The Impact of Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, and Local Color on The

Four major(ip) literary movements can claim some aspect of The Awakening, for in this undersize compass . . . is illustrated virtually all the major American intellectual and literary trends of the nineteenth century (Skaggs, 80). The Romantic movement marked a complex shift in sensibilities away from the Enlightenment. It was inspired by reaction to that periods concepts of clarity, order, and balance, and by the revolutions in America, France, Poland, and Greece. It expressed the assertion of the self, the power of the individual, a sense of the infinite, and supernatural constitution of the universe. Major themes included the sublime, terror, and passion. The writing extolled the primal power of nature and the spiritual link between nature and man, and was often emotional, marked by a sense of liberty, filled with dreamy inner contemplations, exotic settings, memories of childhood, scenes of unanswered love, and exiled heroes. In America, Romanticism coalesced into a dist inctly American apotheosis making success from failure, the immensity of the American landscape, the power of man to oppress the land, and Yankee individualism. The writing was also marked by a symbol of xenophobia. Protestant America was faced with an influx of Catholic refugees from the Napoleonic Wars, of Asiatic workers who constructed the railroads, and the lingering issue of Native Americans. An insular attitude developed, the us and them in Whitman. The major writers of the period were Irving, Cooper, Emerson, Poe, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville. There are various romantic elements in The Awakening. Perhaps the most obvious and elemental are the exotic locale, do of color, and heavy emphasis on nature (cl... ...cause Robert to leave. Works Cited and Consulted Chopin, Kate, The Awakening A Solitary Soul. New York Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1992 Delbanco, Andrew. The Half-Life of Edna Pontellier. New Essays on The Awakening. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambrid ge Cambridge UP, 1988. 89-106. Koloski, Bernard, ed. Preface. Approaches to Teaching Chopins The Awakening. By Koloski. New York MLA, 1988. Martin, Wendy, ed. New Essays on the Awakening. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 1988. May, John R. Local Color in The Awakening. Culley, 189-95. Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin A Critical Biography. Baton Rouge Louisiana State UP, 1969. - - -. Kate Chopin and the American Realists. Culley 180-6. Skaggs, Peggy. Three Tragic Figures in Kate Chopins The Awakening. Louisiana Studies An Interdisciplinary Journal of the southwest 4 (1974) 345-64.