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

Four major literary fecal matters can claim some aspect of The Awakening, for in this small compass . . . is illustrated virtually all the major American intellectual and literary trends of the nineteenth century (Skaggs, 80). The Romantic movement pronounced a profound shift in sensibilities away from the Enlightenment. It was excite 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 force-out of the individual, a sense of the infinite, and transcendental temper of the universe. Major themes included the sublime, terror, and passion. The pen extolled the primal power of personality and the spiritual link between nature and man, and was often emotional, marked by a sense of liberty, filled with lackadaisical inner contemplations, exotic settings, memories of childhood, scenes of unrequited love, and exiled heroes. In America, Romanticism coalesced into a distinctly American ideal making success from failure, the immensity of the American landscape, the power of man to conquer the land, and Yankee individualism. The writing was also marked by a type of xenophobia. Protestant America was faced with an inflow of Catholic refugees from the Napoleonic Wars, of Asian workers who constructed the railroads, and the lingering issue of Native Americans. An parochial 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 ar various romantic elements in The Awakening. Perhaps the most obvious and primary are the exotic locale, use of color, and heavy emphasis on nature (cl... ...cause Robert to leave. Works Cited and Consulted Chopin, Kate, The Awakening A Solitary Soul. refreshing York Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1992 Delbanco, Andrew. The Half-Life of Edna Pontellier. New Essays on The Awakening. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambridge 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, crapper R. Local Color in The Awakening. Culley, 189-95. Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin A Critical Biography. Baton paint lanthanum 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 South 4 (1974) 345-64.