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This week you will be working on the first draft of your final paper. In this paper, you will integrate quotes, paraphrase, and summarize in APA style. To practice this skill, choose one of the two scholarly essays written on The Awakening. Then choose two different paragraphs and copy them into a Word document. After you have chosen the paragraphs, please do the following:

1. Read one of the essays below. Choose a paragraph that you think needs further clarification. Paraphrase that passage. Remember, to paraphrase means to restate the author’s ideas in your own words, using a signal phraseto show the reader that although you are not quoting, you are paraphrasing. Remember to use APA citation.
2. Use the same approach with another paragraph in your chosen article. This time, include a direct quotationfrom that passage. Cite the passage using APA style.
3. Next, write a brief summary of both paragraphs. Remember—this is only a summary. Review this week’s lecture on how to cite a summary in APA style.
4. Click here to review a sample that will illustrate how your assignment should look using either the Church and Havener (2008) or the Powell (2009) article.

By Thursday, August 16, 2012, save your paraphrase, quotation, and summary efforts in or x format and upload to the W5: Assignment 2 Dropbox.

Click to access the articles:

Powell, T. (2009). Chopin’s The Awakening. The Explicator, 67(4), 276-279.

Church, J., & Havener, C. (2008). The “lady in black” in Chopin’s The Awakening. The Explicator, 66(4), 196-197.

The “Lady in Black” in Chopin’s THE AWAKENING

In The Awakening, all of Chopin’s main characters—Edna, Robert, Léonce, Adèle, Arobin, Mademoiselle Reisz—face an age-old ontological problem: how to simultaneously have, despite the obvious insurmountable contradiction,conscious identity (reason, mind)and emotional physicality (eros, body).

Thus, unlike Edna Pontellier, who until the very end painfully struggles and fails to unify these two sides of Being, Mademoiselle Reisz has sought to resolve the problem decisively, however spuriously, by siding primarily with mind-as-artist, denying the mind-absorbing passionate body in herself,

and then unconsciously arranging to repossess passion vicariously through the young and sensuously beautiful Edna (Church 21). Interestingly, Chopin addresses this same ontological difficulty in some of the novel’s minor characters, especially in the almost surreal “lady in black” and “the lovers.”

This shadowy, unnamed woman appears several times in the novel, usually engaged in religious activity (telling her beads, clutching her prayer book, concerned about an indulgence) and most often juxtaposed with a pair of lovers, themselves unnamed. Like Mademoiselle Reisz, this woman dresses

in black, does not enter the water, and apparently devotes herself to higher forms. But just as the pianist involves herself deeply in the lives of lovers (Robert and Edna, and particularly the latter) for the purpose of appropriating the sensual being she denies in herself, the “lady in black” anxiously,

even voyeuristically, keeps near the lovers. Accordingly, we learn that as the lovers make their way toward a tryst, “the lady in black, with her Sunday prayer-book, velvet and gold-clasped, and her Sunday silver beads, was following them at no great distance” (32), and that as they continue, “shoulder to shoulder” (33), behind them hurries “the lady in black, gaining steadily upon them” (33). In “Romantic Imagery in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening,” Donald A. Ringe concludes that Chopin uses this trio of minor characters to contrast their subsuming self-absorption with Edna’s insistent independence:

[T]he two lovers are indeed so lost in each other as to be almost completely

oblivious to what is going on around them. There is surely no self-assertion

here. Nor does there seem to be any in the lady in black who, in praying to

God, is surrendering herself to the Deity. Both the couple and the lady in

black represent a strong contrast to Edna, who never really achieves the loss

of self in love for another, and who is never portrayed as submitting herself

to worship God in communion with others. (225)

We argue that the lady in black, however unconsciously, works to avoid subsumption in otherness and seeks to maintain her bodily being by trying vicariously to appropriate the embodied sensuality of the lovers, just as Mademoiselle Reisz attempts to do principally with Edna, and the younger woman with Robert. It is to the point that, as Kenneth Eble notes in “A Forgotten Novel: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening,” when Robert leaves for Mexico—effectively dividing Edna from an element of herself, one that finally cannot be sustained—the “lady and lovers depart together” (190), disappearing from Chopin’s novel. Most readings of The Awakening emphasize social and psychological issues and generally neglect the novel’s more philosophical reflections and the wisdom they afford. Chopin’s rendering of the “lady in black” helps us understand the author’s interest in an ontological conundrum: the impossible simultaneous requirement for defining identity and freedom from definition. We see this dilemma dramatized in her main characters and in her minor ones. We conclude that Kate Chopin worried over this predicament in herself.

—JOSEPH CHURCH and CHRISTA HAVENER, Binghamton University

Copyright © 2008 Heldref Publications

KEYWORDS

freedom, identity, ontology, vicariousness

WORKS CITED

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Mineola: Dover, 1993.

Church, Joseph. “An Abuse of Art in Chopin’s The Awakening.” American Literary Realism 39.1(2006): 20–23.

Eble, Kenneth. “A Forgotten Novel: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.” The Awakening. Norton Critical Ed., 2nd ed. Ed. Margo Culley. New York: Norton, 1994. 188–93.

Ringe, Donald A. “Romantic Imagery in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.” The Awakening. Norton Critical Ed., 2nd ed. Ed. Margo Culley. New York: Norton, 1994. 222–27. 197

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hopin’s THE AWAKENING

In order to explore the Africanist presence in literature, writer Toni Morrison

lists “some of the common linguistic strategies employed in fiction to engage

the serious consequences of blacks” (67). Three of those strategies are

Economy of stereotype. This allows the writer a quick

and

easy image

without the responsibility of specificity, accuracy, or even narratively useful

description. Metonymic displacement. This promises much but delivers

little and counts on the reader’s complicity in the dismissal. Color coding

and other physical traits become metonyms that displace rather than signify

the Africanist character Metaphysical condensation. This allows the writer

to transform social and historical differences into universal differences. Col-

lapsing persons into animals prevents human contact and exchange; equating

speech with grunts or other animal sounds closes off the possibility of communication.

(68)

and

Fetishization. This is especially useful in evoking erotic fears or desires and

establishing fixed and major difference where difference does not exist or is

minimal. Blood, for example is a pervasive fetish: black blood, white blood,

the purity of blood; the purity of white female sexuality, the pollution of

African blood and sex. Fetishization is a strategy often used to assert the

categorical absolutism of civilization and savagery. (68–9)

In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening the Africanist presence reveals important

aspects of the text often ignored when the Africanist presences are ignored.

The linguistic strategy of economy of stereotype is prominent in Kate

Chopin’s The Awakening. Edna has a “quadroon nurse” (7) who is looked

upon as a “huge encumbrance” (7) by Edna’s children because it is the nurse

who performs the duties of making sure the children look presentable. Edna

is described as “not a mother-woman” (8), and this description is helpful in

understanding why Edna eventually must end her life. But the nurse is never described

or designated as anything other than a “quadroon.” This word signifies

that the nurse is black, and therefore easily dismissed from Edna’s world. But

if the reader does not dismiss the nurse, it becomes obvious that “quadroon”

tells the reader nothing about what the nurse looks like. Is she light? Is she

dark? Fat? Skinny? She is described as meek; she follows the children “at the

respectful distance which they required her to observe” (12). She knows her

position in the world, and this contrasts sharply with Edna’s realization of her

own position, which is revealed a few lines after the nurse is seen following the

children. Edna

was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and

to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.

This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul

of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy

Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman. (13)

Has the nurse been forgotten? Does the nurse not know her place in the

world? This is an example of what Morrison calls metonymic displacement.

The reader must not consider the nurse as a woman. Indeed, in the discourse of

the dominant culture, women are white. By being described as a “quadroon”

the nurse can be dismissed as the reader ponders “larger” issues, such as a

(white) woman, Edna, realizing her place in the world and becoming depressed

at the realization.

Edna never considers, and the narrator never alludes to the fact, that Edna

would not have so much time to sit around and ponder her lack of selfdetermination

if she were not economically and racially privileged. She has

the luxury to question why and how is she is oppressed because she is not

occupied struggling to survive. She has servants to clean her home and raise

her children. While Edna realizes how bored she is as a white woman in the

South, the “quadroon nurse,” the “little black girl” (43) and “a maid” (whose

race is not mentioned so she must be white) (53) make Edna comfortable.

Another example of metonymic displacement occurs when Edna visits the

Lebruns in search of Madameoiselle Reisz. When Edna arrives at the Lebrun

residence and rings the doorbell “[A] black woman . . . plainly an anomaly”

(59) is slow to answer the bell and refuses, after Victor Lebrun answers the bell

himself, to tell Mrs. Lebrun that Edna has come to call. Victor issues “a rebuke

in the form of a volley of abuse” and the woman obeys, going “mumbling

into the house” (60). If the reader is attending to this Africanist presence, the

next line is confusing, for it begins with Edna not wishing to enter the house

because she is preoccupied with how lovely the side porch is. The “anomalous

black woman” and the fight are completely forgotten. Victor must bring up

the subject of “the black woman’s offensive conduct” which “was all due to

imperfect training” (60). Edna again dismisses the woman, and the reader is

forced to either notice the dismissal or be complicitious. It is also important

to notice that the “anomalous black” woman is hinted to be animal-like—she

mumbles instead of speaks, she is “improperly trained.” This metaphysical

condensation makes the woman unworthy of consideration, “prevents human

contact and exchange” (Morrison 60). It solves the problem of Edna’s dismissal

of the “anomalous” woman.

There is also quite a bit of fetishization going on regarding the Africanist

presence in the form of the nurse. First, Edna decides to take up painting;

“The quadroon sat for hours before Edna’s palette, patient as a savage” (57).

Morrison says fetishization is often linked to savagery and is useful in “evoking

erotic fears . . . establishing fixed and major differences where difference does

notexistorisminimal…Blood…isapervasivefetish”(Morrison15).

Certainly the idea of noble, patient savagery is here, and early in the novel the

narrator establishes the idea of difference between Edna and the “quadroon,”

even though Edna is presumably four quarters white, and the quadroon three.

In addition to these characteristics of fetishization, there is another in the novel.

The “erotic fears” surface as Edna’s “purity” comes into question as her husband

leaves her.

His leaving her, however, also seems to bring about her individuality. She

is growing stronger as an individual (94). So she takes a holiday and visits

her children on a plantation in Iberville. Here appear more opportunities to

investigate the Africanist presence in the novel. Her children pick pecans with

“Lidie’s little black brood” (Chopin 94) which signals metaphysical condensation;

and she looks at “the darkies laying the cane, [thrashing] the pecan

trees, and [catching] fish in the back lake” (94). It is after this sentence that

something interesting grammatically occurs. After the sentence quoted above,

Chopin writes, “she lived with them a whole week long, giving them all of

herself, and gathering and filling herself with their young existence” (95).

Grammatically “them” refers to the last possible referent, which is “fish,” or

possibly the subject of the last sentence, which is “darkies.” However, because

we the readers know Edna did not live with the African Americans on the farm

all week long—at least she wouldn’t say it that way—we must assume “them”

refers to her children, last mentioned eight sentences previous. Once again the

reader must comply—against the rules of grammar—with Edna’s dismissal of

the Africanist presence along with the animals in the novel in order to under-

stand the plot of the novel. This is ironic because this text is a favorite for

undergraduate courses because it is short and easy to understand. Yet following

the plot is contingent on ignoring the Africanist presence in the novel. Not only

are Edna, the narrator, and the writer Chopin (assuming it is her grammar that

is causing the confusion) complicitous in dismissing the Africanist presence in

this novel, but a great many students are expected to be complicitous as well.

In order to end this complicity, the Africanist presence must be acknowledged,

and I believe Morrison’s method of analysis will be helpful toward that end.

—TAMARA POWELL, Kennesaw State University

Copyright

KEYWORDS

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_

2009 Heldref Publications

Africanist presence, Kate Chopin, economy of stereotype, fetishization,

metonymic displacement

WORKS CITED

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 1899. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1970. Print.

Morrison, Toni. PlayingintheDark. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992. Print.

James Joyce, the Cinematographic Modernist

In David Trotter’s impressive chapter on James Joyce in Cinema and Modernism,

the author points to James Joyce having “long made a habit out of movie

going” (88). As Trotter points out, Joyce opened the first cinema in Dublin (88).

From this, Trotter makes observations regarding Joyce’s cinematic gestures in

Ulysses. Indeed, the critic makes reference to Joyce’s use of automatism in narrative,

particularly in “The Wandering Rocks” chapter of Ulysses. For instance,

Trotter points out the Blazes Boylan scene at the fruiterer:

The scene bristles with presence-effect, with objects and actions which demand

attention both from Boylan and from the narrator whose job it has

hitherto been to describe in detail whatever occupies the consciousness presiding

over any scene or event. The process by which Boylan selects items for

the basket is the process by which the narrator selects items for description.

Each description of an item has the colour of the purpose which Boylan has

invested in that item. (115)

Trotter’s observation is a keen one. In this scene, Boylan selects fruit, and in

order to capture the scene automatically, as a camera would capture the scene,

the narrator is obliged to record, with some degree of detail, those pieces of

fruit that Boylan lifts. Further, Trotter argues that the pieces of fruit, and their

colors in particular, are representative of the mood, or purpose, of the narrative.

Trotter writes, “there is a kind of collusion of colour, of colourfulness, of

Casey, J. (2010, January 14). The Awakening by Kate Chopin and American women’s fashions

of the 1800s. Associated Content. Retrieved from
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2589079/the_awakening_by_kate_chopin_and
_american.html?cat=46

Original Paragraph 1:
The constrictions of society for the female sex are exemplified in the way women
dressed in during the 1800s in America. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening narrates the
social restrictions 19th century women had and how society reacted when those social
standards were bent or broken. In Kathy Piess’s book Cheap Amusements: Working
Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, middle-class women describe
how they viewed fashions of the time period and how women of different classes
created the looks they read from magazines and saw on the upper class.

Original Paragraph 2:
The way a woman dressed not only exhibited the confining rules of society but also
showed her economic standing and moral character. Women of the lower and upper
classes both followed and conformed to clothing fashions of the 19th century as much
as they could depending the economic situation of each individual woman. Lower

class women could dress in more or less expensive fabrics or styles of clothing to make others
believe she was either more or less wealthy. In Peiss’s book Cheap Amusements Peiss explains
that for the working class “dress was a particularly potent way to display and play with notions
of respectability, allure, independence, and status and to assert a distinctive identity and
presence” (Peiss 63). On Sundays all classes would dress in their best clothes to show those
around town and at church that they were of high character and social standing. Sometimes
women would dress beyond their social class as an effort to attract a man of more wealth with
the hope of marriage. Women of all classes would wear fashionable clothes to show that they
were respectable and modest.

Paraphrase:
According to Casey (2010), examining the clothing worn by American women during
the nineteenth century allows us to better understand the restrictions placed upon
them by society. Women in this society were expected to conform to the guidelines of
fashion of the time, regardless of health issues created by this clothing. In The
Awakening, Chopin illustrates the restrictions women faced in other ways; however, a
connection to the fashion of the period can be made in looking at society’s
expectations of women, and its reaction to the women who defied them.

Here is a sample that illustrates how your assignment should look
using EITHER the Church and Havener (2008) or the Powell
(2009) article. Please note: You cannot use the Casey (2010) article
as this article and sample are for illustrative purposes only.

Choose two
paragraphs
from either the
Church and
Havener (2008)
OR the Powell
(2009) article.
Copy and paste
those excerpts
in a Word
document.

Paraphrase
ONE of the
excerpts, and
cite in APA
style.

Direct quotation:
As noted by Casey (2010), “The way a woman dressed not only exhibited the confining rules of
society but also showed her economic standing and moral
character” (para. 2).

Summary of both paragraphs:
In the 19th century, much like today, a woman’s style of dress indicated her social
standing and level of wealth. Following the guidelines for fashion during the 1800s
also indicated a woman’s morality and willingness to conform to society’s
expectations (Casey, 2010).

Summarize
both
paragraphs,
and cite in
APA style.

Tip: If page numbers are not
available in the article, then cite
paragraph numbers.