” and “social” help to contrast imaginative world of the novel, and these components helped Edna to find herself, own true essence in the world full of contrasts and differences.

Even birds play a very important role in the novel, forming a separate cross-cutting theme. For instance, meaningless chatter of the caged parrot becomes a harbinger of future shocks in the first scene of the novel. The author described it in the following way: “A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: “Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!” (Chopin, 1899). To explain, this scene is very symbolic because some time later Edna begins to perceive her family life as a kind of cage limiting her freedom, and her actions and words begin to have no more meaning than incoherent flow of foreign words, repeated by parrot, for her husband. By the way, birds symbolize the heroine’s place in different ways. This motif occurs in Edna’s conversation with a friend – pianist Mademoiselle Reisz. From the house of her husband, Edna moved into the small “pigeon house”. Later, in the final scene of the heroine’s suicide reappears image of a bird: it turns with a broken wing above the water, unable to continue the fly. Bird, thus, personify the fate of the heroine, who seeks to break out of her environment, but in the process of self-discovery she can not find an acceptable way of existence.

Analyzing the novel, we see that a special role of paralinguistic components of communication is connected with the subordinate position of women in society (which in the XIX century was a clear reflection of the marginal status of women even in the legal field). Woman because of her subordinate position within the patriarchal cultural stereotypes is devoid of her own voice. Only when the situation is out of the box, she gets a chance to express herself. However, self-expression is a complex spiritual work associated with overcoming of imposed cultural stereotypes inside of her mind. Therefore, being in a situation requiring expression, Chopin’s heroine fails to indicate her position. She is either silent, passing all her emotions to intonations and facial expressions or speak, but her words have not become completely her own, they are not filled by their intention to a full degree.

The next step of awakening, or it will be better to say example of awakening, can be seen in the realization that the main heroine can appreciate music. Music receives its special place in the novel because only a person who looks for something may open and feel a real beauty of musical works. For instance, in Edna’s imagination, music by Frederick Chopin evokes the image of a naked man standing on seashore and accompanying by his look a hopeless bird flying away. Music aroused a fever of enthusiasm in Edna, while the description of music sends to the reader its own message: “The music grew strange and fantastic – turbulent, insistent, plaintive and soft with entreaty. The shadows grew deeper. The music filled the room. It floated out upon the night, over the housetops, the crescent of the river, losing itself in the silence of the upper air” (Chopin, 1899).

The next stage of awakening is connected with the main heroine’s accepting herself as a sexual being. We see that extraordinary Edna’s charm and her strange grace irresistibly attract and charm three men: her husband, her lover Alcee Arobin, and Robert, a person who sincerely fall in love with her. Realizing the own sexuality, Edna was looking for its demonstrations and thought about her actions a lot: “She felt somewhat like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into an act of infidelity, and realizes the significance of the act without being wholly awakened from its glamour. The thought was passing vaguely through her mind, “What would he think?” … She did not mean her husband; she was thinking of Robert Lebrun. Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse” (Chopin, 1899). Nevertheless, there is no matter what types of relationship connects Edna with each of three men (matrimonial or erotic love) – men do not see independent personality in Edna. So, this fact pushes Edna to the searches of her personality and individuality.

As it was previously mentioned communicative behavior of the protagonist carries its special meaning in the novel. Edna goes through a complicated search of expression from eloquent silence, through not the own words to the attainment of own voice. Moreover, we see that silence is a continuation of the conversation, and that is an excellent way of speech by its features of transmitting information. At the beginning of the novel, when Edna experiences internal discomfort, she continues to live according to habit and custom, so her silence has the character of humility to her fate. With the growth of the heroine’s self-consciousness her silence takes on the character of action, protest and dissent: “Don’t speak to me like that again; I shall not answer you” (Chopin, 1899). By the way, Edna’s passion for painting also seems to be one of the ways of her self-expression and types of awakening because woman realizes herself to be an artist, but very soon Edna becomes aware of the limitations of her abilities.

Leaving her husband’s house and finding relative freedom, the heroine is experiencing existential doubt, associated with the definition of the “I-image”. In heroine’s speech, when she tries to understand own inner feelings and sense of life, always presents the “voice” of public opinions, which evaluates her deeds and thoughts (“wicked specimen”, “unwomanly”) (Beer and Nolan, 2004). And finally, Edna’s conversation with Robert shocks him for its frankness. It means that Edna found her voice, she did not ashamed of her desires, and she found the courage to talk about them. However, the freedom of choice is still relative in the novel because Edna is affected by the laws of the environment in which she lives (Toth, 1999). And the heroine admits that her “awakening” has brought her not only feeling of fullness of life, but also a kind of suffering: “Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life” (Chopin, 1899).

Summing up everything of the above mentioned, it becomes obvious that the title of the novel has really the layered significance because it is impossible to awake in one sphere of life or some relationships staying the same in others. Changing the own thoughts and the way of thinking in general sense, the main heroine demonstrated us the way how women of her times were ignored by society, even being loved by men. A whole public system was working against women leaving them place only in domestic sphere, trying to hide own ignorance under rules and traditions. We also realized that absence of canonicity in the image of the main heroine demonstrated eccentrically-broken character, acute sensitivity and vulnerability, which were called to emphasize the subtlety of her soul.

In conclusion, connecting all presentations of awakening in the novel and combining them with the overall meaning of awakening, we can note that Edna feels incompleteness and inadequacy of her life and tries within her capabilities to break the vicious circle of her being. Being essentially driven only to the border of her personal life, she tries to find an alternative primarily in the realm of feelings. She seeks a new of living; she looks for sincerity in love while denying responsibility that is traditionally postulated by religion and society. As a result of this gap, Chopin’s heroine enters into the sphere of sexuality because sexuality includes everything from the area of the forbidden. However, the embodiment of freedom that is understood only as the right to freely and openly choose love affairs, to follow her feelings and hobbies, can not satisfy Edna. Of course, she understands the futility of such a relationship; however, she does not want to return to permitted and comfortable life. Thus, Kate Chopin, using artistic language in novel, showed the impossibility of a happy resolution of individual rebellion. This is evidenced by semantic content of individual parts, symbols, images and general semantic orientation of the whole work.

 

Works Cited

Beer, J. and Nolan, E. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: A Sourcebook. Routledge, 2004.

Chopin, K. The Awakening, 1899.

Hoder-Salmon, M. Kate Chopin’s the Awakening: Screenplay as Interpretation. University Press of Florida, 1992.

Toth, E. Unveiling Kate Chopin. University Press of Mississippi, 1999.

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

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freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]
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