The Awakening written by: Kate Chopin
(Essay 2; writing style of fiction novel)
The Awakening, written by Kate Chopin,
published in 1899, shocked many readers of its time. It is the story of a woman
named Edna’s discovery of self, and what it means to live life against the
status quo of motherhood, womanhood, and especially marriage. Edna, the main character goes through her
“awakening” rather fast, nonetheless Kate Chopin’s rhetoric is seen throughout
the short novel, most obviously through the use of various metaphors and of
word choices. Kate Chopin shows her point of view on the subject of marriage,
and womanhood through use of figurative language, and syntax providing deep
meaning to Edna’s awakening from the beginning to her death.
One
of the first examples of syntax used in the short novel, is at the beginning of
Edna’s awakening, as she ponders the reasoning for her sudden urge to be
disobedient, and the thoughts filling her head of a man other than her husband.
“In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the world
as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world
within and around her.” The sentence has a compound verb “was beginning to
realize…and to recognize.” Another
example, “This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the
soul of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost
is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman,” is an example of an allusion.
The wisdom descending upon her soul is an allusion to when Jesus was baptized
by John the Baptist and a dove descended from the heavens. It was a sign to
Mrs. Pontellier that she was right about how she should be treated. She was
tired of being treated as property and was beginning to realize she should be
treated equally and that women had a bigger role in society than they had been
playing (mother and wife). Both sentences are also prepositional phrases,
which are short and to the point which helps the author show her perspective as
well as Edna’s first moment where she understands that she wants to be and have
more than what she is told to be and have.
A
third example of diction or more specifically syntax to prove the narrator's
tone toward marriage in The Awakening, which you may assume to be Kate Chopin's
tone. When speaking of marriage, the narrator or Chopin establishes a disapproving
and saddened tone by using gloomy words like "lamentable," such as
when Edna decline to go to a marriage by telling her husband that weddings were
"lamentable spectacle." Also, the fact of who Edna was addressing,
which was her husband to who she was once married to enhances the disapproving,
saddened tone. This phrase she uses express the unfortunate emotions as well as
the regret felt by the main character. The example of to who the speaker is
speaking (Edna to her husband) would be part of syntax, or sentence
structure. A more detailed example from syntax (which is part of
diction) of the tone of disapproval and sadness toward marriage relates to
Chopin's narrative choice of what is called middle diction (how the
average educated person of the Pontellier's wealthy class would speak). Chopin
uses middle diction to express negatives thoughts and feelings in correctly and
calmly constructed language. For example, this negative stream of thoughts:
"She could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the
foregoing were not uncommon in her married life. They seemed never before to
have weighed much against the abundance of her husband's kindness...."
These negative thoughts are all expressed in a "positive" way, not a
complaining, whining sort of way, through the correct use of Chopin's word
choice. This shows her negative point of view on being a wife, while reminding
the reader of her status and wealth.
Besides syntax, the author also employs the
use of figurative language mostly in the form of a metaphor to show Edna, the
main character’s point of view on womanhood, and to show how she progresses
throughout the novel as a woman and as a human being. The sea is a dominant
metaphor in “The Awakening”. It is both chaotic and dangerous, as well as a
symbol of rebirth. In Chapter X, for example, Edna swims out into the ocean,
only to feel a "certain ungovernable dread." Or again, earlier, in
Chapter VI, as Edna begins to "awaken" to her position in her world,
Chopin contrasts a comment about the "voice of the sea" with a
paragraph describing the beginnings of a new world: "the beginning of
things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, chaotic, and exceedingly
disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish
in its tumult!" here Chopin alludes to the chaotic nature of the sea
which is seen from the beginning of her new sense of self to the end when the
waves consume her very last breath. "The voice of the sea is seductive;
never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander
for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward
contemplation." By the story's end, of course, Edna has fully answered the
wild call to self-discovery and actualization voiced by the sea. As Edna begins
her final walk into the Gulf in Chapter thirty nine, Chopin repeats the
sentence from Chapter VI as quoted above ("The voice of the sea . . . ").
In this scene, the sea clearly represents new birth, as Edna enters the waters
"naked in the open air," as vulnerable as a newborn infant. Edna
herself feels "like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar
world that it had never known." So the sea is both life and death, it was
the beginning of her new awakened self, but her death by drowning in the sea
demonstrates her inability to live in society anymore where she is controlled
by societal roles and expectations of being a woman. Therefore the sea stands
for freedom.
Wakefulness
is also a strong metaphor in the novel, for Edna, to be awake is "to
realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her
relations as an individual to the world within and about her." To be
awake, is to know and in a way, to be enlightened. Chopin makes the
metaphor obvious in the "Mass" Edna celebrates after she wakes up in
Chapter XIII after having literally awakened from her nap, Edna metaphorically
awakens to the vivid details of the world about her, and she asks, "How
many years have I slept?" As with the metaphor of the sea, the metaphor of
wakefulness reaches a climax in the final chapter. Chopin clearly chose these
many metaphors to specifically sequence the main characters progression from
rebirth to death in the sea, and in between that, her ignorance in her rest
representing the old version of herself, and the wisdom she gains in her wake.
This way she is able to symbolize her views while having every written
sentence, or provided thought give a meaning that goes beyond the text .
Kate
Chopin employs the use of syntax and figurative language to show her view on
marriage, and woman hood through the main character Edna. Though this is a
short novel Chopin’s writing style helps her to dig really deep into Edna’s
shoes and allows her to provide an immense transformation in Edna’s character
making her progress from what she needed to be to who she wanted to be.
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