A representação e ascensão da mulher em O despertar, de Kate Chopin.

Abstract

The objective of this research is to analyze women rise in the nineteenth century in the novel The Awakening (1899), by the American writer Kate Chopin from a feminist perspective. Knowing that literature is a mean to give voice to women, it is clear that Kate Chopin used this way to criticize the social conditions of the feminine figure in her gender relations in a patriarchal society. Therefore, the novel The Awakening was strongly criticized for dealing with these issues that went against the Puritanism of the Victorian Era, such as, adultery and the search of female emancipation, and especially for having been written by a woman. This research, through the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, offers an analysis of the gender relations and how she behaved in each space, showing woman’s conflicts about her existence and conditions imposed on her. Besides, this work takes into consideration the narrator's perspective on the role given to women in that patriarchal society. Thus, this research is of bibliographical nature and in order to foment such discussions, it is based on the theoretical support of Woolf (2004), Zolin (2005) and Moreira (2003), among others. Finally, this study shows the discovery of Edna’s subjectivity, her rise and eventual "fall", especially because death is one of the characteristic ending of the female pen, as a criticism to the lack of viable option for a feminine freedom.