Honors Thesis Archive
| Author | Erika Jackson |
|---|---|
| Title | Edna’s Failed Happiness: The Limitations of Kate Chopin’s Feminism |
| Department | English |
| Advisor | Lori Askeland |
| Year | 2022 |
| Honors | University Honors |
| Full Text | View Thesis (380 KB) |
| Abstract | As The Awakening explores feminist ideals and themes of women’s empowerment through the protagonist Edna Pontellier, so too does it highlight the privilege and prejudice both Edna and author Kate Chopin embody as wealthy white women existing within a white supremacist society. In the final scene of the text, as Edna swims out into a sea rich with metaphor and symbolism, reminiscing about an idyllic childhood, to her assumed death, readers are forced to contemplate the impact of the protagonist’s death on the feminist ideals set forth in the novel. Through Sara Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness, queer theory, and Black feminist studies, readers are able to imagine a space in which marginalized people can thrive under oppressive social structures hostile to their happiness, present satisfaction, and social progress via beloved community and collaborative advancement, in a way which Kate Chopin and, therefore, Edna could not. Ultimately, Edna’s perspective was shaped by the white patriarchal society she was raised under to her detriment, as, I argue, she is limited by the supremacy mindset of her presumed centrality that she is unable to fully escape, leading to her being incapable of imagining a fulfilling life for herself by the end of The Awakening. The novel fails, in my view, to move past the limiting and internalized mindset of patriarchy and the dominant society’s conceptions of future-oriented happiness. Ultimately, the ending and Edna’s death redefines all feminist themes through the context of Chopin’s version of white-centered feminism. I assert that Chopin’s participation in white supremacy and investment in the privileges afforded to whiteness, is closely tied to her character, Edna’s, resulting death and failure to imagine a future outside of that privileged space. |
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