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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page research paper t hat discusses how the female characters of Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz are used by Chopin to underscore the characterization of the main protagonist, Edna Pontellier, who experiences a sexual awakening at the dawn of the twentieth century. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khfemawk.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
ultimately fulfilling for every women (Stipe 16). The novel tells of how a young woman, Edna Pontellier, searched for identity and experienced a sexual awakening that shocked the country. Even
today, Ednas story can make student college courses become "visibly angry and particularly outspoken over Ednas inattention to and apparent disinterest in her children" (Stipe 16). What causes Chopins novel
to be so controversial? To answer this question, it is illuminating to look to the contrast that she provides between the three principal female characters in this novel. The
Awakening begins by introducing the readers to Mrs. Pontellier, who is vacationing on the resort island of Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico. There are numerous other families on
the island, and Edna observes these wives with their children. Edna is emphatically not a "not a mother-woman" (Mahon 228). She recognizes the women around her "idolized their children,
worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels" in their service (Chopin 19). She also recognized that she
was not one of them. Later in the novel, as she begins to assert her autonomy, "Mrs. Pontellier" will be referred to simply as "Edna" (Stipe 16). Mr. Pontellier,
the narrator informs the reader, looks at his wife as she were a "valuable piece of personal property" (Chopin 4). It is largely Ednas resistance to the role of being
her husbands possession, as well as her inability to "give herself up for the sake of her children," that creates the conflict within the novel (Stipe 16). Unlike the other
vacationers at Grand Isle, Edna is not a Creole. Born in Kentucky, she comes from stern Presbyterian stock. Her mother died when she was little and her father ruled the
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