エドナ・ポンテリエの挑戦

―ケイト・ショパン著「目覚め」―

抄録

When Edna Pontellier, the adulterous heroine in The Awakening, spends the summer in Grand Isle, Louisiana, she is awakened while interacting with the four important Creoles named Léonce Pontellier, Adèle Ratignolle, Mademoiselle Reisz, and Robert Lebrun. Edna's spiritual awakenings initiated by the four Creoles develop over six uncharted challenges, which represent her struggle to define herself outside the social codes of marriage and motherhood. This paper focuses on the time after she comes back from her summer excursion in Grand Isle to New Orleans, and explores her six practical defiant challenges to overcome the normative gender roles.