The Awakening By Kate Chopin - 1305 Words

Flannery O’Connor’s work opens up wide doors and gives direct access to the true heart of the story through the characters and their actions or gestures. These actions are visible in the book The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Edna Pontellier, the main character, searches for her identity through a series of awakenings. Chopin also creates a new role beyond â€Å"mother-woman† for Edna. Also, Chopin reveals information about the nature of gender relationships in the Creole society in order to understand Edna’s actions. Readers have to look at characters and their actions in order to reach the true heart of the story. Flannery O’Connor points out that â€Å"some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story†¦show more content†¦She simply wants her independence to become her own woman in her own way, and does not want to give up her entire life and soul for her children. Edna’s options are limited once she has awakened. She can go back to her husband and children or she can live a life of solitude like Mademoiselle Reisz. For her neither of these options are possible. Therefore Edna is left without any choices. Chopin illustrates the price Edna must pay for awakening; she no longer has any place in the society she belongs to. According to O’Connor’s theory about the real heart of the story, characters’ actions would have to be both in character and beyond character. Chopin tries to bring in a new role beyond the â€Å"mother-woman†. She states that â€Å"mother-woman† is a woman who â€Å"idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it to a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels†(Chopin 19).Edna Pontellier realizes that she wishes to be more than one of them. She realizes that as a wife and mother, she has not been living for herself, and she lost all her freedom. Her freedom has been taken away by her husband and children. It isn t that she dislikes her children or treats them brutally; she simply isn t terribly interested in being their mother. At the time this novel was published, women did as they were expected to by society. They were expected to be good