Kate Chopin

 Romanticism  The exotic locale, use of color, and heavy emphasis on nature  Edna's search for individuality and freedom:  freedom to decide what to be, how to think, and how to live  Rebellion against society  Other prototypical romantic elements of the text:  Frequent inner thoughts,  memories of childhood,  the personified sea and its sensuous call,  the fantastic talking birds,  the mysterious woman in black,  the romantic music playing almost constantly in the background,  the gulf spirit, and  the desire to express herself through art.

 Realism/Naturalism/Local Color  Reaction against Romanticism and stressed the real over the fantastic  Stressed the uncaring aspect of nature and the genetic, biological destiny of man  Humanity's instinctual, basic drives dominate their actions and cannot be evaded  The identity of the setting is integral to the unfolding of the theme, rather than simply incidental to a theme that could be set anywhere  Portrayal of Edna as hostage to her biology:  Edna is female, has children, and is a wife in a society that dictates behavioral norms based on those conditions,  Relationship between men and women and the economic aspects,  Speaks of women in terms of possession, as property, and as a symbol of a man’s social status,  a victim of fate, chance, of an uncaring world, pulled into a consuming, but indifferent sea,  the only escape from her biological destiny as a woman in society, possessed, sexual, and ruled, is death,  the Creole society and its rules.

 Industrial Revolution  Darwin’s theories: basic drives dominate actions  Women’s Suffrage  Creole Culture

 Industrial Revolution  Turn of the century: 19 th /20 th ; tension between old/new; traditional/modern  World’s Fair Expo Chicago 1904: heralded the rise of the machine age  Transformed handicrafts, which women had always done in their homes, into a machine-powered, mass- produced industry  Lower-class women could earn wages as factory workers

 Darwin’s Theories  On the Origin of Species  The Descent of Man  Conditioned and controlled by:  Environment  Heredity  Instinct  Chance

 Women’s Suffrage  First women's rights convention in July of 1848 (two years before Chopin was born) in Seneca Falls, New York  Lucretia Coffin Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton  Adopted a Declaration of Sentiments patterned after the Declaration of Independence and focused on getting the vote  Suffragists were branded the 'shrieking sisterhood,' labeled unfeminine, and accused of immorality

 Creole Culture  It was Catholic in a Protestant country.  The Creole women were very conservative  They were frank and open in discussing their marriages and children, but could do so because their moral nature did not allow any doubt as to their chastity.  LA was the only state in the nation that operated under a different legal system.  Under the Louisiana Code, patterned after the Napoleonic code of France, a woman belonged to her husband.  Article 1388 established the absolute control of the male over the family.  Article 1124 equated married women with babies and the mentally ill, all three were deemed incompetent to make a contract.

 Middle and upper-class women were still expected to stay at home as idle, decorative symbols of their husbands' wealth.  They were, as Virginia Woolf termed it, expected to be angels in the house.  They were pregnant frequently due to the restrictions on birth control.  They cared for their homes, husbands, and children, played music, sang, or drew to enhance the charm of their homes and to reflect well on their husbands.  Wives were possessions, cared for and displayed, who often brought a dowry or inherited wealth to a marriage.  They were expected to subordinate their needs to their husband's wishes.

 1890s:  1890s: The women's movement begins to gain a foothold on American society. However, women still do not have the right to vote, and women's issues were not part of the political platform.  Today:  Today: Women have had the right to vote since the passage/ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in  1890s:  1890s: According to the law, a married woman's property belonged to her husband, even if she had inherited land before being wed. If she later divorced her husband, the land would still be legally his.  Today:  Today: Women have equal legal rights to property, and divorce cases usually conclude with at least half — if not more — of a couple's possessions going to the wife.  1890s:  1890s: Advice columns for women had their beginning. With the advent of Dorothy Dix's column in 1895, advice columns appeared in newspapers and provided a forum for discussion of women's issues.  Today:  Today: Not only do publishing companies print women's columns in newspapers, but they also dedicate entire magazines to women's issues.

 Born in Missouri in 1850  Raised in matriarchal household  Educated at Sacred Heart Academy (Catholic boarding school)  Strong female influence in younger years

 In 1870, married Oscar Chopin, the son of a wealthy cotton-growing family in Louisiana.  He adored his wife, admired her independence and intelligence, and "allowed" her unheard of freedom.  They had seven children.  They moved to his old home in Cloutierville.  Oscar died of swamp fever there in  Kate took over the running of his general store and plantation for over a year.

 In 1884 she sold her property and moved back to St. Louis to live with her mother.  To support herself and her young family, she began to write.  Her first novel, At Fault, was published in 1890, Bayou Folk in 1894 and A Night in Acadia in  The Awakening was published in 1899  She died of a cerebral hemorrhage on August 22, 1904.

 Identity  Women & Femininity  Marriage  Love  Society & Class  Repression  Art & Culture  Family  Respect & Reputation  Life, Consciousness, & Existence

 Art:  Art becomes a symbol of both freedom and failure.  Edna sees art as a way of self-expression and of self-assertion.  Mlle. Reisz sees becoming an artist as a test of individuality.  Edna fails because her wings are too weak.  Birds:  Birds are major symbolic images in the narrative.  They symbolize the ability to communicate and entrapment of women  Flight is another symbol associated with birds, and acts as a stand in for awakening.  Edna escapes her home, her husband, her life, by leaving for the pigeon house.  Mlle. Reisz lectures Edna on the need for strong wings in artistic endeavors.

 Clothes:  Edna is fully dressed when first introduced; slowly over the course of the novel she removes her clothes.  This symbolizes the shedding of the societal rules in her life and her growing awakening and stresses her physical and external self.  Adele is more "careful" of her face in the seventh chapter and wears a veil.  Both she and Madame Lebrun constantly make clothes to cover the body.  The woman in black and Mlle. Reisz never change their clothes, symbolizing their distance from any physical attachment.

 Sleep:  Sleep is an important symbolic motif running through the novel.  Edna's moments of awakening are often preceded by sleep.  Sleep is also a means of escape and of repairing her tattered emotions.  In fairy tales, sleep is a key ingredient.  Ocean, Gulf, or Sea:  The ocean is a symbol of both freedom and escape.  Edna remembers the Kentucky fields of her childhood as an ocean.  she learns to swim in the gulf, and she finally escapes into the sea.  The ocean is also a source of self- awareness, both an outward knowledge of the expansion of the universe and an inner direct obsession with self.  The sound of the surf calls to her, comforts her throughout the novel, and acts as a constant beckon in the text.  As you read, notice how often, even in New Orleans away from the sea, the language mimics the sound of the surf or the actions of the water.

 Houses:  There are many houses in the novel: the one on Grand Isle, the one in New Orleans, the pigeon house, the house in which Edna falls asleep on Cheniere Caminada.  The first two of these houses serve as cages for Edna. She is expected to be a "mother-woman" on Grand Isle and to be the perfect social hostess in New Orleans.  The other two are places of supposed freedom. On the island she can sleep and dream, and in the pigeon house she can create a world of her own.  Grand Isle itself is a place of women. Most men only visit on weekends, and while there go to places of their own like the Kleins hotel.  Cheniere Caminada is then a place of escape off this island of women, into a new, romantic, and foreign world.  New Orleans is the bastion of societal rules, of realistic life and duties.  Kentucky, for Edna is simply New Orleans in a different place; ridged with rules and full of unhappy memories.  New York and Mexico are men's Grand Isles, and both Leonce and Robert leave Edna for these places, where they do business with other men.

Selected passages

 Call of the sea (III)  Passions are aroused  “you are the only one worth playing for”(Mademoiselle Reisz to Edna)  Bathing (swimming) at midnight (IX)  Robert: “he did not lead the way, however, he directed the way” (X)  Edna learning to swim, determined to inhabit her physical self, to value it, luxuriate in its sinews and strengths (X)  Turning her face seaward...a quick vision of death smote her soul (X)

 Expected to answer her husband’s request, “unthinkingly,” as befits the “daily treadmill of life”  “I can’t permit you to stay out here all night”  Awakening gradually, as if from a dream (XI)  NOT a mother-woman (IV)  Idolizing her children  Worshipping her husband  Esteeming it a holy privilege to efface herself as an individual and grow wings as ministering angels

 Edna (re)birthing herself (XIII)  Revisionary mythmaking again: this time of Sleeping Beauty  Oppression of church service  Madame Antoine’s cot  Edna bathing herself, sleeping lightly at first (XIII)  AWAKENING, “with the conviction that she had slept long and soundly”  Hunger (XIII), eating bread & wine