Choice of Lifestyle in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening Essay -- Chopin Awa

Choice of Lifestyle in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening One of many poignant themes in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is Edna Pontellier’s fundamental choice of lifestyle -- the choice of dedication to the aesthete, the solitude of art (as represented by Mademoiselle Reisz), or devotion to the all-consuming task of becoming a domestic goddess (as Madame Ratignolle has done). Considered mutually exclusive not only by Chopin but by American society as a whole, the role of the housewife leaves little room for the serious pursuit of art. As evidenced in Helen Watterson Moody’s contextual document "The Artist and Marriage," "The woman must decided, then, whether to pursue her chosen art or to marry will make her happier." The plethora of demands of the successful artistic lifestyle, which includes near absolute concentration on one’s craft, the time and space to truly create, and the solitude needed to express one’s essential self simply was not compatible with nineteenth century ideals of domesticity. Edna Pont ellier, unwilling to submit to the relative asceticism of art and equally incapab...