Feminist approach to The Awakening - Essay Example

20 March Feminist Symbols in The Awakening Léonce Pontellier and two children represent the anchors of a stable, but dull,life for Edna Pontellier. Edna wants nothing more than to be free in making decisions in her life. She craves to be with Robert Lebrun, but she cannot, because she is married and with children. She desires to paint and swim as she pleases, but she also cannot do all these, because her free time as an individual does not exist. This essay analyzes the symbols in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening from a feminist perspective.

The sea and the birds are symbols that illustrate the stark gender inequalities between men and women, and so awakened women like Edna chooses suicide over a life of limitations that her womanhood brings to her.Birds stand for imprisonment and the possibilities of being free. The mockingbird and parrot at Madame Lebrun’s house represent one of the freedoms that women lack: freedom of speech. These chattering birds irritate Léonce: “Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their society when [these birds] ceased to be entertaining” (Chopin 2).

He shares the sentiments of other men who find women’s stories as inane. At the same time, the power to leave women as they talk represents the power of men over women’s freedom of expression. They can overlook the female voice and get away with it. Women, on the contrary, are forced to listen to and to obey what men tell them. Birds, in addition, stand for the feeling of being trapped as a woman. A woman is ensnared already as a woman, and more so, when she is married. One time, Edna weeps after Léonce charges her for being an irresponsible mother, and she feels: “An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish” (Chopin 14-15).

She slowly realizes that her gender has put her inside a strong figurative cage. Birds also signify freedom. The ability to open one’s wings and to fly is an action of complete freedom. Mlle. Reisz tells Edna to develop stronger wings for her artistic desires. Wings represent the strength of flight; it suggests the lack of boundaries in the sky. As a married woman, nevertheless, Edna cannot stretch her wings and fly, because she is in a cage of her gendered roles as a wife and a mother.The sea stands for Edna’s yearning for escape.

Edna sees the ocean as her only escape from her limited world. In the sea, she can swim and flee from her husband’s controls of her actions. She can leave behind her roles as a mother too. She believes that the sea is a spiritual entity that helps her awaken from her slumber: “The voice of the sea is seductive” because, it is “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” (Chopin 34).

The sea communicates to her who she can be. It, however, symbolizes not only the “endless openness and possibility but also one of chaos and dissolution” (Gray 72). In the sea, she realizes that her possibilities are in her imagination only. Society will never set her free from her gendered roles and responsibilities. As a result, she chooses to take her life, for in the afterlife, she can unbind herself from her gender. Hence, Edna finds complete freedom in dying.The novel suggests that to be a married woman is to be in double-locked cages.

Men control the key to these cages. It also shows gender inequalities through the symbols of birds and the sea. The birds represent cages and flight, while the sea stands for vast opportunities and dissolution. These symbols tell readers that for a woman, there is no real freedom. A woman is caged forever; therefore, for every woman, death is the only door to true freedom.Works CitedChopin, Kate. The Awakening. Web. 18 Mar. 2012 < http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=ChoAwak.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all>.

Gray, Jennifer B. “The Escape of the ‘Sea’: Ideology and ‘The Awakening.’” Southern Literary Journal 37.1 (2004): 53-73.