The Pursuit Of Bing An Integral Self

Women's pursuit of the self is a popular subject in literature. What is reflected in The Awakening and The Color Purple is very representative. Edna in Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Celie in Alice Walker's The Color Purple are different in their physical appearance, social status and races, but they pass through the similar passage of growing up. The purpose of this thesis is to trace the track of the awakening and growing up of the two literary figures, so as to show how slow, difficult and sometimes painful but wonderful this process is. The historical factors contributing to the different results of their awakenings are also discussed. The paper consists of five chapters.Chapter One Introduction. This part is a brief introduce to Kate Chopin's life and her representative works The Awakening and Alice Walker's life and The Color Purple, which makes her well known.Chapter Two The Loss of the Self. Patriarchal ideology is deep rooted in women's minds, which women were cast to be in submissive and subordinate roles. Women are unaware of the loss of the self in marriage.Chapter Three The Awakening of Self. There are three awakenings both of Edna and Celie. They are the awakening of the self-identity, the awakening of sexuality and the awakening of the sense of economic independence.Chapter Four The Realization of the Self. Edna is awakened only to find that herself is split among sex, marriage and love, because she finds out that she can't ignore the contradiction between herself and motherhood. The reason for the split is that Edna can't free herself from the patriarchal society in which Victorian ideology prevailed. Different from Edna, Celie obtains her downright independence and reunites with her family members, which implies the integrity of Celie's personality.Chapter Five Conclusion.