1. Dr. Aaron Nyerges Lecturer in English and American Studies University of Sydney aaron.nyerges@sydney.edu.au

2. Personal: the ethic of self-discovery Historical/geographical: learning about the far off (reconstruction era in Southern Louisiana) Legal/social: Married women’s property rights / social relations created by legal codes Literary/generic: A list of intertexts

3. 1960s canonisation; a product of 1960s politics. Rejecting the conformity of institutions; feminism and the politics of self-assertion Contemporary feminisms critique link between women’s liberation and self-discovery / assertion of independence Literature of Female Development: Jane Eyre, Emma, Mill in the Floss, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Madame Bovary.

4. Bildungsroman 1. living is an art the apprentice may learn 2. a young person can become adept at the art of living to the point that they become a master 3. success in this depends on the choices of the apprentice 4. the character has to see their potential to be a master 5. this requires an affirmative attitude toward life as a whole The Novel of Awakening 1. The idea that living is suspended until adulthood 2. The belief that a young woman is incapable of becoming adept at the art of living and must be guided through it 3. The assumption that a woman does not have a choice 4. The character must have the potential for disillusionment 5. Negative or, at best, cautious attitude toward life as a whole. Susan Rodowski, “The Novel of Awakening, Genre

5. [Leonce’s] entrance awoke his wife, who was in bed and fast asleep when he came in. He talked to her while he undressed, telling her anecdotes and bits of news and gossip... She was overcome with sleep, and answered him with little half utterances… Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake. She began to cry a little, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir. Blowing out the candle, which her husband had left burning, she … went out on the porch… The tears came so fast to Mrs. Pontellier's eyes that the damp sleeve of her peignoir no longer served to dry them. … She could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life. They seemed never before to have weighed much against the abundance of her husband's kindness … [Yet] An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood Chopin, The Awakening

6. Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a characteristic hitherto contrary to her nature. Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life -- that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions. Chopin, The Awakening

7. Bildungsroman: Wilhelm Meister, Huckleberry Finn, The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man 1. living is an art the apprentice may learn 2. a young person can become adept at the art of living to the point that they become a master 3. success in this depends on the choices of the apprentice 4. the character has to see their potential to be a master 5. this requires an affirmative attitude toward life as a whole The Novel of Awakening: The Mill in the Floss, Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary, Emma 1. The idea that living is suspended until adulthood 2. The belief that a young woman is incapable of becoming adept at the art of living and must be guided through it 3. The assumption that a woman does not have a choice 4. The character must have the potential for disillusionment 5. Negative or, at best, cautious attitude toward life as a whole.

8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmM-XX8atlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYrD_l3juoU

9. Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.

10. [Edna] stood watching the fair woman walk down the long line of galleries with the grace and majesty which queens are sometimes supposed to possess. Her little ones ran to meet her. Two of them clung about her white skirts, the third she took from its nurse and with a thousand endearments bore it along in her own fond, encircling arms. Though, as everybody well knew, the doctor had forbidden her to lift so much as a pin! He would come to her in the afternoon or evening, sit and roll his cigarette, talk a little, and go away as she had done the night before. But how delicious it would be to have him there with her!

11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHg5xBbndNY States that had community property laws in marriage rather than coveture

12. The years that are gone seem like dreams -- if one might go on sleeping and dreaming -- but to wake up and find -- oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life. Chopin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA6FFnjvvmg