Subject:
Analysis: Chapters I?V It is appropriate that The Awakening, which is essentially a novel about the social constraints of women in the Victorian era, opens with the shrieking complaint of a constrained parrot: ?Go away! Go away! For God?s sake.? These words, the first in The Awakening, immediately hint at the tragic nature of the novel, as the bird echoes the phrases of rejection and rebuff that it has heard time and again. Although Madame Lebrun?s parrot speaks English, French, and ?a little Spanish,? it also speaks a ?language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes. . . .? Caged and misunderstood, the parrot?s predicament mirrors Edna?s.
