The Importance of Setting in The Awakening Essay -- Chopin Awakening

The Importance of Setting in The Awakening Setting is a key element in Chopins novel, The Awakening To the novels main character, Edna Pontellier, house is not home. Edna was not herself when enclosed behind the walls of the Pontellier mansion. Instead, she was another person entirely-- someone she would like to forget. Similarly, Edna takes on a different identity in her vacation setting in Grand Isle, in her indep dismissent home in New Orleans, and in skilful about e truly other environment that she inhabits. In fact, Edna seems to drift from setting to setting in the novel, neer really finding her true self - until the end of the novel. Chopin seems highly concerned with this question throughout her narrative. On a larger scale, the author seems to be probing even more deeply into the essence of the pistillate experience Do women in general have a place in the existence, and is the life of a woman the cumbersome pursuit to find that very place? The Awakening struggles w ith this question, raising it to multiple levels of complexity. Edna finds liberation and happiness in various places throughout the novel, yet this is almost immediately countered by unhappiness and misery. nonetheless at the end, the reader is still left with the question of whether Edna has truly found a setting in which she can finally be herself. Many readers would make out that Edna finds this niche in her seaside vacation home on Grand Isle. To Edna, the sea is a wide expanse of opportunity and liberation from the constricting socialite world of French Quarter New Orleans. Chopins lavish descriptions of the sea give us an insight into its powerful effect on Edna The voice of the sea is seductive never ceasing, whis... ...e Awakening. 1899. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Ed. Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge lah State UP, 1969. 881-1000. Delbanco, Andrew. The Half-Life of Edna Pontellier. New Essays on The Awakening. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 1988. 89-106. Gilmore, Michael T. Revolt Against Nature The Problematic Modernism of The Awakening. Martin 59-84. Giorcelli, Cristina. Ednas Wisdom A Transitional and Numinous Merging. Martin 109-39. Martin, Wendy, ed. New Essays on the Awakening. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 1988. Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. Westport, CT Greenwood, 1990. Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin A Critical Biography. Baton Rouge Louisiana State UP, 1969. Showalter, Elaine. Tradition and the Female Talent The Awakening as a Solitary Book. Martin 33-55.