LE3 .A278 2018

2018

Narbeshuber, Lisa

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

English

English & Theatre Studies

This thesis examines Kate Chopin’s infamous 1899 novel, The Awakening. Along with a few of her short stories – “Désirée’s Baby,” “Beyond the Bayou,” and “The Story of an Hour” –which were earlier published in Vogue magazine, this work conceptualizes the role of privilege in protagonist Edna’s ability to reach a point of fulfilment, as her pursuit of this fulfilment drives the narrative’s plot. While her racial and economic privileges are the components that lead her to recognize her oppressions, such subjugations inhibit her liberation, eventually leading to her death by suicide. The first chapter explores Edna’s androgyny – both physical and emotional –as it relegates her to the margins of her gendered Louisiana society. However, the second chapter brings this marginality further into question by employing Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality. Though oppressed as a woman who does not wholly subscribe to feminine ideals of the time, Black, poor women of the narrative are oppressed by Edna. The third chapter then analyzes the novel’s public reception, as well as the reception of Chopin’s works when published in Vogue. By writing in the novel format, which inevitably addresses a more extensive male audience than that of a women’s magazine, Chopin pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable storytelling, revealing temporal anxieties surrounding women’s agency. Consequently, this thesis demonstrates that The Awakening has maintained its relevance over time, as it explicates the intricacies of the intersectional perspective before it became a theorized concept.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:3186