The Awakening Essay -- essays research papers

The Awakening opens in the late 1800s in gigabyte Isle, a summer holiday furbish up popular with the wealthy inhabitants of nearby New Orleans. Edna Pontellier is vacationing with her husband, Lonce, and their cardinal sons at the cottages of Madame Lebrun, which house affluent Creoles from the French Quarter. Lonce is signifier and loving but preoccupied with his work. His frequent business-related absences mar his domestic look with Edna. Consequently, Edna spends most of her time with her friend Adle Ratignolle, a get hitched with Creole who epitomizes womanly elegance and charm. Through her relationship with Adle, Edna learns a great deal about freedom of expression. Because Creole women were expected and off-key to be chaste, they could be withdraw in a forthright and unreserved manner. moving picture to such openness liberates Edna from her previously prudish behavior and repressed emotions and desires.Ednas relationship with Adle begins Ednas process of awakening and self-discovery, which constitutes the point of the book. The process accelerates as Edna comes to know Robert Lebrun, the elder, single son of Madame Lebrun. Robert is known among the Grand Isle vacati one(a)rs as a man who chooses one woman each yearoften a married womanto whom he thusly plays attendant all summer long. This summer, he devotes himself to Edna, and the two spend their geezerhood together lounging and talking by the shore. Adle Ratignolle often accompanies them.At first, the relationship between Robert and Edna is innocent. They mostly bathe in the sea or engage in idle talk. As the summer progresses, however, Edna and Robert grow closer, and Roberts affections and attention inspire in Edna several internal revelations. She feels more bouncy than ever before, and she starts to paint again as she did in her youth. She also learns to float and becomes aware of her independence and sexuality. Edna and Robert never openly discuss their love for one another, but the time they spend alone together kindles memories in Edna of the dreams and desires of her youth. She becomes inexplicably blue at night with her husband and profoundly joyful during her moments of freedom, whether alone or with Robert. Recognizing how intense the relationship between him and Edna has become, Robert honorably removes himself from Grand Isle to subdue consummating his forbidden love. Edna returns to New Orleans a changed woman.Ba... ...worried about the outcome of her aroused but confused actions. Already reeling under the weight of Adles admonition, Edna begins to perceive herself as having acted selfishly.Edna returns to her house to find Robert gone, a cable of farewell left in his place. Roberts inability to escape the ties of orderliness now prompts Ednas most devastating awakening. Haunted by thoughts of her children and realizing that she would have eventually found even Robert unable to fulfill her desires and dreams, Edna feels an overwhelming mavin of solitude. Alone in a world in which she has found no feeling of belonging, she can find only one answer to the unavoidable and heartbreaking limitations of society. She returns to Grand Isle, the site of her first moments of emotional, sexual, and intellectual awareness, and, in a final escape, gives herself to the sea. As she swims through the soft, embracing water, she thinks about her freedom from her husband and children, as well as Roberts failure to understand her, twist Mandelets words of wisdom, and Mademoiselle Reiszs courage. The text leaves open the point of whether the suicide constitutes a cowardly surrender or a liberating triumph.