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

Wolffs View on maidenly Sexuality in Chopins The AwakeningIn her essay Un-Utterable Longing The Discourse of Feminine Sexuality in Kate Chopins The Awakening Cynthia Griffin Wolff sees the lack of a lecturefor Edna Pontelliers intimate desires in particular and female 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 lack of a language of feminine sexuality. As Ross C Murfin points out in his introduction to this essay, Wolff combines several theoretical perspectives such(prenominal) as feminism, gender studies, new historicism, psychoanalytic criticism, and deconstruction (376). Wolff introduces her thesis in her initial discussion of the opening passing game of The Awakening stressing the fact that the parrot has no language of its own. She remarks that there is a sense of enigma (or fraud) about this bird who seems able to communicate but is not (376). Similarly the main character Edna Pontellier screwingt communicate her needs. The first part of Wolffs essay is a six-page assessment of the image of women current at the end of the nineteenth century demonstrate the lack of a language for intimacy and sexuality. She looks specifically at the work of William Acton, an author widely read at the time. According to him women didnt have 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 marital duties, he blames her for not taking care of the children. Lonce turns the disappointment of the rejection into a reproach of neglected maternal duties. According to Wolff, the true subject of Chopins novel, may be less the particular dilemma of Mrs. Pontellier than the larger 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 measure of societys failure to allow its women a language of their own (388).