摘要：

《觉醒》是美国女作家凯特•肖班的作品，它讲述了主人公艾德娜在父权社会中从自我意识苏醒，到觉醒后的行为转变直至最终走向自杀的过程。本文从女性主义理论视角出发，从分析艾德娜所处的社会环境、艾德娜亲人对她的影响、她本人性格特点、以及她为取得思想独立所做的斗争入手，研究促成艾德娜觉醒的因素以及导致她最终自杀的悲剧的根本原因。本文认为女主人公艾德娜实际上并未完成觉醒。导致她觉而未醒的原因是父权社会的压制和主人公自身性格的不完整。主人公艾德娜觉而未醒的“觉醒”过程表明，女性的心灵成长除了需要客观的社会条件之外还离不开对自身性格的塑造。

关键词：艾德娜；觉醒过程；女性主义
 
Abstract：

The Awakening is a literary work written by Kate Chopin, an American woman writer. It depicts the process from the protagonist’s awakening of self-consciousness in the patriarchal society, the transformation of her behavior to the way she has chosen to end her life. In the light of feminist theories, this thesis begins with the description of the social environment which Adna was living in, Adna’s characteristic and her fight against the society. It makes a study on the factors contributing to Adna’s awakening and on the radical causes for her suicide. This thesis tends to prove that Adna did not totally finish her course of awakening. And the reasons for that were the oppression to women from the patriarchal society and Adna’s weakness in her character. Adna’s unfinished awakening shows that not only the social environment but also the fulfillment of their own mind is important to women’s awakening.

Key words: Adna; the course of awakening; feminism

1. Introduction 
The Awakening is the work of Kate Chopin, which was published in 1899, it depicted that how the protagonist, Adna, awakened to realize her own existence. In order to pursue freedom and independence, Adna walked out of her family and refused to be an appendage to her husband, but ended her course of awakening by committing suicide. After being published, The Awakening caused a sensation in the society. From the columnists to the critics, people in the society then denounced the novel as a perverse work, and it was forbidden to be published.
At the end of 1960s, women’s liberation movement reached the peak. which brought Chopin and her novel The Awakening back to light. In The Awakening, Chopin depicted Adna’s awakening of her self-consciousness and sexual consciousness, she made a bold and honest exploration of married women’s inner world. The Awakening is viewed as the earliest representative work of American women literature. More and more scholars, home and aboard, began to study Chopin and her work The Awakening. They have pointed that Kate Chopin had illustrated the main problems that women had to face in the patriarchal society—social discipline compelled women to dedicate their youth to marriage and children. They’ve also pointed that when Adna began to awake, she couldn’t be satisfied by her dreary life any more. They said that the behavior of Adna’s fighting against her fate was the sign of her awakening.