Blog Post 10: The Awakening; Characters/Themes/Etc: TEAM WHY

This week’s blog post is going to differ from last weeks “Awakening” post off of the fact that this week’s post is concerned more than just sexuality as a theme and will also be dealing with symbols and character details. The first theme I would like to bring up is self-expression. This is mainly shown through the main character Edna. First off she expresses herself through art; Mademoiselle Reisz and Edna as explained in the text are almost in a way communicating through their music. Next Edna expresses her love and passion through two other characters; Robert and Alcee. This expression is a pretty blatant theme because she never expresses this with anybody else in these ways. Lastly, as Edna expresses herself throughout the story her new identity makes society not understand as well. This means that people aren’t understanding or empathizing with her. Another theme that is occurring throughout the text is “children.” The first brought up topic about children is how Edna is not a motherly woman. This also is linked to Ratigniolle who is the ideal woman because she is pregnant and tries to persuade Edna to not continue down her “awakening” path. Then you have Reisz who is the exact opposite and act childish herself; she doesn’t follow the rules and more importantly knows about Robert and Edna’s relationship, yet doesn’t say anything about. Overall you then have Edna whose journey in the text is that of a child; becoming re-born again and finding her true happy identity. This is a theme that I believe is much overlooked and should be looked into more carefully to gain a deeper understanding of the novel as a whole. The last theme I would like to bring up is independence. This may be a very easy one to depict out of the text, but it is an important one to talk and analyze about. Independence is the striving factor behind Edna’s decisions, she doesn’t want to be tied down and told what she has to do or can’t do; she wants to make her own life decisions and she indeed acts on them as seen in the story. (Acting on her emotional and sexual desires for example) This novel as a whole contains many more underlying themes and just need to be exploited through careful reading, consideration and analyzing. These are just three of the main themes that stood out the most to me while reading it. I would highly recommend this book, because of the messages it sends about woman in the 19^th century.