the awakening chopin

A popular local colorist during her lifetime, Chopin is now recognized as an important figure in nineteenth-century American fiction and as a major figure in feminist literature. Born on February 8, 1851, in St. Louis, Missouri, she was the daughter of Thomas O’Flaherty, a prominent businessman, and Eliza Faris. Her best known work, The Awakening (1899), depicts a woman’s search for sexual freedom in the repressive society of the American South during the Victorian era.

Throughout her literary career, Kate Chopin, much like her fictional heroines, explored dangerous new ground. She created female characters that test the boundaries of acceptable behavior for women and explore the psychological and societal ramifications of their actions and desires. They are forced to make existential choices based on the few avenues available for them to create and maintain autonomous identities outside of wife and mother in the late nineteenth-century American South. Chopin’s protagonists attempt to physically or spiritually transcend these limitations but often meet with crushing results. Chopin does not guarantee her characters an admirable place within their society, but she portrays them with dignity and sympathy.

Kate Chopin began her writing career strikingly with the creation of a triumphant woman artist-Paula von Stolz-a character who seems to be a projection of the author’s own ambitions. “Wiser than a God,” Chopin’s first story accepted for publication, portrays the resolution of the woman artist with utter confidence. The actual main conflict of the tale requires the dilemma Paula encounters whenever, following the passing away of the woman’s mom, your woman receives a married relationship proposal from George Brainard, the wealthy, attractive guy as well as should choose between a comfortable, traditional marriage and also the career like a live concert pianist that she’s spent the woman’s entire life preparing.

This article aims to review the important feminist thoughts and concepts for example “marriage”, “Identity” and “Woman Figure” in the story of “Wiser than a God” based on feminist hypotheses through Simone p Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.

a. Marriage

Chopin introduces the institution of marriage as a choice rather than an absolute issue in a young woman’s life in an early short story, “Wiser than a God.” The story is prefaced with the ominous Latin proverb “To love and be wise is scarcely granted even to a god” (241). It is clear that in this story, love and wisdom will be mutually exclusive entities and one must choose between the two. Mary E. Papke suggests that in the story, “Chopin draws the mind/body split [....]” (38). The story centers on Paula, a beautiful young woman and extremely gifted pianist. She manages to shun romantic love in order to focus on her dream of a musical career until she meets George. George is very much in love with her and desperately wants to marry her. For the first time in her life she is conflicted about her future.

Paula begins to succumb to George’s affection: “She felt such a comfort in his strong protective nearness” (246). She refuses, however, to marry George, claiming that marriage “doesn’t enter into the purpose of my life” (249) -a shocking revelation. George does not realize Paula’s goal and enthusiasm on her songs and also the part that it plays in her own life. According to Martha J. Cutter, “Perhaps in the end language is simply not important-she succeeds without it. But Paula continually finds her attempts to explain her needs are not heard at all; even her mother tells her not to ‘chatter’ (243). Paula attempts to explain to him how important it is to her and asks him, “Can’t you feel that with me, it courses with the blood through my veins? That it’s something dearer than life, than riches, even than love?”(249). George is taken aback by her fervent declaration and answers, “Paula, listen to me; don’t speak like a mad woman” (249). It’s clear which George signifies societal thoughts about marriage, and that Paula’s representation, is based on the woman’s razor-sharp realization that she’ll lose herself in the event that she gets George’s spouse.

Although she does not marry George, Paula’s assertion that, had she married him, she would have been expected to give up her music, is proven correct with the woman he eventually does wed. Although his new wife had been an avid dancer, she “abandoned Virginia break-downs as incompatible with the serious offices of wifehood and matrimony” (250). As much as this woman was expected to give up her love of dancing, Paula would have been expected to give up her music. Here, the author points out the irony of marriage. Instead of the role of wife conveying merely social and familial woman marries, will be the defining and only identity she will have ever again. According to Papke, “Paula [....] chooses to follow the purpose of her life though she be deemed a ‘mad woman’ by George and his type, to position herself in a state of insanity. By the conclusion, it is clear that the author believes Paula to be wiser than a god” (39). Paula, however, does sacrifice deeply. She lives solely by her intellectual, rational side, effectively ignoring the desires of her heart and body.

b. Identity

“Wiser than a God,” Chopin’s first story accepted for publication, portrays the resolution of the woman artist with utter confidence (Toth 2). The initial part of the story brings up some general facts and information about Paula’s character as an artist who adores music.

These clues from the very beginning demonstrate the fact that music is merged with Paula’s character and has granted an identity to her. It is apparent which by music she could display herself, and she or he might appeal to individuals around — whether in a party, in a culture or perhaps in an urban area. These magnificent abilities could support Paula and distinguish her from the girls who lack this talent.

It is worth noticing that from the very first lines of the story, Chopin has also introduced music as a character along with Paula. Music is the soul that lives within Paula’s body. In this way Chopin illustrates both music and Paula as central and significant matters in the tale.

The central conflict of the story involves the dilemma Paula faces when, after the death of her mother, she receives a marriage proposal from George Brainard, a wealthy, attractive man and must choose between a comfortable, conventional marriage and the career as a concert pianist for which she has spent her entire life preparing. Here Gorge’s occurrence makes Paula to think of amity, affection and relation with an opposite sex. Therefore Paula at some moments after becoming familiar with George describes him as a handsome gentleman and compares him to other males that she is in relation; and approves that George is superior to them in look and appearance “He was so unlike any man of her acquaintance…she could at the moment think of no positive point of objection against him”(246). This womanly sensation that inevitably exists in Females’ nature does not make Paula to yield. Paula doesn’t want to sacrifice and annihilate her liberty and her identity that she achieved by hard practice in music. After her Mother’s death she becomes more devoted to music which is the symbol of her true self and her autonomous identity. Your woman prefers the actual dreamy globe, that belongs to artwork and songs, compared to real and patriarchal globe, that is associated with George and the society. She believes living in moments without music is equal to extinction, annihilation and “deterioration” (248). But George expects that Paula will be willing to give up her musical calling for “the labor of loving” instead (248). He proposes to her, never fully comprehending her devotion to her art or realizing that it could conflict with her devotion to a man. Paula, who admires George, is thrilled at his request but realizes that they must part. She doesn’t allow George to separate her from her autonomous identity; even when she comprehends that George is tempting her, she shushes him up and tells “don’t tempt me further” (249). That’s why when George wants her to answer whether she is marring him or not, she couldn’t answer him confidently and she asks George to give a one week interval to her to think. George believes that he is the ‘Subject’ and the ‘Absolute’; for him Paula is the ‘Other’ not the ‘Self’ who could have an independent identity that could decide either to get married or to stay single. He couldn’t understand Paula because her character is imperceptible and unclear for him and for his society. When Paula says that marriage has no place and no position in her life, he never understands; because the society that George belongs to is occupied with girls and women who yearn for people like George to propose or marry them; so he says “Paula listen to me; and don’t speak like a mad women”(249).

George suddenly and unexpectedly sees someone different from the girl he had known as Paula begins to talk about the purpose of her life with her “father’s emotional nature aroused in her” (249). Paula makes a passionate defense of her art, something she knows she cannot understand:

What do you know of my life,’ she exclaimed passionately. ‘What can you guess of it? Is music anything more to you than the pleasing distraction of any idle moment? Can’t you feel that with me, it courses with the blood through my veins? That it’s something dearer than life, than riches, even than love?(249)

George’s reply to this-”don’t speak like a mad woman”-betrays his incomprehension and his belief that a woman who gives herself so passionately to artistic pursuit, particularly at-the expense of a potential husband, must be insane. Until now he has known Paula only as the “daughter of the undemonstrative American woman” (249).

Paula’s abilities increase in the absence of a male muse; and her loneliness and seclusion is often itself perceived as a final revolt against the society that has refused to provide her an acceptable space within which to pursue her creative inclinations. Paula’s struggle to attain her full potential as an individual is thus best perceived as deeply related to her efforts to develop her creative abilities, to grow her art, and to discover an affirming place within her world.

In this early story, Kate Chopin explores art as a kind of divine bondage, as suggested in the epigraph, “To love and be wise is scarcely granted even to a God.” Paula does love and feels physically attracted to George but is wise in her decision not to marry him. She is an exceptional woman and has the wisdom to recognize that “the purpose of her life” would be destroyed by marrying him (249). The story, rather than focusing on Paula’s moment of public triumph, shows Paula beset with temptation in her most vulnerable moment. By choosing to become a concert pianist instead of George’s wife, Paula satisfies both her own ambitions and her parents’ and thus keeps a meaningful connection to them even in their death. Seyersted notes that “Wiser Than a God” has certain affinities with de Stael’s Corinne in George’s momentary belief that he can accept a wife who does not live solely for him and his family but that it also shows a pronounced difference in Chopin’s heroine’s ability to resist romantic temptation: “unlike the French heroine… Paula tells her suitor that life is less important to her than the unhampered exertion of what she considers her authentic calling and her true self”(105).

The Feministic Study Associated With “Wiser Than A God”, A Brief Tale By Kate Chopin is a post from: WiredWriter