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

Choice of Lifestyle in Kate Chopins The AwakeningOne of many poignant themes in Kate Chopins The Awakening is Edna Pontelliers 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 working class of becoming a domestic goddess (as Madame Ratignolle has d mavin). Considered mutually exclusive not only by Chopin but by American society as a whole, the habit of the housewife leaves little room for the serious pursuit of art. As evidenced in Helen Watterson Moodys contextual document The Artist and Marriage, The woman must(prenominal) 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 ones craft, the time and space to truly create, and the solitude needed to express ones essential self simply was not compatible with 19th century idea ls of domesticity. Edna Pontellier, unwilling to submit to the relative asceticism of art and equally incapab...