Abstract:
This paper studies Kate Chopin’s reinterpretation of female sexuality and personal autonomy
in The Awakening through the lens of Elaine Showalter’s Gynocriticism. It argues that Edna’s
struggle with the traditional idea of female sexual abstention, self-sacrifice, and silence
symbolizes her insatiable desire to redefine female identity. The articulation of her overt
sexuality in the novella offers a new gateway of understanding a ‘female self ’. Edna’s physical
autonomy awakens her to a subversive, compelling, dynamic and liberating “wild” female
self within. Edna in her journey into the untamed zone of sexuality through “moments of
being” catches a glimpse of the forbidden trajectory of self-knowledge. She yearns to reach
her selfhood through these utterly individual moments of awareness, intense power, beauty
and personal significance. The unfolding of her female interiority reveals a strong connection
between wildness of female eros and creativity. Chopin identifies this so called evil, unrestraint
sexuality as an elixir of woman empowerment. Edna’s wandering into her sexual wilderness
embodies a new female archetype who writes her own story of resistance and power through
her body. Edna’s gradual alienation from androcentric idea of chastity, marriage, motherhood,
her celebration of female body, and the final rejection of ‘happy-ever-after reality’ evoke a
volcanic eruption of a new femininity in the female literary tradition.
