Dealing With Society Edna PontellierS Battle With

Dealing With Society, Edna Pontellier.S Battle With Social Class Essay, Research Paper

Edna Pontellier, the main character in Kate Chopin.s novel The Awakening, is a woman trying to form her own identity, both feminine and sexually, in the repressive and Victorian Creole world of the latter nineteenth century. She is met by a counterpart, Mademoiselle Reisz, who is able to live freely as a woman. Edna herself was denied this freedom because of the respectable societal position she had been married into and because of her Presbyterian up bringing as a child. The role that Mademoiselle Reisz played within society, a society that failed to view her as being a truly respectable social member, was quite opposite to that of Edna.s respectable position in society.

Edna was ordained in the Presbyterian ways as she became an adult in Kentucky and Mississippi (Companion 123); as one critic put it, she was of .solid old Presbyterian Kentucky stock. (Petry 58). Edna was raised in a truly .restricted Victorian. (Nikerson) manner to be .an American woman.with a graceful severity of poise and movement. (Companion 123). To understand the social order she was born into you have to look at the Presbyterian background she grew up in. Presbyterianism took the view that women were .regarded as equal to men.[but women were] the weaker vessel.and should become subordinate to the husband. (Wolff 2). In broader terms, this is saying that women are equal, but are still below men in society. This construct was reinforced by the fact that .married women in Louisiana.[, in Edna.s time,] were legal property of their husbands. (Chopin 121). By a broad range, women of high Victorian society were greatly scrutinized if they tried to step out of any of the normal set boundaries of their womanly positions.

As a whole, Victorian society was based on a rich social etiquette that most would not understand today. Such social etiquette involved a woman being consistent in .her .duties. to her husband, her children, and her .station. in life. (Chopin 121). This .station. is a much smaller term to display a much larger idea for social ethics. It is in this that Edna comes to odds against and struggles with, especially when she realized .her position in the universe as a human being.[recognizing] her relations as an individual to the world. (Chopin 14). The .relationship. was being that of a subordinate to the male. Mademoiselle Reisz.s station was among that of Victorian society, but with the tragic flaw that it was only by stature and not by divinity. She was in the social order, but without the beliefs that everyone felt someone of her stature should have To broaden this example, Mademoiselle Reisz is much like President Clinton, in the broadest of sense, because Clinton is among the elite in society. Clinton does not truly have the respect, authority, or admiration of his peers, compared to such a President as Ronald Reagan; this example holds true to Mademoiselle Reisz as well. Like a car alarm going off, most everyone notices it, most everyone ignores it.

Those women of the lower class were considered below the Victorian order and any diversions, of either men or women, from their set societal positions were overlooked as being done because of a lack of refinery. The broad onset of the way the Victorian class felt towards the lower class is common knowledge today, but the sexual repression that stemmed from the Victorian class is not so commonly known. William Acton1 stated .that the majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with the sexual feeling of any kind. (Wolf 2). This belief, along with the whole of Acton.s book, was a major influence upon the Presbyterian Church in the Victorian Renaissance (Wolf 2).

Chopin shows that Edna had, since childhood, always bad problems dealing with her social order by the way Chopin describes her as having an .outward existence that conforms, [and] the inward life that questions. (Chopin 14). This idea of conformity was what eventually drove Edna to suicide. This conformity also lead to positions in society that she could not escape, and when she tired to be any different than that of the norm, society lashed back. Victorian society was not about to let a respectable member miss conform, especially when she had been a conformist all her life. Mademoiselle Reisz had not been a conformist and had broke the boundaries of society so long ago that she became over looked and even a joke within the Creole society. As it is true today, as well as in Victorian times, society allows a misfit into their group so they can always view how refined they are. Ironically, this idea of having someone to show how a social class is better than another was in itself childish and below what the Victorian class thought they truly believed in and stood for. Mademoiselle Reisz was used as a model of what one desires not to achieve. Edna was one of society.s models of what a woman should strive for; rejecting .the society around her.[was] a notion too radical for.[her] peers. (Nickerson). Another irony, Edna tried to view Mademoiselle Reisz as her model .if she.[was] to succeed and soar above .tradition and prejudice.. (Thorton 52). Mademoiselle Reisz.s music seemed to open up and speak to Edna, which soon led to her awakening.

Mademoiselle Reisz, .while admittedly is nothing like a vixen. (Wolff 2), is described by Chopin as .a disagr