A Comparative Approach Of The Feminism In The Awakening By Kate Chopin & One Is Enough By Flora Nwapa
This article will comparatively approach The Awakening by Kate Chopin and One Is Enough by Flora Nwapa to form a feminist analysis of both. Kate Chopin (1850–1904) is an American writer best known for her stories about the inner lives of sensitive, daring women. The Awakening is one of Kate Chopin’s novels that was first published in 1899.
Flora Nwapa (1931–1993) is the first West African woman to publish a novel in English, she is a clever manipulator of language. Nwapa reinvented the African woman in her third novel, One Is Enough, which was published by Tana Press in Enugu, Nigeria, in 1981.
The comparative approach of the paper will compare and contrast three elements in The Awakening and One is Enough to analyse both works from a feminist perspective; the first element is the plot; the second element is the setting; the third element is the characterisation.
Plot
The first element of analysis in the paper, the plot, will tackle an overview of The Awakening and One Is Enough to examine the inner and outer conflicts of Pontellier and Amaka, respectively.
The Awakening tells the story of a woman’s desire to find and live fully within her true self. Her devotion to that purpose causes conflicts with her society and self. Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of The Awakening, follows what her education, marriage, and society constructed for her. Pontellier marries, has children and becomes ‘thee wife’ till she follows through with her impulsive attraction to different men, cheating on her husband who is named Robert, and discovers she does not love her husband. That is when Pontellier rejects society and the constraints that were embedded within her due to such a society. Pontellier finally realizes that the constraints are embedded and she commits suicide as her chosen path to freedom. She was an educated, assumed religious, and critical-thinking reader.
One Is Enough is a story that covers women’s struggle to find an independent and fulfilling life. After six years of happy, childless marriage, Amaka, at thirty, realised that her faithful 6 years of marriage was a con by the discovery of her unfaithful husband who had two sons from another marriage. Amaka is the protagonist who is childless at the beginning which is a big deal in Nigeria. However, she managed to establish a good business with her own children, twins, in the end.
In The Awakening, Pontellier’s inner conflict was reflected in her outer conflict with society. Pontellier broke all the rules of society to search for ownership and chose death over living in shackles.
In One Is Enough, Amaka had two cultures, her own Nigerian culture and the English missionaries’ culture, to choose from and she chose to pave her way using both. Amaka’s inner conflict was a reflection of the confusion and indecisiveness of the outer conflict between the two cultures. That confusion was eliminated in the end when she chose to be independent, get pregnant to prove she is not barren, and that one marriage was enough for her to learn the truth about society and men.
Setting
The second element of analysis in the paper, the setting, of each of The Awakening and One Is Enough set the stage for oppression to manifest. The setting in The Awakening and One Is Enough was not only the patriarchal oppression that was manifested in society but also, the cultures that were unquestionable at the time.
Women were viewed as mystic creatures of some sort by men as evident in the following extract by the doctor conversing with Robert about the protagonist, Edna who is known as Mrs Pontellier; “…has she been associating of late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women — super-spiritual superior beings? My wife has been telling me about them. Woman, my dear friend, is a very peculiar and delicate organism — a sensitive and highly organized woman, such as I know Mrs Pontellier to be, is especially peculiar. It would require an inspired psychologist to deal successfully with them. And when ordinary fellows like you and me attempt to cope with their idiosyncrasies the result is bungling. Most women are moody and whimsical…” (Chopin 171).
Pontellier is a middle to upper-class wife in this society. This is the position Kate Chopin held in her own life. Pontellier’s husband did not give her love, time, or affection. Pontellier was treated as an object who was not allowed her mere rights as a human first before being assigned as a female and a woman as De Beauvoir elaborates on page 147 in her book, The Second Sex, the struggle of being assigned rather than being humanely treated:
“…No one dreams of demanding a social role for them other than what they are assigned. It is more a question of comparing the life of the cleric to the state of marriage; it is a masculine problem brought up by the Church’s ambiguous attitude to marriage…”
Marriage was not an option, it was a must and divorce was not even considered in society at the time and Pontellier’s society did not give her a chance to choose anything. Thus, marriage was one of the patriarchial constraints at the time of the novel, The Awakening. Divorce was considered taboo at the time because The Awakening takes place in late nineteenth-century Louisiana. The action of the first half of the novel centres on Grand Isle, Louisiana, an island fifty miles south of New Orleans.
Women were and are still seen most of the time as properties, objects, commodities, and trophies. Thus, the term ‘trophy wife’ and such depictions are not limited to one culture as the patriarchal oppression manifested, not only, in different cultures, but also throughout different times and that only made girls, women, and females fall prey to the male domination:
“suitors fight over this prey, and the girl is sometimes not even twelve years old when her father or his lord gives her to some baron as a gift. The more marriages, the more domains for a man…” (De Beauvoir 136)
The Awakening became Chopin’s most famous novel and was known as one of the first feminist works in literature, but upon publication, the book brought a lot of controversy. The Awakening was never officially banned, but its controversial content did lead to some sections of the book being censored.
The incidents in The Awakening are narrated through a limited third-person point of view and we never have actual access to what is going on in Pontellier’s mind whereas, we can access Amaka, the protagonist,’s thoughts in One Is Enough through the same limited third-person point of view.
One Is Enough takes place after the independence period and the Biafran War period, in colonial Nigeria. Nwapa employs simple language, she accurately recreates both the format of oral storytelling and the traditional dilemma tale by sustaining a narrative primarily composed of oral conversations whose primary function is to stimulate a serious probing of social and moral issues that confront Igbo women in their everyday lives.
Amaka, the protagonist, was a child who believed in true love and prince charming who would sweep her off her feet. Being barren was a huge offence in society rather than being an unfaithful wife. Amaka’s society consisted of her husband, mother, aunt, mother-in-law, friends, family, and business colleagues. Marriage was an added privilege of chastity in Amaka’s society, not a necessity. Amaka realised her sense of identity as a separate entity and confronted her husband, Obiora, as he demanded obedience for being a man:
“I am a man.”
“I am a woman.” (Nwapa 26)
He did rush to hit her and use brute force as he did before, but Amaka would not let him win this time and she stood up for herself. One Is Enough was celebrated and served as a gleam of hope to guide those lost on what is really important. At least for Amaka because in One Is Enough, Flora Nwapa deftly manipulates oral conversations and interjects celebratory and resistant responses to popular humour to proclaim the contemporary African woman.
Characterisation
The third element of analysis in the paper, the characterisation, will tackle the development of Pontellier and Amaka that led each of them to her freedom.
Pontellier chose silence over voicing her revolt against society. She was searching for self-ownership in a time when none existed. Silence only led to suicide and that was how Pontellier found her freedom. She was a caged bird among many others who sang of a freedom she longed for still, on a distant hill.
Pontellier realized what she was missing was not only her freedom but also herself. It was no longer enough to live in an illusion of freedom and sing of it, Pontellier decided to taste freedom and take the leap. Pontellier searched and her search led her to nature which was the original call for freedom and the self that she could not realize among the loud noises of society’s conformity.
The character of Pontellier is controversial, but one thing was certain; she lived her search and came to a resolution. It was not a matter of wrong and right because Pontellier had already broken all those rules. It was a matter of choice and self-discovery and that is what Pontellier is believed to have retrieved in the end in a society that has given her no sense of freedom or self-ownership.
Amaka found freedom and self-ownership through her journey. She was almost married to two men who ultimately died. Thus, Amaka blamed fate and had no faith in fate. Until she got married and believed that she actually acquired her happy ending, only to be shocked that her knight in shining armour has been cheating on her and had two sons from another woman. The irony is that she was more mad at him for not being honest rather than for cheating.
The confusion between all information presented in Amaka’s character is reflected in her pattern of thought. Amaka rejected the unfaithful treatment of her husband and declared that she will pave her way in patriarchial domination through her own mixture of the teachings of her mother and aunt; that children were more important and to use as many men as she possibly can to get pregnant, and between the teachings of the missionaries; that speak of honour, chastity, and loyalty, to establish her own life.
Amaka was experiencing inner conflict because of such constraints between her own society and her education from the missionaries. That was relevant to her pattern of thought that followed the stream-of-consciousness technique. On the other hand, the outer conflict was manifested in her rejection of marriage and choosing to show her society that she is not barren and she no longer needs a husband with her children and business flourishing. She paved her own way. Amaka’s confusion led her to disappear to Lagos and start over far from her constraints.
In the end, the paper managed to implement a comparative approach to analyse The Awakening by Kate Chopin and One is Enough by Flora Nwapa from a feminist perspective through three elements; the first element was the plot; the second element was setting; the third element was the characterisation.
The analysis concluded that both protagonists; Pontellier and Amaka were searching for freedom and self-ownership in The Awakening and One is Enough, respectively. Each of them found what she was searching for through different means.
Pontellier had one society, the English society, and she chose infidelity to break the core of the teachings of the society to prove self-ownership. However, she found her freedom in death.
Amaka had two societies, the Nigerian society and the English society, and she chose independence. She broke the rule of marriage by not getting married again because one is enough. Thus, she kept the teachings of the English missionaries and did not cheat or get accused of infidelity. At the same time, she got pregnant to prove to her Nigerian society that she is not barren, but her marriage was. Ultimately, she found her freedom in life.
