The New Woman in Kate Chopin's the Awakening Essay

The New Woman in Kate Chopin's the Awakening - Essay Example This means that for almost half a century before Kate Chopin published The Awakening, society had been engaged in a struggle over equal rights issues and social ideologies. As an outcome of this struggle, female part of the society had, to some extent, already undergone mobilization and emancipation from their socioeconomic captivity. The following research is to review and analyze on the example of Kate Chopin's novel about the "sexual awakening" and an unconventional behavior of a woman how for the first time in the USA, women began to bring the formerly private issues of family and home into the public domain and this way caused significant social changes. As many biographers admit today, writing a story of another person's life story is writing one's own as well. If we try to find out why Kate Chopin wrote her novel and how the society accepted it, we will often find the answers in the French women the voices of whom dominated Chopin's formative years. Many historians note that women during the post-Civil War period regularly took part in the marketplace, earned their own sources of support, broke with derogatory forms of financial dependency on men. Culley M. asserts that women "at all levels of society were active in attempts to better their lot, and the "New Woman", the late nineteenth-century equivalent of the "liberated woman", was much on the public mind" (Culley 117). In middle 1899, nearly 50 years after the women's movement officially had started, the social and cultural background seemed favorable for the literary introduction of Edna Pontellier, Kate Chopin's fictional character. The plot of the novel can be depicted in short as follows. The main character, Edna Pontellier is 28 years old, married to a 40-year-old New Orleans businessman who earn living for her and their two sons. She is satisfied but not really happy. During one summer at Grand Isle, a charming Creole resort, she has several awakenings. A real romance occurs between Edna and the resort owner's young son, Robert Lebrun, after he teaches her swimming and she gets the feeling of power and sensuality. Meanwhile, Edna makes friends with Madame Adle Ratignolle, a woman who is fully contented in her traditional woman role, but whose affectionate ways and insights draw Edna to speculate about herself and learn striking things. Being a motherless child and an intellectual Edna now realizes that she has married Lonce Pontellier only in order to annoy her family, and to close the door on unreal obsessions and dreams. She realized that she became a mother without particularly wish to be one, and did not raise that question until that moment. During Edna's summer of awakenings she starts, with the help of her female friends, recovering her voice. The peculiar, slightly sinister pianist Mademoiselle Reisz develops Edna's deep appreciation for music and inspires her flirtation with Robert, who, suddenly leaves for Mexico. After coming back home Edna begins to ignore her wifely obligations. Listening to her own inner voice, Edna starts expressing opinions, and while she is ecstatically alone, organizes a luxurious dinner party before moving herself to a little house. Later on Edna has

Shamanism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Shamanism - Essay Example These tales take on a legendary, epic nature. In communities that continue the shamanic traditions, narratives with shamanic protagonists serve to establish a communal code of conduct, providing a narrative model of idealized and stigmatized shamanic behaviors. They constitute a native discourse on the nature, efficacy, and dangers of shamanic practices. A practitioner's power can be described and also enhanced by such tales. Examples of such narratives can be found in Knud Ramussen's (1921) Eskimo Folk Tales. One typical story is that of Kuniseq who sets out on a spirit journey to the land of the dead with a spirit helper. The landscape is described as a slippery reef, changing into a field of heather, providing visual imagery for a better understanding of the nature of the spirit world. Kuniseq meets some children and his mother who tries to kiss him and offers him berries which he refuses, as one should never eat in the land of the dead if one intends to remain with the living. In general, the tale provides a comforting representation of the land of the dead and the supporting role of the spirit helper. When Kuniseq dies soon after this journey, it is to be happily reunited with his deceased kin. The tale illustrates the shaman's familiarity with the spirit world, emphasizing his competence and also provides information on the other world of interest to listeners. Not only does the tale provide valuable cosmological information, it also underscores the efficacy of the angakok to fulfill the task of supplyinf information on the cosmos that would otherwise be unavailable to ordinary members of the community and presents the shaman as a true Inuit hero. Q2. In the cultural encounters between shamanic traditions and other religions or systems the former have often been vilified and condemned. Shamans have been tortured and persecuted as was reported of U.S. Navy Commander Henry Glass in his dealings with the Tlingit people in the 1890s. But even more subtle methods of discrediting and suppressing shamanic worldviews exert pressure on practitioners over time. Intercultural and interfaith confrontations can lead to the marginalization of the shaman figure, which did not necessarily enjoy total acceptance in the first place, and was sometimes regarded as a source of misfortune and suspicion even in the shaman's own cultural context. As the community evolves toward more complex systems of organization and the religious tradition becomes more firmly institutionalized with a fixed doctrine, the marginalization of the shaman can increase. Religions undergo transformation reflecting the changes in norms and circumstances of their ambient soc ieties. Combined with external pressure and systematic suppression, particularly from missionizing religious traditions with strong doctrinal components and the superiority of the aggressors, the cultural context of the shamanic community can change to such an extent that a shift occurs and the religious beliefs predominant in the community change. There may or may not be vestiges of the old traditions remaining in form of certain rephrased rituals, or mystical figures. The shaman is gradually superseded by or transformed into the priests elected and trained by established religious institutions. An internal decline in the belief in the importance of shamanic rituals can be the result of external influences and the encroachment of alternative worldviews. State- sponsored efforts as in Soviet Russia, or