Kate Chopins Awakening - Edna Pontellier as Master of Her Destiny Essa

In Kate Chopins The Awakening, the main character, Edna leaves her husband to find place in the world. Edna believes her new sexually independent power will make her master of her own life. simply, as Martin points out, she has overestimated her strength and is still hampered by her limited ability to hold her energy and to master her emotions (22). Unfortunately, Edna has been educated too much in the traditions of society and not enough in reason and independent survival, admitting to Robert that we women learn so precise of life on the whole (990). She has internalized societys conception of woman as guided by her emotions and not her mind and, therefore, in the search for another man to gather the void of love in her life, lets her goal become clouded instead of learning to depend on herself alone. Edna wants to overcome gender stereotypes, and is already using behaviours such(prenominal) as assertiveness and independence to question them, but the struggle is new to her and she fails to discover a method that would allow her to successfully leave behind societys preconceptions. Martin writes, Ambition, striving, overcoming odds, the think of energy on a goal are habits of mind associated with masculine mastery. A woman who wants to develop these skills has to defy a centuries-old tradition of passive femininity. . . . But Edna Pontellier does not have the emotional resources to transcend the conventions that regulate female behavior, conventions that she has, in fact, internalized. (22) Even in her defiant disobedience to her husband, she is subconsciously aware of the futility of her struggle. During a go over of violent frustration with her marriage, she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon th... ...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 friendly Fiction of Kate Ch opin 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 confinement Book. Martin 33-55. Skaggs, Peggy. Kate Chopin. Boston Twayne, 1985.Stein, Allen F. Women and Autonomy in Kate Chopins Short Fiction. NY Peter Lang, 2005. Web. 21 Apr. 2015. Wells, Kim. Kate Chopins The Awakening A Critical Reception. Kate Chopins The Awakening A Critical Reception. N.p., Aug. 1999. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.