觉醒读后感(英语)

Reading Report

------The Awakening

Reading Report

-----The Awakening

“A bird with broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water.” It’s the fate of Edna, and it’s the tragedy of the Edna. This is the novel of The Awakening. The Awakening uses these formal and structural techniques to explore themes of patriarchy, marriage and motherhood, woman’s independence, desire, and sexuality both honestly and artistically.

The author of The Awakening is Kate Chopin. She was born on February 8, 1850, in St. Louis. Missouri. Both at home with family and at school with the nuns, Kate grew up surrounded by intelligent and independent women. So, Chopin’s adult writings were dominated the female freedom and sexual awareness, for the environment when she was raised. His husband loved her very deeply, often supported admired her independence and intelligence. So an activity that enabled her to develop and express her strong views on women, sex, and marriage. Afterwards, Chopin succeeds immediately with her writing about the French she had met and observed during her New Orleans and Coulterville years.

It is a story of a young wife’s gradual awakening to her own sexual and individual for independence and freedom not permitted by the society. In such society, women depended on men; they rarely had self-status but only someone’s daughters, wives, loves, mothers. The story of The Awakening took place in the late 1800s in Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular with the wealthy people. Edna is a vacationing with her husband, and their two sons at the cottages of Madame’s Lebrun. Pontellier is a kind and loving but busied with his work. He not stays frequently at home for the business work, and ignores his domestic life with Edna. Adele, Edna learns a great deal about freedom of expression. To the previously prudish behavior in the past, she slowly opens her expression emotions and desires. Undoubtedly, Edna’s relationship with Robert begins Edna’s process of “awakening” and self-discovery. At first, the relationship between Robert and Edna is pure. They mostly swim in the sea or engage in idle talk. Follow the summer past day by day, Edna and Robert grow closer. She starts to paint again and learns to swim. The time they spend alone together awakes her memories that the dreams and desires of her youth. When Robert recognizes how intense the relationship between Edna, he leaves the Grand Isle to avoid the love that the society doesn’t to accepted. Back in New Orleans, Edna just pursues painting all day and ignores all of her social responsibilities. Her husband agrees with the doctor’s advice, allowing Edna to remain home alone while he is leave on business. Edna gives her former lifestyle and more into a home of her own. Although she loves Robert, Edna has the affair with Alcee, who is able to satisfy her sexual needs. Robert returns to New Orleans, expressing openly her feeling for Edna. Robert’s inability to escape the ties of society makes Edna’s most devastating awakening. By the novel’s end, Edna had awakened to herself,

but found no place for that herself in the world she lived. She returns to the Grand Isle, the site of her first moments of emotional, intellectual awareness. Finally, she gives herself to the sea.

Edna is the main role of the novel, and the “awakening” to which the title refers in hers. She is a respectable woman. Who not only admit her desires, but also has the strength and courage to act on them. Breaking through the role appointed to her by society, she discovers herself and independence. At the beginning of the novel, Edna lives in a sort of semi-conscious state. She is happy in her marriage with Pontellier and unaware of her own feeling and ambition. The people Edna meets and the experience she has on Grand Isle awaken desire and pursue the music, art, freedom, in dependence and sexual satisfied. So, like a child, Edna begins to the world around her with a new viewpoint, forgetting require of society to her behavior, and ignoring the effects of her unconventional actions. In these chapters, the author has a lot of detailed description to Edna when she in the first time recognized self-value and meaning of the life, including her activities complicated heart and uncontrolling mood.

Finally, Edna completely followed the soul. She doesn’t like the nobleman to do everything she doesn’t want to do, but she starts pursue the desire and learns to painting and swimming. In there, she is brave, and evens her independence amounts to selfishness. She doesn’t love her husband, so that she fails to consider the needs and desires of anyone but herself. And Edna leaves her children in the care of their grandmother without a second thought. But I respect the awakening of her. She leaves the big house, and moves into the pigeon house,

which she pays for with her winning from the profits from her sketches. Her independence comes true completely in the economic and personality. Everything starts love, but not ends love. However, as a woman, how she wills does it when she lost the hope of love? I think she choose the suicide to end her life, because of hopeless love. Tragically, Edna’s awakenings isolate her from others and ultimately lead her to sate of total solitude.

Edna chooses such a lifestyle that she refuses to sacrifice her integrity by putting her life in the hands of controlling powers. But Mademoiselle Reisz is an unconventional and unpopular woman, who is unmarried and childless, and she devotes her life to her passion: music. She may be the most influential character in Edna’s awakening. Luckily, she chooses the loneliness and continues to live in her lonely world. A foil for Mademoiselle Reisz, Adele is a devoted wife and mother. She spends her days caring for her children, performing domestic duties, and ensuring the happiness of her husband. She unawares of her own pursuit and value, and enjoys and accepts the simple lifestyle, which is conformist existence. Mademoiselle Resize acts as a foil for Adele, who lives the society accepted lifestyle that Mademoiselle Resize rejected for solitude and freedom. Adele still represents the ideal woman in the society. However, Edna is an unconventional female. She ignores her responsibilities to husband and children, seeking freedom up until, or perhaps even thought, her death.

To Edna, Robert lacks the enough encouragement and daring to define the expression from the society. Although he remains away in Mexico for munch of Edna’s awakening. Robert plays an invaluable role in its beginning and end. Edna

sees in win a promise of the love and excitement that had been missing from her life since she married Pontellier. Although Robert loves Edna, he nerveless can’t forget the societal conventions that both allow and limit his actions. Unlike the Robert, Edna is snap away for his devotion. Robert’s sudden return from Mexico and his unrealistic plan request that Pontellier gives Edna freedom so that he may make her wife. On the other hand, it shows a bold side to Robert’s nature. And the love is genuine and blazing to Edna. However, Robert clearly recognizes the difference between day dream and reality. Ultimately, the passion that Robert feels for Edna is not strong enough to join the lovers in a true union of minds, since although Robert’s passion is strong enough to make him feel torn between his love and his sense of moral rectitude. The note Robert leaves for Edna makes clear to Edna the fact that she is alone in her awakening. Once Robert refuse to violate the boundaries of societal convention, Edna acknowledges the profundity of her solitude.

Pontellier, he is Edna’s husband. He concerns her wife and works hard to bring money into the household and gives her the material life. But he doesn’t posses enough insight to worry about her emotional and psychological health. He thinks Edna as a possession and not as an equal. Pontellier never makes an effort to understand her feelings, nor does he seek out her opinion on any matters. Moreover, Pontellier worries not about Edna herself, but about what other think of her and this will reflect back on herself. He cares most about his social standing.

Besides, the bird and the sea have important of a caged parrot. These words, the first in the awakening, immediately hint the Edna’s predicament which is

caged and misunderstand .She doesn’t express her own opinions, through the bars of their metaphorical cages. At last, it is a sad spectacle to see a symbol of Edna herself. “The ocean calls out to people’s souls to come to it and get lost in their own thoughts, to be alone it. The water of the sea gently put its arms around you and makes you feel safe.” When in the water, Edna discovered her own strength and thought her own position in the life and marriage. Thus, the sea also reminds the fact that Edna’s awakening is a sort of rebirth. Appropriately, Edna ends her life in the sea. In The Awakening, the sea symbolizes freedom and escape. The sea gives us the strength, confidence, as same time brings the loneliness and horror.

Eventually, exhaustion overtakes Edna, and gone to the expanse of the sea. It is the face of Edna, and it is the tragedy of age. Let us make a decision between the length and width in our life, and for many people choose the width even now, he still lives like this with the different personality and pursuit.