Kate Chopin - Edna Pontellier’s gradual awakening by means of learning different 'languages'

Abstract or Introduction

Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening finds herself
dissatisfied with her marriage and the limited, conservative lifestyle that it allows. The people
Edna meets and the experiences she has on Grand Isle awaken desires and urges for music,
sexual satisfaction, art, and freedom that she can no longer bear to keep hidden. Like a child,
Edna begins to see the world around her with a fresh perspective, forgetting the behavior
expected of her and ignoring the effects of her unconventional actions. She emerges from a
state of devoted wife and mother to a state of total awareness in which she discovers her own
identity and acts on her desires for emotional and sexual satisfaction. During her gradual
awakening, Edna learns at least three new "languages" and modes of expressing herself that
lead to the revelation of her long-repressed emotions. These new languages will be further
dealt with in the course of this paper.
At the beginning of the novel, Edna exists in a sort of semi-conscious state. She is
comfortable in her marriage to Léonce and unaware of her own feelings and ambitions. Edna
has always been a romantic, enamored with a cavalry officer at a very young age, in love with
a man visiting a neighboring plantation in her teens, and infatuated with a tragedian as a
young woman. But she saw her marriage to Léonce as the end to her life of passion and the
beginning of a life of responsibility. Although she expected her dreams of romance to
disappear along with her youth, her fantasies and yearnings only remain latent, re-emerging
on Grand Isle in the form of her passion for Robert Lebrun. “She awakens from the romantic
dreams of girlhood first to find herself a married woman and then to find that the meaning of
marriage is very different from what she had supposed” (Gilbert 358). [...]