The function of adultery, contract and female identity in Kate Chopins The Awakening

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Looking back to familial relationships, the first section explores Edna's and Celie's relationships with their respective fathers and how this later contributed to the failure of their marriages. The early loss of their mothers with the resulting emotional and practical consequences influencing their own maternal feelings is further examined. Section two is concerned with the sexual objectification of both women and looks at the influence of Edna's and Celie's adulterous heterosexual and lesbian relationships on their quest for autonomy and true understanding of themselves. Finally, the conclusion reviews the consequences of their actions and evaluates the price they paid in their pursuit for a unique identity of their own.

Introduction Throughout the ages there has been evidence to suggest that many women have felt, albeit in varying degrees, a sense of imprisonment within the bounds of matrimony. Over the course of history, marriage as an institution, may be said to have been instrumental in serving the needs of patriarchal societies, being an ideal vehicle for containing and controlling seemingly subversive female sexual desires, a threat so feared by the male sex. It is hardly surprising therefore that any attempt to break free of these bounds was looked on as a subversive act by a patriarchal society.

While the act of adultery was not exclusively the preserve of females, attitudes towards adultery committed by men deemed it to be an act of lesser consequence and thus more easily condoned. Yet there have been, throughout the centuries, many women who have ignored the social condemnation of this act and the legal, practical and emotional consequences to their spouses, children and themselves, and moved beyond the bounds of marriage to where selfhood and desire played the leading role in their lives.

The lack of a guiding female influence through the early loss of their mothers is another factor that will be explored, giving as it does a deeper understanding of their later relations with women. Marriage, its restraints and the objectification of women, is of vital importance in enabling us to comprehend how far adultery was a reaction against this sanctioned form of oppression. Last but not least, this section will also deal with the question of motherhood. Whether it was a positive or negative state for Edna and Celie is essential to our understanding of how these women dealt with their maternal instincts.

The presence of or lack of maternal feelings in both Edna and Celie and the extent to which these feelings had any effect on their decision to commit adultery is pertinent to the question of what led Edna and Celie to act as they did. Here I will be looking at the issue of women as sexual objects and the repudiation of this role by both Edna and Celie. In acknowledging the existence of sexual desire and exercising the right to choose their own sexual partners, Edna and Celie were, one could claim, were asserting their own identity. Kate Chopin New York: Infobase Publishing, , pp. For Celie in particular, sex with Shug is not just a physical act but an act of defiance against men who treated her as no better, and in fact worse than, any animal.

I have endeavoured, where appropriate, to support my own opinions with reference to extracts from the two novels as well as the learned opinions of critics in an attempt to give a balanced interpretation of my theme.

As a white female living in the twenty-first century, I cannot claim to fully understand the experiences of characters such Celie and Edna due to our differences in race and the era I live in. I can, however, attempt an understanding and interpretation of their lives and actions from the viewpoint of simply being a woman.

Familial Relationships For Edna in The Awakening and Celie in The Color Purple, their lack of a sense of identity has its roots in the relationships that shaped their lives, namely with their fathers, husbands and mothers.

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As the first male contact for a daughter, a father mirrors not only his perception of her as a female but also introduces her to her proscribed role within patriarchal society. From daughters owing filial duty to their fathers, many women went on to become wives, dependent for their identity and material needs on their husbands. Despite the differences in class, race and education, both Edna and Celie are moulded by the influence of their relationships with their fathers, husbands and religion, and the loss of their mothers. It was not only the search for selfhood and the need to establish an independent identity that precipitated the break up of their marriages but, more significantly, the act of adultery that was to become a means of attaining these two goals.

Having lost her mother at an early age, she was raised by her elder sister and a father, whose unbending sense of family duty and emotional repression, forced Edna to retreat into an inner life of fantasy. OUP, , p. Hereafter cited as Kate Chopin. It is a comment that is equally true of her relationship with her husband, Arobin, Mlle. Reisz and, I would argue, to a certain extent even Robert. The question is just how far her attachment to Robert is based on a realistic perception of his character and how far on the romantic image she has constructed of him for her own enjoyment.

It could be said that her superficial attachment to her father is a characteristic that applies to all her subsequent relationships. Whether her adulterous affairs are a result of a subconscious desire to be the centre of attention, something denied her in her relationship with her father, or simply an immature need to shock him, is open to question. She discovered he interested her … for the first time in her life she felt as if she were thoroughly acquainted with him.

Celie has no recollection of her natural father, but the revelation in her adulthood that he was lynched is a shock that is further compounded by the knowledge that the man she thought of as her real father is in fact, no blood relation. My children not my sister and brother. He shows no affection towards her and Celie seems to expect none. Her conception of him as a father is of a man driven by his sexual needs and demanding satisfaction either from her mother, step-mother, herself or her sister Nettie.

Kate Chopin's "The Awakening". Being a 'New Woman'

It is in fact her husband, Mr- that sums Celie up; 'you black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman. Goddam, he say, you nothing at all. Bible say Honor father and mother no matter what. To find herself Celie must struggle against religious hypocrisy that presents a communal Sunday face of piety while hiding the weekday face of brutality in her family life. Edna too is no stranger to the hypocritical role of religion in 4 Ibid.

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Phoenix, , p. Hereafter cited as Alice Walker. The transference of duty from father to husband, of changing filial obligation into wifely obligation, was no great step for Edna and Celie. Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes 'wealth, power, social distinction, fame, - not only these, but home and happiness, reputation, ease and pleasure, her bread and butter, - all, must come to her through a small gold ring.

She simply exchanged the defining role of daughter for that of wife. As a businessman, damaged goods are a liability to his investment in Edna as a wife and reflect on his business acumen. Chopin uses a nice turn of irony to illustrate this objectification. Put your foot down good and hard; the only way to manage a wife.

The function of adultery, contract and female identity in Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening'

It is even doubtful whether Edna realises or appreciates this as she is so intent on her own quest for self-gratification. He say, Her cow.

Just as an animal is appraised for its suitability so too is Celie and as a transaction she would seem to be less important than the cow! Bill Overton sums this up nicely by quoting Balzac who stated that a wife is 'a chattel acquired by contract. Nature made her for our use, made her to bear everything; children, sorrows, even blows and punishments from man.

Violence is only one aspect of her everyday existence as a wife. As 12 Kate Chopin, op. The Awakening, A Sourcebook London: Routledge, , pp. Macmillan Press, , p. Mr — instructs Harpo, 'wives is like children. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating. What can she become? Why, she said, the mother of his children'. Motherhood is not easy to define yet it plays a vital role in human society. How far it is a construct of Nature for the continuation of the species, a state sanctified by religion, or an instinct for love and nurture embedded in the female psyche, is unclear.

Many women might claim that their feelings for their children are divorced from their feelings for the father of their children.

Pregnancy, birth and nurture create a bond with a child that no father can fully experience. This is the case for Celie. Although her two children were conceived after her rape by her step father, she appears to harbour no resentment towards them for being products of this abuse. She is evaluated as a woman by others in her community on her care of her step-children but says, 'I be good to them. Her lesbian relationship with Shug is far more than just sexual and it is Shug, who according to Barker, finds 'the only way to resuscitate life back into Celie through love, primarily with a mothering influence who could inculcate in Celie what her own mother could not.

Any woman who did not adhere wholeheartedly to the principles of this cult would have been seen as a traitor to her sex by many. Greenwood Press, , pp. OUP, , pp. For Edna, motherhood was 'a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her. Yet, in a way, it is a remark that brings home the fact that Edna does not, at this point, actually have a self to give! In rejecting the roles of wife and mother, Edna has yet to find a role that defines her and in committing adultery she is simply searching for a role that satisfies her own conception of selfhood.

Faced with the issues of self-hood, gender-roles and the lack of independence she discovers her own desires. The question is, if Edna has managed to live this new life before she drowns herself. And what possibilities did she have? Who is Edna and what makes her so different to the other women so that she has to break out of her former life?

Why and how does she change and had she had other opportunities? Until some day in the middle of the 20th century women played a subordinated role in society. Already in the middle age male children were preferred over female children. She destroyed the paradise and therefore is portrayed as the bad one.

Later in the 4th century St. This was part of the separated spheres rule, which married couples usually had. This means that women had to take care of the family and men had to earn the money. On the one hand this gave wives at least little power within the family, but on the other hand this caused, that especially upper-class women like Edna felt watched by society all the time.

Since women were associated with their home, they were expected to be good looking, cultivated and cheerful as well.

Because married flirts were regarded as being dangerous, young married women were not supposed to be out in public alone with other gentlemen but her husband. The only right women had, was the right to love and the right to be loved. Women and children were owned by men as they owned material possessions.

Single women did not have many rights, either. To elaborate, for a woman this meant to give up her name, her independence and all her property. Edna grew up on a farm in Kentucky which means that she is, in contrast to all of her Creole friends, a real American woman. Her father, the Colonel, used to be a Confederate, an officer in the civil war. He, as a strict Protestant, probably had clear rules in education. In his opinion, husbands should manage their wives with authority. Also her passion belonged to several unreachable men she met during her teenager time.

All this reflects her weakness for melodrama, which is shown in her later affairs with Robert and Arobin, as well. Edna dreams her life in a way that keeps her from becoming happy in real life.

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