Question 2

1)   I’m Every Woman – Whitney Houston

“Anything you want done baby I’ll do it naturally”

This line represents the expectation of women to do exactly as they are told and as their husbands ask. Adele Ratignolle is the best character example for this lyric. She is the prime example of an ideal southern housewife willing to do anything and everything her husband desires

2)   Unwritten – Natasha Bettingfields

The moral of the song unwritten is to let go of everything and live the life you want to live the way you want to live it. Your life is unwritten and you get to write it out the way you see fit. This is exactly what Edna Pontellier struggles with. Her life is basically written out the way everyone else wants it to be and she has no say on how she wants it to be written. She tries to set off on her own and figure out her own life but she unfortunately fails. On a different note, there are two lines in this song that parallel Edna’s rebellion throughout the novel:

“I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines
We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way”

Just like in the lyric, Edna has been conditioned to act and behave a certain way but she has found that she cannot sentence herself to that so she breaks the traditions and does things against the social norm.

3)   A New Day has Come – Celine Dion

“When it was dark now there’s light, where there was pain now there’s joy, were there was weakness I found my strength”

This song to me corresponds to the theme in The Awakening of sleep and wakefulness. “When it was dark now there’s light” is like when Edna finally found herself artistically and recreated herself. “Where there was pain now there’s joy” she is trying to let go of the pain from her past life and find joy in the new from becoming her own woman. “Where there was weakness I found my strength” Edna felt weak and powerless before she “found herself” and with that she has gained a new strength that she hopes will help her.

4)   This Time – Pia Toscano

The chorus of this song describes exactly how Edna feels as she tries to find herself and who she is other than what society has molded her and other women to be:

“This time I’m gonna do it my way, this time I’m finding out the hard way, this time I’m gonna go back to the girl I was on the night you found me. No more holding back the real me, just wait, in a minute you’ll see, this time, just in time, it’s my time getting back to the real me”

5)   Defying Gravity – Idina Menzel

The title itself tells of obvious defiance and defying the normal way of life which is what Edna’s whole goal is as shown in the lyrics:

“Something has changed within me, something is not the same. I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game”

“I’m through accepting limits ‘cause someone else says they’re so. Some things I cannot change but till I try, I’ll never know!”

Another part of The Awakening that is represented in the song Defying Gravity, is when Edna gives up on love and has an affair because of her confusion on her feelings for Robert. This is shown in two lines of the song:

“Too long I’ve been afraid of losing love I guess I’ve lost. Well if that’s love it comes at much too high a cost!”

The song is a dialogue between the Witch of the West, Elphaba, and her sister the Witch of the East, Galinda. Elphaba, like Edna, is wanting to rebel and defy the social norms that were put into place for her and other women while Galinda, like Adele, wants to stay with the way things are and is contempt with the rules that have been put into place for her.