The Awakening
Life Is A Dream
Response To The Awakening
?The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting, the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.?
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
That summer at Grand Isle changed her life forever. The sea, the people, the atmosphere in general all gave way to Edna Pontellier?s ?awakenings.? In Kate Chopin?s novel, The Awakening, Edna undergoes a process of serious self-examination into her life as a mother, wife, and a woman stuck under the pressures of high society. These awakenings all seem to focus around Edna?s search to find her soul underneath the shrouds of formality and her roles in society. In addition, Edna seems to focus around the idea that her life is a dream, an illusion before her summer at Grand Isle.
The idea of the soul plays a very important part in the novel. Edna is constantly distracted by frequent bouts of ?inward contemplation.? Early on in the novel Edna recognizes that she has lived ?a small life all within herself? (Chopin, 35). She knows she has let herself conform, but she also
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