Essays / Sample Excerpt # 4

  Kate Chopin's turn of the century novel, The Awakening, challenged society's concepts of what a wife and mother should be (Stipe 16). The story, which tells of a young woman's search for identity and her sexual awakening, shocked the country and seriously damaged its author's career. The protagonist, Edna Pontellier, can still make students in college courses become "visibly angry and particularly outspoken over Edna's inattention to and apparent disinterest in her children" (Stipe 16). Edna's search for self-discovery and self-expression in The Awakening leads eventually to her suicide. There has been a great deal written pertaining to exactly what compelled Edna to this act of desperation. An examination of scholarly opinion, as well as Chopin's text, will reveal that Edna's last act was a culmination of several factors. The complex cultural tapestry that Chopin creates in this work does not lend itself to simplistic answers as to Edna's motivation. As this examination will show, Edna's suicide was the result of complex cultural forces, of which her awakened sexual identity was only a part.

1. Heroism in the Aeneid
2. Queen Mary I of England
3. Urban Ecology / Baltimore
4. Chopin's The Awakening

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