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The Awakening: Edna Pontellier's Spiritual Awakening - Online Term Paper

The Awakening: Edna Pontellier's Spiritual Awakening

Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening relates the emotion-driven story of Edna Pontellier. Her story is a happy one. Not because of some typical fairy tale ending where they all live happily ever after, but in that she accomplished her goal in life. She never “sacrifice[d] herself for her children.” (p. 115) Edna Pontellier remained an individual. She achieved her goal of being a free spirit through her death.
To Mrs. Pontellier, “the children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered her into the soul’s slavery for the rest of her days.” This is the complete opposite of what she wanted her relationship with her children to be. She was willing to do ...

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finally found in her death. As she walked down to the beach for the last time she put on her bathing suit. When she arrived at the shore, “she cast the unpleasant, pricking garments from her.” That symbolized the shedding of her “unpleasant” and “pricking” life. “For the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air.” (p.115) She was on her way to being free. “She felt like a new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.” (p.115) Mrs. Pontellier had never known spiritual freedom. This was her release from a controlling world. As she swam towards eternity, Edna thought of a lot of things. She thought of her children and husband. She knew then that “they need not have thought that they could posses her, body and soul.” Edna knew that suicide was her only way of completely liberating her soul.
Edna Pontellier underwent a spiritual awakening. It was achieved through the endless physical sleep of death. In the case of The Awakening, ...

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The Awakening: Edna Pontellier's Spiritual Awakening. (2004, December 6). Retrieved January 22, 2025, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Awakening-Edna-Pontelliers-Spiritual-Awakening/18576

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 12/6/2004 07:05:16 AM
Category: Book Reports
Type: Free Paper
Words: 432
Pages: 2

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