Kate Chopin: The Awakening
- The Awakening was a financial failure in Chopin’s time and was widely censored.
- On the surface, Creole society seems tolerant of female independence.
Issues that led to the repression of the novel:
- Social and sexual independence of women. The idea of female emancipation was shocking and improper.
- Female point of view of what would happen to a real woman if she attempted to claim the freedom attributed to the Goddess of Love.
Stylistically, the work effectively uses symbols that are introduced in the opening chapter and recur throughout the work.
The Sea:
- Represents freedom as an opposite to the societal expectations of a patriarchal society.
- Learning to swim becomes a metaphor for learning to exercise freedom.
- Associated with baptismal imagery. Awakening as a kind of rebirth.
- Edna’s moments of escape are in the sea, where she gains independence and erotic freedom. She is not bound by the societal values of land.
- Wild openness of the sea/nature. She escapes from a controlling, patriarchal theology to a kind of religion in nature.
Caged Bird:
- Metaphor: Symbol of Edna confined by marriage and the expectations of her patriarchal society. May prefigure Edna’s restlessness.
- Edna feels entrapped by Patriarchal theology, which dictates that she is a wicked and sinful woman to dare to oppose patriarchy.
- Caged by the expectations of the mother-woman.
- Birds are prominent throughout the work.
Birth of ideas of independence, love are born in the female colony. She begins to explore her position in the universe.
Patriarchal tone of her husband’s attitude toward her:
- He looks “at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage” (44). Fundamentally, he views her as a possession.
- Her rings become important to her. He had held them while she was swimming and apparently free. When she returns them to her fingers, the rings become symbols of his possession and of reclaiming of his wife.
- He returns to Grande Isle for the weekend, but doesn’t stay to dinner with his wife.
- Meals become a kind of communion between souls. Whenever her husband offers her something to eat, Edna refuses it. They don’t commune together at mealtimes.
- Edna’s failure as a wife and mother is early established. “Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman” (51).
- Léonce becomes angry because she is sleeping when he tells her things that are happening in his life.
- Léonce is not as extreme as he might have been.
Mother-Women:
- “They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.”
- Their wings are not to fly away on.
- Adèle Ratignolle is always doing things for her children. There is no limit to her self-effacement.
- Contrast between Edna and Adèle (58). Edna is singled out physically, while Adèle is the perfect mother-woman: plump, and representing the ideal of that type.
Romantic Subplot:
- The Creole husband is never jealous because of a kind of code of honour between the men of his society.
- Robert adopts Edna for the summer, says words of love to the ladies as a joke.
- Mme. Ratignolle warns Robert that Edna could take him seriously, and Robert replies that he may take himself seriously.
Appears to be a very tolerant society. People talk of private matters openly, but there is a limit. When Robert takes himself seriously in his love for Edna, he leaves.
Edna is torn between contradictory impulses:
Eg.) Robert persuades her to go swimming after she has refused.
Sense of Awakening:
- Change first evident on page 57.
“Mrs. Pontellier 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 descent 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.”
- Irony of tone. The Holy Ghost is usually on the side of patriarchy. The freedom Edna wants is usually reserved for men. Foreshadowing of problems ahead.
“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such a beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!” (57)
- Edna confides unsatisfactorily in Mme. Ratignolle, and later, with greater satisfaction in Mlle. Reisz, an independent woman.
- Escape through field as a child is parallel to her escape into the water.
- She had been running from the Presbyterian service.
- She had impulses, even as a child, to run away from tradition and find escape in nature.
- At one time, religion had taken a firm hold upon her. She seems to be breaking away from it now.
Motifs in the work:
Piano-playing:
- Takes on different qualities when associated with different players.
- Mme. Ratignolle kept up her playing on account of the children. Everything she does is for the children. The quality of an artist is not in her.
- While her playing puts pictures into Edna’s mind, Mlle. Reisz’ playing arouses passions within her soul.
- Music is freeing to the mind, allowing for the notion of possible escape from the rigid notions of turn-of-the-century society.
- Edna calls one of Adèle’s pieces “Solitude”. She pictures a man on the seashore watching a bird flying away from him. Birds are a symbol of freedom or potential freedom. It seems that only a man could ever dream of escape. The bird image reappears when she tries to escape.
- Edna seeks independence through her art.
Wings:
- Part of the bird motif associated with Edna.
- Almost every time Mlle. Reisz meets her, she pats her on the shoulder.
“She put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said. “The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.” (138)
Chapter X: Mystic Bathing
- Edna has been moved by Mlle. Reisz’s piano playing.
- “Mystic” nature of the swim emphasized: “But someone, perhaps it was Robert, thought of a bath at that mystic hour and under that mystic moon.” (72)
- The band playing at Klein’s hotel and the “strange, rare odours abroad” suggest a richness and heaviness of fertility.
- Snakes appear here (73) and reappear at the end.
- Edna is fearful of letting herself go. In entering the ocean, she goes into a kind of imaginative world removed from the world of dry land, where society has expectations. In nature, she can be anything.
- Feels she has control over her own body and soul. Swimming is a metaphor for the freedom she seeks.
- Wants to go where no woman has gone before. Desire to go beyond the limitations of her society.
- Seems easy, free, and independent in the water, then goes over her depth.
- Duality to her existence: Wants independence, but how far can she go?
- Swim becomes spiritual/emotional. Mme. Reisz’ music has moved her to seek independence.
- Robert doesn’t know anything about it. He will never understand. She is fooled by the illusion that he will.
- Kind of rebirth. Transformation of a spirit of the water makes her greater than human.
- When Edna’s husband returns, he gives her reasons to enter his house. She wants to remain in the outdoor space.
- He eventually orders her inside. She realizes for the first time that he orders her about. She begins to issue orders:
“Léonce, go to bed,” she said. “I mean to stay out here. I don’t wish to go in, and I don’t intend to. Don’t speak to me like that again; I shall not answer you.” (78)
- Edna refuses the wine offered her by Léonce. Symbol of communion.
- The next morning, she sends for Robert. Indicative of her taking charge of things. They share a small communal meal.
- Sailing away, “Edna felt as if she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast, whose chains had been loosening – had snapped the night before when the mystic spirit was abroad, leaving her free to drift whithersoever she chose to set her sails.” (81) She feels she has great choice of where she wishes to go.
Quest Motif
- They speak of pirate treasure and high adventure. Fantasy associated with the trip to Chênière Caminada
- The point of the trip had been to go to church.
- She sees a contrast between her vision of new freedom and the values of Christianity as advocated during the turn of the century.
- Response to service: feeling of repression, drowsiness.
- Gilbert believes that Edna attempts to escape from patriarchal religion to a natural one broad enough to encompass all human passion.
- After fleeing the church service, Edna experiences a kind of ceremonial rebirth and Mme. Antoine’s.
- Ritualistic transformation: Baptism – rebirth—communion
-removing clothing: freedom
-awareness of existence in the flesh
-ritualistic washing
-new kind of communion in meal of bread and wine.
-physical new beginning. Animal qualities emphasized: “Edna bit a piece from the brown loaf, tearing it with her strong, white teeth.” (85)
- Edna goes out into the garden. Kind of Garden of Eden image.
- Notion of her nap not having been a normal sleep is emphasized. Seemingly everything has changed and she has slept one hundred years. (85)
- Robert “familiarly adjusted a ruffle upon her shoulder.” (85) Bird motif?
- Refers to her new self as being different from her old self:
“She could only realize that she herself –her present self—was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that coloured and changed her environment, she did not yet suspect.” (88)
- Léonce had been worried by his wife’s absence, but left when he found out that there was a possible business deal at Klein’s. Here he shows his priorities and materialism.
- Robert is going to Mexico.
-reason for his departure hinted:
“I’ve grown so used to seeing you, to having you with me all the time, and your action seems unfriendly, even unkind. You don’t even offer an excuse for it. Why, I was planning to be together, thinking of how pleasant it would be to see you in the city next winter.”
“So was I,” he blurted. “Perhaps that’s the –“ He stood up suddenly and held out his hand.” (94)
-he may have fallen for her, but for all his joking around, he is traditional. He believes that it would be a sin to be involved with another man’s wife.
The limiting factor in Edna’s society is not so much the husband as the children:
- The text protests the narrow expectation of the role of women.
- Difference between Mme. Ratignolle and Edna. They do not speak the same language. Edna is in confrontation with a mother-woman.
- Notion that two different views of the role of women are in conflict. (New Woman vs. Traditional mother-woman) Similar conflict between Edna and Léonce.
Edna:
-Edna would never sacrifice herself for her children
-(97) she would give up the unessential, but she would not give up her independence of spirit.
Mme. Ratignolle:
-Ratignolle would live an entire life of servitude.
-Reasons for self-effacement are cloaked in religious terms: “a woman who would give her life for her children could do no more than that – your Bible tells you so.” (97)
Conflict between Edna and Léonce:
Spirituality vs. Materialism:
- Leonce’s wife is missing, he goes to do business with a cotton broker.
- Admires his possessions around his house
- When he reads the newspaper, he reads the market reports rather than social reports.
- Léonce’s reason for resentment of Edna’s cancellation of Tuesday at-home days is that the breach of social convention could result in less business.
- Edna seeks spiritual and emotional fulfilment. She is no longer willing to serve as the social end of his business life.
- Edna and her husband do not eat together. Their lack of communion takes on a symbolic overtone.
- The most obvious manifestation of the conflict is Edna’s throwing down of her wedding ring (103). The ring withstands. Her struggle to break free from social conventions is not an easy one.
- Antagonism towards domestic life. She visits Mme. Ratignolle, who by contrast is concerned with household duties. These duties are emblematic of her self-effacement. There is very little left to her. Edna seeks something beyond domestic duties.
- Sympathy for colourless existence:
“She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle, -- a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life’s delirium.” (107)
Mme. Ratignolle is happy only because she is blind. She has no independence of spirit.
- Edna’s sense of becoming someone else is observed by her husband, but he doesn’t really understand it. He thinks she is unbalanced.
- He argues that she is painting instead of doing housework. He holds up Ratignolle as a model because although she continues her music, she puts her family first.
“He could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.” (108)
- At the end of the novel, she casts off all of her clothing, breaking from tradition and returning to nature.
- Léonce complains to Dr. Mandelet. His major concern is that she lets the housework go.
- Progress towards independence. Edna says “a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth.”
- Léonce is not a brute. If he were violent, The Awakening wouldn’t be a story of a woman seeking independence from the tradition of marriage, but of a woman merely attempting to get away from danger.
- Association of her new self with nature emphasized in Dr. Mandelet’s observation: “She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.” (123)
- Celestine refers to Edna’s little house as the pigeon-house. It is a tiny place, but it is her own.
- Edna’s recollection of the words of Mlle. Reisz:
“when I left her today, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said. “The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.”
- Mlle. Reisz’s independence is an artistic one. She seeks her independence independently of men and finds it.
- The text suggests a different kind of new woman – is a sexually liberated woman possible?
Symbolic Dinner Party:
- According to Gilbert, it is a kind of Last Supper celebrating the transformation Edna has gone through. She is described in glowing terms.
- Edna has been elevated:
“The golden shimmer of Edna’s satin gown spread in rich folds on either side of her. There was a soft fall of lace encircling her shoulders. It was the colour of her skin, without the glow, the myriad living tints that one may sometimes discover in vibrant flesh. There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.” (145)
- Mlle. Reisz’s comment at the end of the evening as she kissed Edna’s shoulder: “Bonne nuit, ma reine; soyez sage.”
- Edna suffers a lessening of social reputation as a result of her affair with Alcée. Ratignolle does not want to be associated with scandal.
- Robert is a huge disappointment. He is ultimately conventional. His traditional conscience gets the better of him.
- She declares her independence:
“You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, ‘Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,’ I should laugh at you both.” (167)
- Edna had escaped to a freedom of choice, not from one possessor to another. Robert does not respect her independence.
- Conflict between Edna’s new self and the mother-woman. “Think of the children, Edna. Oh think of the children! Remember them!” (170)
Last Swim:
- Thoughts of self-doubt
- Children are antagonists who attempt to enslave her as they have Mme. Ratignolle.
- The bird as a symbol of freedom falls defeated into the water.
- Nakedness, feeling of being born into a new element.
Ending:
- A celebration of her escape in return to the sea. American society not prepared for the return of the goddess of Love.
OR
- A defeat. Was there a possibility of some other solution to Edna’s situation that could be looked upon more favourably?
