毕 业 论 文
（2014届本科）
论文题目： 埃德娜觉醒历程分析
—— 评《觉醒》
学 院： 外国语学院
专 业： 英 语
班 级： 2012级
作者姓名： 毛金兰
指导教师： 贺跟旺 职称： 副教授
完成日期： 2014 年 5 月 10 日
Edna ’s awakening
----- A brief analysis of the Awakening
by
Mao Jinlan
Class 2, Grade 2009
(No. 2009091222)
Supervisor: He Genwang
（Associate Professor）
April 20, 2013
School of Foreign Languages and Literature
University
毕业论文（设计）诚信声明
本人郑重声明：所呈交的本科毕业论文（设计），是本人在指导老师贺跟旺的指导下，独立进行研究工作所取得的成果，成果不存在知识产权争议，除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成果。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律结果由本人承担。
作者签名：
二O 一四年五月十日
Statement of Authorship
Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or part from a thesis presented by me for another degree or diploma.
No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the thesis.
This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma in my tertiary institution.
Signed: Mao Jinlan
Dated: May 10,2014
Acknowledgement
First and foremost, I would like to avail myself of the opportunity to
express my gratitude to associate professor He Genwang , my tutor, who has taken her precious time off from her tight schedule, reading my thesis carefully and offering me constant encouragement, valuable suggestions and enlightening instructions, which contribute to the completion of my thesis.
I would also like to acknowledge my indebtedness to my roommate Wang Xiaoxu and many others who have contributed their time, thoughts, skills and encouragement to this thesis.
I am also grateful to Ma Fang, Liu Ying and all my friends who have given me generous support and helpful advice in the past few years
Finally, I wish to devote this paper to my beloved family, who have given me life and love, and have been supporting me since 24 years ago.
摘 要
小说《觉醒》是美国女作家凯特肖邦的代表作，出版于1899年。十九世纪下半叶，社会在许多方面有了突飞猛进的发展，然而女性仍然被看作是男人的财产和附属品。凯特肖邦在创作过程中紧紧围绕这一主题，在小说中深入细致地刻画了女性的社会地位，婚姻生活以及自我追求。本文旨在通过运用女性主义理论研究小说《觉醒》的女主角打破传统父权社会的束缚，追求女性身份认同及独立的觉醒之旅。女性主义者认为遭受不公平的原因是她们的性别。社会需要进行积极的变化来改变女性所面临的情况。而最直接有效的方法就是改变自己的处境。小说女主公埃德娜采取行动，经历了一个逐步觉醒的过程并最终获得精神上的独立。本文从三个方面详细分析了埃德娜的觉醒历程。埃德娜是一位真正的女性主义者先驱。作为一位新女性，埃德娜愿意以任何代价去换取心中的梦想，投入大海的怀抱不是对社会的妥协，也不是争取女性权利的失败。相反，这是一种解脱与重生。
关键词：女性主义; 重生; 觉醒; 精神; 独立; 性
Abstract
The Awakening, published in 1899, is the masterpiece of the American female writer Kate Chopin. In the second half of the nineteenth century, society made great economic and scientific process in many aspects, but women were still considered to be the possession of men. Kate Chopin focuses on this motif in her works and portrays female's social status, matrimonial life, and autonomy in a profound manner.
By analyzing Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the paper intends to study the protagonist’s campaign against the fetters of conventional patriarchal society and her journey of pursuing self-hood and independence by adopting the theory of feminism, which is based on the belief that women suffer injustice because of their sex. Under this broad umbrella various feminisms offer deferring analyses of the causes or agents, of female oppression. A change in society is needed in order to make a positive reform for women. But how is this change to be brought about? The obvious answer is to convince individual women to change their situation. Edna, the protagonist in The Awakening, makes such a struggle through a gradual awakening process of taking actions to gain spiritual independence.
This paper carries on a detailed analysis of the process of Edna’s awakening in thr ee aspects. She thus becomes definitely a frontier feminist. Her death cannot simply be regarded as a compromise with the conventional rules; rather, it is a beginning and rebirth of a new life.
Key words: feminism; rebirth; awakening; spirit; independent; sex
Contents
诚信声明……. ………. …………………………………………………………………………i Statement of Authorship……………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgement …………………………………………………………………………iii 摘要…………. …. …………. ………………………. …………………………………………iv Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………v
1. In troduction………………………………………………………………………………1
2. Edna’s Awakening journey ……………………………………………………………….1
2.1 Awakening of Feminism Consciousness ………………………………………………1
2.2 Awakening of Love…………………………………………………………………... …3
2.3 Awakening of Sexual Consciousness…………………………………………... ………. 5
3. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………. 7
4. References …………………………………………………………………………………8
Edna ’s Awakening
----A Brief Analysis of the Awakening
Mao Jinlan
School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Longdong University
1. Introduction
Kate Chopin (1805-1904), American female writer, was regarded as a talented local color writer for her two favorable collections of short stories: Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). However, her second novel, The Awakening, provoked a flood of controversy after its first publication in 1899. Because the book, concerned with touchy subjects such as extramarital affairs, deserting home, leaving children, and the like, called into questioning the values and attitudes towards women in the entire society. Before 1945, the only special research on Chopin’s works is Daniel Rankin’s Chopin and her Creole story (1932). In 1962, Edmund Wilson, in his analysis of American Civil War literature , called the Awakening beautiful written with a theme that “anticipates D. H. Lawrence” (Wilson, 1962: 590). The Awakening was also mentioned in popular magazines during that period of time. During 1980s and 1990s, scholars began to use contemporary approaches to interpret the novel. For example, Showalter analyzes American women’s writings including Chopin’s via a feminist perspective. In 2005, Patricia L. Bradley (2005) explores an intersexual connection between The Birth of Tragedy written by Nietzsche and The Awakening, adding post-structuralism to the various interpretive approaches to the novel. In China, there are also some studies on Kate Chopin and her works since 1990s. For example, Jin Li and Qin Yaqing, in their articles in American Literature (1999), introduce the life of Kate Chopin as a female writer and analyze the female images under her pen as repressed, awakened, rebellious ones. This paper explores the protagonist--Edna ’s awakening from feminism consciousness, love and sexual consciousness.
2. Edna’s Awakening Journey
2.1 Awakening of Feminism Consciousness
Feminism incorporates both a doctrine of equal rights for women and an ideology of social transformation aiming to create a world for women beyond simple social equality. (Gong Yubo, kong Qinghua, 2010: 40) “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is,” British author and critic Rebecca West remarks, “I only know that other people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or prostitute” (West, 1982: 219). Indeed, feminism is often defined as a matter of what is absent rather than what is present. In its diversity feminism is concerned with the marginalization of all women: that is, with their being relegated to a secondary position. It is theory that men and women should be equal politically, economically and socially.
In The Awakening Chopin depicts her protagonist, Edna, a twenty-eight year-old married woman with two children in the middle-class Creole family, in a situation where she finds herself trapped and stifled in the life of a wife and mother. The process of Edna’s gradual awakening to her identity and her own position as a woman in the world is the chief cause of all her suffering. The difficulties that Edna encounters in terms of family are primarily rooted in her marriage: that is, her interaction with her husband and her relationship with her children. Edna gradually realizes that her marriage is a mistake; she has married a man she does not love. When Edna has children, she fails to be a good mother. Thus, Edna suffers from being in an unwanted marriage and from being a distant mother: she desires freedom from family obligations to search for self-autonomy.
Refusing to be an object existing to benefit Pontellier, Edna chooses to leave her husband’s mansion. Edna exclaims, “The house, the money that provides for it, are not mine” (Chopin, 1988: 107). Edna is tired, frustrated by being treated as a lesser being, unable to do anything out of her own autonomy. She is thus determined to move into an apartment for lease, which she calls a pigeon-house. Moving into the pigeon house, a space belonging to Edna alone, is not only an action breaking the social rule of a married woman at the time, but also a crucial step that Edna takes courageously, following her instincts in an individualistic way. It is within the little pigeon house that Edna, for the first time, feels the “intimate character of a home”. Only in the pigeon house can she release all her social responsibility temporarily. For Edna, “there was with her a feeling of having descended in social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual” (Chopin, 1988: 127). Moving into her own house, Edna
gains spiritual awakening while putting off her social obligations such as being a mother and a wife. The pigeon house assists Edna in raising her own sense of spirituality and individuality. In her own space, free of social restrictions, Edna is her own self. She begins to really “look with her own eyes; to see and apprehend the deeper under currents of life” (Chopin, 1988: 127).
As awakening from the patriarchal oppression and regaining her right gradually, Edna
also takes actions to gain her financial independence at the same time. The famous Britain woman writer Virginia Woolf indicates in A Room of One’s Own that a woman must have money and a room of her own and then she can free herself from dependence on the man and meditate without disturbance (Woolf, 2008: 2). It seems that the process of Edna’s awakening in economy demonstrates the points of Woolf. Although marriage has provided Edna with financial security, like many other women receive in marriage, Edna gradually realizes that such sweetness from marriage is nothing but a fancy dream. In order to be independent thoroughly Edna turns her dabbling in paints into a lucrative profession. She assigns a decent job to support herself. When she wants to be independent and be away from her husband’s control, Edna tries all the ways she can to make money, including selling her paintings, so that she can be independent economically It can be said that Edna attempts to earn money to free herself from financial obligation to her husband. As Barker quotes, “Edna’s painting allows her an active role in interpreting the world around her. It also allows her greater control over her life” (Barker, 1988: 74). There are mainly two ways for Edna to make her own money. One is by gambling at the horse races, and the other is by selling her paintings. In the novel, Edna is able to make a living by selling paintings, without depending on the providence from her husband. She proudly tells Mademoiselle Reize, “I won a large sum this winter on the races, and I am beginning to sell my sketches” (Chopin, 1988: 122).
As Edna gradually takes control of her life, her vision increasingly expands. “She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of her own life” (Chopin, 1988: 127) . Obviously, economical independence helps Edna to pursue her real independence in spirituality.
2.2 Awakening of Love
In looking into Edna’s psychological aspect, Wolff wrote, “The emotional change must
be described as the development of an increasingly resistant barrier between the real external world and that world which was most authentic in Edna’s experience--- the inner world of her fantasies” (Wolff, 1973: 236). Chopin makes it clear that Edna’s marriage is not the result of her deep love for Pontellier. One of the reasons is her desire to flout her father, who violently opposes her to marry a Catholic. Another is that Edna intends to rebel and determines to escape from the grimness of her father’s world. Meanwhile, the marriage enables Edna to preserve her own identity. As Wolff points out “The marriage to such a man as Leonce was a defensive measure used to reinforce the distance between them” (Wolff, 1973: 237).
What really matters in life is just what their marriage lacks. They are terribly short of
mutual understanding. Mr. Ponterllier’s only life-long business is to earn big money. His spare time is filled with gambling and playing game at Klein’s Club. He has slipped into the habit of telling others’ anecdotes and gossips which bore Edna very much. He always reproaches her for her neglect of the children, though she is not an unkind mother. He thinks that he cannot be in two places at once making a fiving for his family on the street, and staying at home to see that no harm befalls them. On the other hand, Edna is extremely fond of music, art and mutual communication. As we know, marriage is based on mutual affection. Edna is therefore in a vulnerable position. Mutual communication in her marriage is luxuries.
Feeling no passion for her husband, finding her marriage to the twelve years older has
been “purely an accident”, Edna takes to swimming which has brought her close to Robert who attempts to teach her to swim daily around the whole summer. During this period, Edna finds a lot in common with Robert. Gradually they have become congenial friends. They have fallen in love. It is Robert, not her husband who excites her passion, her fantasy in life. At this moment Edna begins to awaken from the romantic dreams of girlhoods But Edna found herself failed. The reason is that Robert’s conventional dislike for seducing another man’s wife gets in the way. When Robert understands that he loves her, a man’s wife, he leaves for Mexico to avoid the temptation.
While Edna was romantic; she hoped that Robert could come back. Even Robert came
back, he didn’t visit Edna. But Edna still had illusion, until at last, when she saw the note on the table, she realized that Robert couldn’t return and understand her. The leaving of Robert had given a vital blow on her. “There was no one thing in the world that she desires. There
was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone.” (Chopin, 1988: 155)
Edna’s fancy that she will be completed when Robert returns to her is eventually
annihilated. Lonely as she is, she receives another man, Arobin’s flirting physically. “When Arobin leaned forward and kissed her, she clasped his head, holding his lips to hers” (Chopin, 1988: 112). While the sudden passion ceases as Robert’s coming back. It is at the time that Edna can tell more clearly what true love is and what merely physical desire is. She knows that only Robert is her true love, and Arobin is “absolutely nothing to her” (Chopin, 1988: 104) .
Edna is standing on a different ground of understanding that Robert has perhaps never
reached before. When Edna says to Robert that she would laugh at both Pontellier and him if they both consider her as a possession, Edna is in fact showing Robert how much she has “awakened” and enlightened to be abl e to speak such universal truth. Edna loves Robert; although he might not understand，he is the one who has intrigued Edna and brought her to this level of self- understanding. The passage shows that men at the time were often confused and mixed the feeling of love with possession. And perhaps most women of the time thought that being the husband’s possession was natural and common. But Edna transcends the traditional idea of what women are supposed to be. She belongs to nobody but herself, even though she truly loves and is loved, and even though she is called and given the name of “Mrs. Pontellier.”
2.3 Awakening of Sexual Consciousness
Sexuality plays an important role in women’s studies. (Beauvoir, 1998) Previous
awakening to spiritual pursuit leads to her awakening to sexuality. Human beings’ sexual activity consists of both physical pleasure and spiritual communication. (Beauvoir, 1998) Victorian times were periods of extreme sexual repression. Women could not show their sexual need and they were not capable of experiencing erotic pleasure. It was especially true to women of the middle and upper classes. For a respectable woman, the sex act was one of self-sacrifice; the good woman was passionless.
Although sex is affected by social expectations of the time, it is still a very strong natural
power. Edna’s reaction to Arobin ’s flirting cannot be controlled by her. She bows before the comfort of body and sensuality. “When Arobin leaned forward and kissed her, she clasped his head, holding his lips to hers” (Chopin, 1988: 112). By holding Arobin’s face and looking into his eyes, kissing his lips, Edna is facing another major awakening in her life. That is, the natural animalism and sexual impulse which is so strictly forbidden in patriarchal society of her tim e. Her response to Arobin’s love is motivated by real passion. It leads Edna to a realization of being a woman, a person whose only nature is to possess the desire and passion necessary to complete her awakening to become an individual. “The awakening for Edna is not just the mental realization of being oneself; it also creates an understanding that her physical body is connected to herself. Arobin’s touch not only conveys her a certain physical comfort, her intimacy with people helps Edna rediscover her physical flesh, as important and necessary to her awakening” (Ge Yi, 2005: 53). Thus the sleeping beauty is awakened physically.
By the way, the setting of the Awakening is sensuous. Grand Isle, where Edna Pontellier
experiences sexual awakening for the first time, is being surrounded by the sea. Swimming in the sea, Edna feels the real existence as a woman with the water gently touches her body. It is the sea that awakens her obscure sensuality. The sea is sensuous and seductive under the pen of Chopin. Against this sensuous background, Edna is gradually awakening to her own sensuousness. Her realization of her own sensuous beauty is the first step.
Actually, the “pigeon house” not only satisfies Edna’s desire to seek independence, also
nourishes her sexual desire to which her nature really responds, for she has abandoned the functional sexuality which constrains female sexuality to motherhood. The erotic energy which has been suppressed in her heart erupts like a volcano. Without the constraint of patriarchal morality, Edna enjoys sexual freedom in the pigeon house.
Edna unfolds the sexual desire and physical longing that have long been repressed for
another man. However, as she gains the self-control in terms of her sexuality, Edna can tell more clearly what true love is and what merely physical desire is. She knows that only Robert is her true love, and Arobin is “absolutely nothing to her” (Chopin, 1988: 104).
“I love you, she whispered, only you; no one but you. It was you who awoke me last
summer out of a long, stupid dream. Oh! I have suffered so unhappy you’re your indifference.
Oh! I have suffered, suffered! Now shall be everything to each other. Nothing else in the world is of any consequence.” (Chopin, 1988: 147) From these words, it shows that Edna lo ved Robert deeply although she was another man’s wife. When Robert finally comes back, Edna finds still “in his eyes the same tender caress, with an added warmth and entreaty which had not been there before---the same glance which had penetrated to the sleeping places of her soul and awakened them”. (Chopin, 1988: 147) At last both Robert and Edna cannot hide the passion of love from each other anymore. When Edna finally invites Robert to her own “pigeon house”, Robert agrees immediately. At the pigeon house they cannot hold back love for each other anymore.
Although Edna’s sexuality does not lead her to the happy ending as in fairytales, she
significantly learns to express herself in sexual terms. It is the sign to stress that women have the right to embrace sexuality and the right to control their own sexuality just as men do. Edna challenges the society by claiming her own sexual control and thus calls the attention to change.
3. Conclusion
The Awakening is a story of women developing sensuality and individuality. Chopin was a
pioneer of her own time, in her portrayal of women’s desires of independence and control of their own sexuality. Chopin questions and interrogates individual and cultural markers and methods of constructing identity, bridging the ever-widening split between the “masculine” and “feminine” principles in literature. At the same time she creates a new image that hints at the interchangeability between feminine ideology and masculine ideology. Edna, as a pioneer woman with a dream to have selfhood, love and sexuality, has tried her best to pursue her beautiful dream and experienced a journey from ignorant to awakening. The open ending of the novel weakens Edna’s ultimate fate, but emphasizes the significance of Edna’s awakening journey i tself. Her awakening journey is a representative of the female’s struggle for self-identity and independence. In addition, the awakening journey is a process or passage rather than a destination.
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