The Awakening first draft

1. The Awakening
Written By: Kate Chopin
Presented By Group ALPHA
English 1A
Professor Drane

2. About Kate chopin
Kate was born in 1850, and she grew up in a creole
social elite family. Her father was an Irish immigrant
and her mother was French creole. Growing up they
were fairly well off. Kate lost her father at a young age
so she grew up in a household of all women. Kate was
first introduced to writing from her great
grandmother, Madame Charleville. Later in life, she
got married to a man who accepted her
unconventional ways. He allowed her to behave and be
her own women but sadly after having 6 kids with her
husband, Oscar, he died in 1883 from swamp fever.
She was well off from her husbands business, so she
could easily feed their six children, thankfully. She
managed her husbands business for only a year before
moving back home to be with her mother who died
one year later. She wrote her first novel in 1890, At
Fault, before that she only had written short stories
for magazines.

3. The Awakening by Kate Chopin was set in Louisiana, on the early 1900’s, with an
emphasis on the Creole culture there. Back then women were looked to manage the
household, while the men were the ones who make the money for the family. This was
evidenced what Leonce had come home from New Orleans and chastised Edna for not
taking care of the children because Raul had gotten a fever. Women were just there to
be maternal and nothing more, like Madame Ratignolle, a perfect example of a devoted
wife and mother of her children.

4. The Awaking
By Kate Chopin
The Awaking is a story of a women’s views and struggles as a women, wife
and mother. In an age in which the women was perceived as the house hold
manager. Women were not really much more than this. There were no opinions or
points of view to be taken into consideration. Women were to tend to their
husbands, bare children and ensure the home and their lives as a family were as
pristine as possible. There was were no notions of a women having any emotions
let alone sadness. It was a though feelings were an internal situation and women
needed to figure their feelings out just as they did with everything else. Edna’s
husband supports her and their children but there is clearly a divide between them.
It at times has to do with other people, but more so it has to do with his wife and
her emotional status. Her internal battle with who she is and whom she longs to be.
Edna was not the common wife, she did not feel the maternal or wifely instinct. She
was lost in this word but she played her role as best as possible.

5. Two Sides to Every
Coin
To be part of a marriage she did not want to be
in, to be parent of children she did not want to
take care of. Edna felt trapped that she could not
find solace in maternal things that the other
Creole woman found themselves happy in. She
understood what role she had to play but she
could not bare to play it for too long. From the
adulteries she committed, to feeling unsatisfied
with Leonce, Edna wanted to rebel. When people
start to feel that their life has become to much for
them, where they have no control over the
choices, they start to think about what they can
control. Their own body. Edna’s very limited, but
meaningful act to supposedly take her life.
Describes and ending that brought her happiness
in ways, living her own life could not.

6. The Struggle was as real as a Feather
Edna was a romantic women throughout her life. She was in love with a soldier when she was a
young girl, as she got older she fell in love as a teen, and then again with an actor once she was an
adult. She had a big heart filed with love and she was a rebellious women. She knew that her
marriage was suppose to take over her romantic views and actions, that she wasn’t suppose to feel
the way she did those times growing up but that didn’t happen. These feelings and yearnings
stayed with her.
She is the kind of women who keeps a lot of her feelings buried, and her unhappiness to
herself. Being unhappy in her life because she isn’t really happy with being a mother, she isn’t that
kind of women who wants to be a mother or wife, she’d much rather have a life full of passion and
excitement.
She vacations in Grand Isle, which is occupied by rich families during the summer.
There she finds the man she begins to see very often and ends up having an affair with, Robert
Lebrun. At the island is where she has her awakening, learning how to swim. The ocean actually
played a good part in her awakening being that she spent a lot of her time around and in it.
The birds were a served as a symbol of a few things. They served as a symbol
of women in those day and ages being trapped. They weren’t free and able to express themselves
and do what they want, they were trapped to be the wife and mother, to protect her young and to
serve the family she had. The birds and women had so much in common, the fact that neither of
them could communicated with society, to express their thoughts and feelings.
“The bird that would soar above the level of plain tradition and prejudice must have
strong wings.” Enda was told. Another connection to bird, that the women who want to be
independent in the world they live in, and act outside of what they are expected to, needs to be a
strong women to endure what will come with that.

7. Under His Watch
Her husband, Leonce, was displeased with
her changes. She began painting and
behaving in a different way than he’s ever
seen her. He has feelings that she was in
love with another man, I don’t think he was
completely oblivious to Edna's feelings. He
is clueless to her feelings for Robert and her
love affair. He went to a doctor to get
advice, a lot of times back then when
women weren’t acting how they were
suppose to, men thought the women was
having a mental break down.

8. When the last Feather Falls
There is a major transformation with Edna to the beginning of the book to the end
where it is noted that she may have committed suicide. In the beginning, Edna was
looking for something, anything to make her feel alive again. She had the husband with
a successful career, her two children, yet she looked for excitement in others. Stuck in
the stereotypical era where women would stay home, Edna broke free from that by
looking at others as a source of freedom. She thought she would find freedom in Robert
but even then she knew she would not find solace in him. Her own children become
antagonists for her, she “...knew a way to elude them”, which was by apprent suicide
(Chopin, 300). Her freedom is the water, she finds, “...the voice of the sea speaks to the
soul” (Chopin, 34). It invites her soul into it’s abysses of solitude and that is where Edna
finds her freedom, her comfort, she has been looking for. Edna dies happy, knowing this
is a choice she made, in an area she loves.

9. The End
Edna was able to do something that many
women have a one point in their lives longed to
accomplish. Edna, removed herself from her society made
reality and responsibilities as a married woman and
mother.
She sought to find her freedom and herself, by
leaving her husband and children basically her old self.
Venturing out and living alone in the pigeon house.
Engaging in a sexual relationship with a men that was not
her husband. As well as falling in love with Robert. She
gained freedom related to the “What if” that was lingering
in her mind and body. No longer a possession of her
husbands, she was assertive to make decisions for her self.
Nonetheless, she was still not truly fulfilled. Her
mind was still caged like a house bird. Not ever being able
to set herself free in her mind as she was physically. The
ending of her story is up for debate, we truly do not know
if she commit suicide or not but the heaviness of her body
symbolizes that she might have given up and just allowed
herself to drown.

10. Work Cited
The Awakening Electronic Edition, Chopin, Kate, 1851-1904
http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/chopinawake/chopin.html
Source: From ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOUTHERN CULTURE edited by Charles Reagan
Wilson and William Ferris Copyright © 1989 by the University of North Carolina Press.
Used by permission of the publisher. www.uncpress.unc.edu Kate Chopin, 1851-1904
http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/chopinawake/bio.html