Friday, November 13, 2015

The Awakening: Post 1


"For men, love was important, but for women, it was absolutely necessary. As a 19th century book states: "Man's nature leads him forth into a struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts...But a woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world.""  (http://www.thehistorybox.com/ny_city/society/articles/nycity_society_courtship_article0038.htm)
An article about Victorian Era Relationships clearly explained what the ideal, and what most women were like during this century. While most things were out of the women's hands and into her parents hands to determine their lives, most women enjoyed the idea that their biggest role in life was to get married and reproduce. Which is what causes such an unsettling feeling with Léonce about Edna. Most men just like Léonce looked at marriage and having a family as the most important part of causing and fulfilling a women's life just the quote suggest by saying “the heart is her world".

 
After Léonce asks Edna to check on their son, and she begrudgingly does, you feel the shift in a negative way on how he looks at Edna. Then it becomes clear when he begins to talk about how Edna does not have the qualities that a "mother- woman" (19) should have. Edna does not appear to be one of the women that "idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels." (19) Léonce was addressing the fact that Edna is different, and is breaking the rules of how to be a traditional woman. While Léonce clearly wants the typical Victorian Era women he is married to the woman who just from the beginning and the small but structured actions she takes in the story that she will be one who defies the outline given by the society about how a woman should be.
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2 comments:

  1. UnknownNovember 15, 2015 at 12:13 PM

    In the article posted, it talked about how woman 30 and older were seen as "old maids," while men were seen as bachelors. Perhaps this was the reason Edna was married. She probably did not want to disappoint her family and ended up marrying Léonce out of sheer impulse, or as she describes it: "purely an accident" (Chopin 62). It is clear that Edna is not fit for motherhood or married life, so she must have had motives she was not even aware of for marrying Léonce.

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  2. whitneythoNovember 16, 2015 at 11:03 PM

    When engaged in conversation with Mr. Pontellier, Edna seems to be uninterested in what he says. This could be due to the fact that Edna, like many other women of Victorian Era, married for financial stability over love. Edna is uninterested in anything that deals with marriage or her children, Mr. Pontellier even states that “Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman” (Chopin 19). Edna does not want to live the mundane life of a married woman, which leads her eyes to shift on to Robert.

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