Showalter’s Analysis of Chopin’s The Awakening Essay

Showalter’s Analysis of Chopin’s The Awakening In â€Å"Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book,† Elaine Showalter makes a compelling argument that â€Å"Edna Pontellier’s ‘unfocused yearning’ for an autonomous life is akin to Kate Chopin’s yearning to write works that go beyond female plots and feminine endings† (204). Urging her reader to read The Awakening â€Å"in the context of literary tradition,† Showalter demonstrates the ways in which Chopin’s novel both builds upon and departs from the tradition of American women’s writing up to that point. Showalter begins with the antebellum novelists’ themes of women’s roles as mothers—especially the importance of the mother-daughter relationship—and women’s attachments with†¦show more content†¦As I said above, this is a compelling argument, one that is hindered only by its trite, final sentence. The only issue I had with this article is that Showalter’s ending is trite. While it is true that â€Å"we can never know how the tradition might have changed if her novel had not had to wait half a century to find its audience,† this is obvious and was established at the beginning of the essay. Does it really need to be stated? Moreover, the final sentence (â€Å"It is up to contemporary readers to restore her solitary book to its place in our literary heritage†) reads like a final sentence from one of my freshman composition students. Why not end the essay with â€Å"The fate of The Awakening shows only too well how a literary tradition may be enabling, even essential, as well as confining† (221)? This succinctly sums up the article and gives the reader something to ponder. Luckily, the rest of the article had already kept my attention and received much head-nodding so that I still consider this to be a fine, well-supported essay. Showalter supports her argument with specific examples from the novel that demonstrate its attempt to move from the world of mothers and daughters into a world concerned with self-definition, all the while illustrating its simultaneous dependence upon the very world away from which it attempts to