Symbolism In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

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Victorian women were controlled. Not only through mandatory subservience to men, but through an oppression of expression and free thought. Kate Chopin, in her fictional novel The Awakening explores what it means to be a Victorian woman. She does so through the romance, thoughts, love, and exploits of young woman Edna Pontellier, highlighting the ways in which she is controlled and her childlike renewal, or awakening, into becoming a free-thinking individual. Chopin successfully does this through rhetoric and stylistic strategies such as anecdote, symbolism, allegory, and metaphor. However, one metaphor stands out from the rest; that of a bird, whose life consists of captivity until it is free and can easily soar, only to become injured and fall towards the ground.
Chopin begins her novel by creating two caged birds; “A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over, ‘Allez …show more content…
Pontellier soon feels the intensity such flight. One afternoon she is bathing, and all of a sudden feels like a “tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who all of a sudden realizes its powers and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence. She could have shouted for joy.” (27). In the water she becomes a child again, and awakens to realize how oppressed and prejudiced against she truly is. This is her baptism, or renewal. Following this, Mrs. Pontellier is free in romance and in expression. She paints more, visits more, speaks more boldly and truthfully, and does not remain in her cage. “The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.” (83). The bird is now free here, and the extended metaphor carries on. The joys and pleasures Mrs. Pontellier now experiences displays that once she is freed of prejudice and tradition, she is much happier, vibrant, and alive. Such an awakening allows Chopin to show how women could be in the absence of constructs that make them unequal to
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