Wolff’s View on Feminine Sexuality in Chopin’s The Awakening :: Chopin Awakening

Wolffs View on Feminine sexual practice in Chopins The AwakeningIn her essay Un-Utterable Longing The cover of Feminine Sexuality in Kate Chopins The Awakening Cynthia Griffin Wolff sees the overleap of a languagefor Edna Pontelliers sexual desires in give awayicular and feminine sexuality in generalas the main theme in Chopins novel. She particularly looks at how issues of sexuality remain unsaid in the novel, or how they are expressed in a different way, because of the overlook of a language of feminine sexuality. As Ross C Murfin points out in his introduction to this essay, Wolff combines several theoretical perspectives such as feminism, gender studies, naked historicism, psychoanalytic criticism, and deconstruction (376). Wolff introduces her thesis in her initial discussion of the initiation passage of The Awakening stressing the fact that the parrot has no language of its possess. She remarks that in that location is a sense of enigma (or fraud) about this bird who seems able to broadcast but is not (376). Similarly the main character Edna Pontellier cant communicate her needs. The first part of Wolffs essay is a six-page judgement of the image of women current at the end of the nineteenth century viewing the lack of a language for involvement and sexuality. She looks specifically at the browse of William Acton, an author widely read at the time. According to him women didnt fox sexual feelings of any kind hence he saw no reason to talk about those issues. Wolff criticizes that this false image of women as a-sexual beings created by writers such as Acton also mislead the men of that time in their perception of women. Wolff argues that a vernacular of motherhood (386) replaced the missing language of intimacy and sexuality. In this context she refers to the passage when Lonce comes home, Edna rejects his advances, and instead of reproaching her of neglecting her matrimonial duties, he blames her for not taking care of the children. Lonce turns the disappointment of the rejection into a reproach of neglected motherly duties. According to Wolff, the true put in of Chopins novel, may be less the particular dilemma of Mrs. Pontellier than the large problems of female narrative that it reflects and if Ednas poignant fate is in part a reflection of her own habits, it is also, in equal part, a gradation of societys failure to allow its women a language of their own (388).