Wolff’s Analysis of Chopin’s The Awakening Essay -- Chopin Awakening

Wolffs Analysis of Chopins The AwakeningIn her essay Un-Utter qualified Longing The Discourse of Feminine sex activity in Kate Chopins The Awakening, Cynthia Griffin Wolff creates what Ross Murfin describes as a critical entirely that is greater than the sum of its parts. (376) By employing a variety of critical approaches (including feminist, gender, cultural, sensitive historicism, psychoanalytic and deconstruction) Wolff offers the reader a more complete (albeit complex) explanation of Edna Pontelliers behaviour and motivations than any single approach could provide. Wolff contends that locating the source of Ednas repression is the key to dread Chopins story.Wolffs perspective is feminist in that she focuses primarily on the character of Edna. By analyzing The Awakening in a historical context Wolff is also able to effectively explain not only Ednas motivations, but also those of nineteenth-century women in general. According to Wolff, Ednas repression can be traced to the g ender crisis that developed within the Presbyterian church during the nineteenth-century. Unli...