Author ~ KATE CHOPIN

First published in 1899, The Awakening, is a novel written by Kate Chopin, which was
initially titled A SOLITARY SOUL. This is one of the earliest American novels to talk
about womens issues making it a milestone work on the early feminism. The novel is
set in the 19thcentury New Orleans, Louisiana gulf coast. The plot depicts the
protagonist Edna Pontellier struggling between her motherhood responsibilities and
her unorthodox views on femininity. The Awakening is a complete mixture of realistic
narrative, sharp-witted social elucidation, abstract complexities altogether making it a
forefather of American Modernistic Literature.
For my paper, Ill be using two theories on the novel The Awakening.

MARXIST THEORY
FEMINIST THEORY
MARXIST THEORY AND ITS APPLICABILITY IN THE AWAKENING

The cultural theories developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels rests upon the
principle that the history of humanity and the societal institutions is hell bent on the
changes in economic organization. Marxists assert that the economic structures
within the society overlook the reasons behind political and social behavior. A
concern for social rather than the individual.

In her novel, The Awakening, Kate creates different social and economic statuses
for each character. To point out, Leonce Pontellier represents the Creoles as he is an
established person, rich and successful, and according to Victorian norms, he can
marry any woman of his choice and recast her life. On the contrary is his wife Edna
Pontellier, who has been raised in a middle class family and she lived her own small
life all within herself. The man that she falls in love with, Robert Lebrun, is a young,
twenty-six-years old single man, who has the passion to adapt and fit himself into the
higher social class whereas Edna, could not fully adapt herself into becoming rich.
The Marxist ideology is firmly fixed with the faith in societys and individuals creation
of economic motives. These are the motives that create socioeconomic demarcation
amongst the group members within a society.

A Marxist analysis of The Awakening focuses on the ways that shape the
characters intellectual issues produced by Capitalism. The construct of capitalist
society, that is, the passion to excel and succeed socially as well as economically,
causes Mr. Pontellier to take his wife for granted, and to see her merely as a valuable
piece of his personal property. When Edna couldnt take it anymore her husbands
attitude, she resulted into an absolutely dissatisfied wife, a mother and a woman.
When she became aware of the fact that she is being repressed by the Capitalist
Ideology and forced into a relationship she cant bear, she rises above the impact of
exploitation and alienation that the capitalist society has gifted her. She recognizes
her potential, explores her sexuality, her identity, achieves awareness, control, and
turns herself into a woman being. However, the problem arises when the individual
takes control of the situation s/he was repressed for so long, and tries to act upon the
oppression, it gravitates to further isolate the individual from the society. The same
happened with Edna. She describes herself as having declined in the social scale,
and correspondingly making her way up in the spiritual one and every step she took
forward gave her a sense of relief from the obligations and perhaps added to her
strength and augmentation as an individual. Ednas capability to put at stake her
social comfort so as to grow as an individual, and explore herself is worth the praise.
Kate Chopins underlying intentions, here, serve a two-fold purpose. On the one
hand, she is letting her character Edna isolate herself and break the stereotypes from
the structure of such a classist society; and on the other hand, she wants Edna to
grow as a person, as a woman, as an individual and create her own identity and not
depend on any materialistic relationships and society. Thereby, Chopin makes it clear
that individual discharge is more significant than societal out-turns, irrespective of
Ednas depression and the end of the novella.

Chopin finely mocks Ednas powerlessness to come to terms with the irony that she
dislikes being ill-treated, without realizing the subjugation she afflicts upon her
servants. For instance, she alienates her servants from the outcome of their labour,
asking them to live in a room backyard and not the newly built house they spent
working on for Edna. Since she felt alienated, and subjugated by the upper societal
demarcation, this viewpoint, here, serves as a contrast to the motive Edna wants to
move into an entirely new world. These ideological battles present in the novella
suggest significantly the Marxist melody throughout the text.

At the time this novella was written, class system existed within the classes; as a
result, the protagonist realized not only her class consciousness, also herself as a
whole, her identity in the absence of the restrictions of Victorian norms and ideologies
that had always kept her in dark. Hence, it can be safely concluded that Marxist
concern stays the most prominent throughout the novella The Awakening.

FEMINIST THEORY AND ITS APPLICABILITY IN THE AWAKENING

Feminism is basically an entire range of movements and struggles, pertaining over

years, that secure a woman her equal positioning in the society in every field- be it
political, social, economical, or personal.

Years before Kate published her novella The Awakening, the society was enrolled in
a battle over social ideologies and demand for equal rights for women.

Edna, the protagonist, embodies all the social ideologies for which women of the era
were making great efforts. She is a respectable woman who acknowledges not just
her sexual desires but also her strength and courage made her to act upon them.
Victorian women were expected to behave in a certain manner, perform their
domestic duties and take care of everyone in the family and she embodied all that
until her saturation point. A woman who never cared about her needs and desires
and wants, was now turning into a lady that wants her desires and needs fulfilled.
Falling in love with Robert gave her the strength to explore her sexual desires, and
grow as person coming out of the expected social roles of a woman of Victorian era.
Her slow and subtle transformation into just EDNA, from Mrs. Pontellier, lightens
the fact that a woman is never the property of her husband, who owns it, rather she
must fight to attain her forgotten identity and must ensure herself a place in the
society.

The kind of freedom Edna desired was lived by her friend Mademoiselle Reisz, who
is unmarried. Edna becomes influenced by Adele Ratignolle, married with children,
she is a creole woman who motivates Edna to adjust and be conventional.

In the 19th century America, where the life of a woman revolved around being
married, child-bearing, and maintaining domestic spheres, a woman that Edna has
become, was unacceptable and Chopins heroines actions were just the same. Kate
was putting those dangerous ideas into the heads of women, inculcating in them the
conceptions that they are their own heroines, and obviously independent of their
husbands; regardless of the nineteenth century expectations from women. Edna
Pontelliers awakening is one of her mental intelligibility and her suicide step is a
victorious act. By committing suicide, she finally relieved herself from the social
constraints and possessions. An act of Liberation, her suicide is an important step,
thus justifying Edna as an ultimate feminist.
CONCLUSION

Marxism and Feminism both aim to help for a better social life in their own ways and
own theories. Feminism- being a sociopolitical movement, makes Edna realize the
worth of her life and the no-need to stick to societal expectations to make herself
adjustable to the society, instead enjoy her freedom. Marxism- being a
socioeconomic theory, tends to base the society on the theory that class system,
capitalism can only ruin individuals peace and his relations to other people, thereby,
thoroughly rejects Capitalism.