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The Awakening – RRS

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Title:The Awakening

Author: Kate Chopin

Publication Date: 1899

Nationality: American

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Author’s Birth/Death Date:February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904

Distinguishing Traits of Author:

Kate Chopin was an American short story writer and novelist mostly of a Louisiana Creole background. The events that she experienced as a Creole woman underscore the repressing nature of the Creole society Edna is subjugated to. Like The Awakening, Chopin’s novels were set in Louisiana, thus reflecting the significant role her married life in Louisiana plays in her writing. With The Awakening and her short story “The Story of an Hour” focusing on unorthodox views of femininity and motherhood, Chopin was widely recognized as one of the leading writers of her time, as well as a forerunner of feminist authors in the twentieth century.

Setting:

In the beginning of the novel, The Awakening takes place in the late 19th century at a resort in the city of Grande Isle, Louisiana. Managed by Madame Lebrun and her two sons Victor and Robert, the resort is welcoming to protagonist Edna Pontellier, for its “seductive” voice “of the sea” invites “the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude” and “lose itself in mazes of inward contemplations” (20). It is within Grande Isle’s gorgeous beaches and scenery where Edna realizes the repressing nature of her life and how within this life she lacks true love as pure and unadulterated as Grand Isle’s landscape. Upon the Pontellier family’s departure from Grand Isle, the setting then shifts to the Pontellier residence on Esplanade Street in New Orleans. A “large, double cottage, with a broad front veranda,” the Pontellier home is a far cry from the relatively separated Grand Isle resort where narrow “bridges” connected the Lebrun cottages one with the other (75, 1). With Edna living in such a majestic and confining home, it is now wonder how or why she feels repressed and restricted within Creole society and the expectations it holds for her.

Brief Plot Synopsis:

As the story opens, Edna Pontellier, along with her husband, Léonce, and two sons, Raul and Etienne, vacation at a lavish resort in Grand Isle. While there, she spends her time with Madame Adèle Ratignolle, the ideal Creole woman who places her children and husband at the center of her life.

Edna, however, spends more of her time with Robert Lebrun, whose mother manages the resort. Chatting “incessantly” to one another day in and day out, Edna and Robert engage in a relationship that starts off friendly to one much deeper and more meaningful (5). With her face “suffused with a quiet glow” when they meet to go to the Chênière, she feels more free and comfortable with him than she does with Léonce (49). Work-oriented as the sole provider of the family, Léonce rarely spends time with Edna and the kids, and instead gives them material objects as signs of his devotion. Edna is therefore drawn further into Robert’s arms.

With Edna drawn to the adventure and physical love Robert offers, it is no surprise that she is left heartbroken and dejected when Robert leaves Grand Isle for a business venture in Mexico, with a simple handshake as their final goodbye. Though Edna returns to her majestic home along Esplanade Street in New Orleans miserable, she comes back more strong-willed than she was when she left. She engages herself in her lifelong passion of painting and ignores such social responsibilities as holding weekly reception days, and keeping the house clean.

Concerned that she has “some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women,” Léonce seeks help from the family physician Doctor Mandelet (100). He advises Léonce to let Edna do what she wants and, following the doctor’s guidance, Léonce leaves the house on a business trip while the children spend time at their grandmother’s house.

Left alone, Edna enjoys this newfound freedom by moving into an apartment nicknamed the “pigeon house,” and spending time with an eccentric, piano-playing single woman named Mademoiselle Reisz, who represents everything Edna wants to be: self-sufficient and independent. Edna also engages in a sexual relationship with the flirtatious Alcée Arobin, but she does not hold the passion and true love towards him as she does for Robert. Her interaction with Alcée simply fuels her free will and increases her self-control.

Robert soon returns to New Orleans and admits his love for her. The two share a passionate kiss before she leaves to stay at Adèle’s bedside as she gives birth. Begging him to wait for her, she returns from the birth and finds that he has left, leaving a note saying that because he loves her he must leave her. Thinking of Robert’s desertion, Edna is left alone, realizing that no matter how hard she tries she will never escape the oppressing Creole society in which she married into. In order to escape such a world, she returns to Grand Isle and drowns herself in the sea, the one place where she feels she has the most control and power over her body, her actions, and spirit.

Brief Description of characters:

  • Edna Pontellier –

From the story’s onset to its close, Edna is presented as a complex and emotionally dynamic character whose quest for meaning in her life forms the basis of the novel itself. Though she initially conforms to society’s expectations of her as a passive wife and mother, she is described as being “rather handsome than beautiful,” suggesting a willpower normally attributed to men hiding underneath her feminine exterior (5). Through her relationship with Robert, Edna finds her long-suppressed voice and establishes her independence in engaging in such liberating activities as painting and swimming where she is free to do whatever she wants, all at her own will. The jubilant personality she expresses with Robert recalls the feelings she once had as a youth, providing her with the understanding that her married life lacks such fire and true happiness she radiated as a teen and as an adult when in Robert’s presence. Realizing her “position in the universe as a human being,” she slowly distances herself from the obedient façade she exuded towards Léonce in the beginning of the story, and expresses her growing sense of who she is (192). Such an act could not be any further from the endless tears she once shed as “thrust her face, steaming and wet, into the bend of her arm, and she went on crying there” during Léonce’s reproaching of her “habitual neglect of the children” (9). Edna soon loses the meekness she exhibited here and, when Léonce criticizes the meal she helped prepare, she “finished her dinner alone, with forced deliberation…and…eyes flamed with some inward fire” (79). From submissive housewife to defiant woman, Edna displays her rebellious nature against the restricting Creole society and emerges more conscious of who she strives to be: autonomous and free from any sort of responsibility that is expected of her to accomplish. Instead, she establishes her ambitiousness in dreaming to completely remove herself from her former life and living a new one solely based on passionate love. Edna proves childish in harboring such unrealistic hopes, as well as selfish in initially disregarding how her spiritual and sexual awakening will impact her children. Nevertheless, as Edna commits suicide at the novel’s end, it can be argued whether this act was an act of defeat – a ploy presented as an accident to protect her sons’ reputation, as well as a sign of how she cannot escape the cultural expectations of society – or as a triumphant one, where only she has the power to control her body and determine the end of life. No matter how the ending is interpreted, Edna remains as a tortured, yet free-willed soul courageous in breaking expectations of the time, and living a life that she wants to live.

  • Léonce Pontellier – Léonce Pontellier is a well-regarded and highly respected man in the Creole community back in New Orleans, and is described to be the best husband any wife could ever wish for because of his endless purchases of extravagant gifts for Edna and their children. He is a forty-year-old man with a slender build, medium height, and wears his hair “brown and straight, parted on one side” (2).

Though he is Edna’s husband, Léonce fails to understand Edna’s dreams to become independent and free-willed. Waking her up in the middle of the night to tell of his daily fortunes, he is too self-absorbed into his own affairs to take heed of her welfare and wants in life. He poses as the typical Creole man expected to be the provider of the family; in fact, he builds his relationships with his children and wife solely on material, giving his children bon-bons instead of spending time with them, as well as buying Edna’s love with lavish jewelry. His concern for maintaining a strong family dynamic on the outside prevents him from connecting with Edna on an emotional level on the inside. Declaring that Edna’s newly self-sufficient behavior is “odd” and is “not like herself,” he proves ignorant in realizing that her conforming role as wife is not her true self at all, and that she could not be any further from the preconception of her as a doting Creole woman (100). Despite his broken emotional connection to Edna, he loves her and treats her with respect and affection; what drives Edna away from him, however, is his concern for appearances and his inability to stop following the norms of Creole society.

  • Madame Adèle Ratignolle –

In contrast to Edna’s nonconformist, enlivened self at the end of the novel, Adéle is the embodiment of the ideal Creole woman. Possessing the “more feminine and matronly figure” over Edna’s “long, clean, and symmetrical” body, Adéle immediately comes off as a motherly individual living up to the maternal duties expected of her to follow (21). She places her children and husband at the center of life, dedicating her day to cook and clean all for them. With such domestic activities pervading her time and thus life, she proves selfless in chasing down any individual dreams she may have, and instead doing whatever it takes to please her family. Such a mindset comes in complete contrast to the self-centered goals and behavior Edna exudes as she returns home to New Orleans, ignoring her household duties as well as the welfare of her husband and sons. Constantly reminding Edna of the consequences of her independence and to “think of the children,” she poses as a follower to society’s expectations as the submissive wife, obedient to man’s will (170). The more she attempts to sway Edna’s willpower, however, the more she drives Edna away from convention and towards nonconformity. Seeing Adéle’s lack of a dominant voice in her marriage, as well as her grueling birth, furthers Edna’s realization that such a life is not hers to live, and that she wants to be free from these motherly responsibilities. Adéle thus serves as a foil to Edna, whose domesticated, obedient self emphasizes the intensity of Edna’s growing change from passive housewife to a fiery, self-sufficient woman.

  • Mademoiselle Reisz –

Mademoiselle Reisz despises the society and its expectations that Adéle is obedient to and, instead, is a peculiar woman free of social restraint. A “disagreeable little woman…who quarreled with almost everyone,” Reisz is an older woman living alone without a husband or children, whose assertiveness causes the strict Creole society to reject her (37). She is unconventional in her attitude and life, which poses as a welcoming thread to the gradually independent-minded Edna. The fact that Reisz dedicates her life to piano playing inspires Edna to follow her passion of art with the same zeal Reisz exudes. Unlike the Farival twins, who play piano because society expects them to, Reisz does it at her own will, out of her own passion for such a hobby. As her piano playing suggests, she lives according to what she wants and not what others or society wants her to do. With Edna as the only character deeply moved by Reisz’s playing, Reisz helps Edna in realizing that she, too, should live spontaneously according to the desires and passions that drive her. The rebellious, eccentric Reisz therefore serves as a foil to the docile Adéle that emphasizes Edna’s awakening into self-sufficiency; the less time she spends with Adéle completing her household tasks, the more she is driven into Reisz’s free-willed, defiant arms. Independent and bold, Mademoiselle Reisz acts as the embodiment of everything Edna strives to become.

  • Robert Lebrun –

Robert plays a significant role in igniting Edna’s sexual and mental awakening. Openly flirting with her, he stirs in her the carefree nature and young love that she once felt as a youth. His vivacious nature drives Edna to break down her wall of reserve that society has placed on her, and live freely and spontaneously. Though Robert, according to Adèle, speaks with “about as little reflection” as expected “from…children,” he proves serious in his feelings towards Edna (30). Unable to “tell [Edna] that he had penetrated her mood and understood,” he establishes his sensitivity in listening to Edna’s every thought and takes her seriously as an increasingly independent woman (44). Robert’s tender behavior towards Edna provides her with the hope that she can find true, passionate love with Robert as her soul mate. With him suddenly leaving Grand Isle, Robert’s zealous feelings towards Edna is illustrated, as he hopes that his departure will allow him the time to control the intensity of his love for her. When he returns to New Orleans, however he admits to Edna his dream for her to leave Léonce and become his wife. Through such a declaration, Robert loses the cowardice he previously expressed in shying away from his love, and now demonstrates his bold nature in revealing his true feelings and dreams for Edna and him. No matter how strong his lust and passion for her are, Robert remains a conformist to the rules and expectations of Creole society. Leaving with the note declaring, “I love you. Goodby—because I love you,” he realizes the unrealistic nature of his dreams and the fact that Edna is a married woman, thus completely removing himself from her life (172). Robert loses the spirited personality so different from other Creole that he once exhibited and, with his loyalty to convention, proves that he is not so different from the men of the time—men who stick to expectations and follow what is deemed acceptable. Through Robert’s ultimate nature as the typical Creole man, Edna realizes the failure of her dreams and the extent of her loneliness, despite how independent and free-willed she has become.

  • Victor Lebrun –

In contrast to his older brother Robert, Victor does not have the ability to settle down because of his heavily flirtatious nature. When Edna returns to Grand Isle before she commits suicide, Victor temporarily removes himself from his typical self-centeredness and ignorance as he notices how different Edna looks, although he is unable to point out what exactly is different about her.

  • Alcée Arobin –

Like Victor Lebrun, Alcée is an extremely flirtatious man who regularly associates himself with married women. With his manner inviting “easy confidence, “ he takes solace in wining over the adoration of passive, dependent women as a way to exert his power in toying with their feelings (117). Edna, however, proves different from the other women he once associated with. Looking “up at her as she mounted [the ladder] with her face half turned to him,” Alcée loses his dominating persona over woman and, instead, proves his dependent nature in waiting on Edna’s moods for the scheduling of their next date (132). Rather than as a potential soul mate, Alcée solely acts as a pawn for Edna to control her emotions and release her sexual urges. Through Alcée, Edna exerts her growing domination and voice over men, thus aiding her in her sexual and mental awakening.

  • Doctor Mandelet –

Doctor Mandelet is the Pontelliers’ family friend and physician. He is a very knowledgeable and insightful man and is suspicious of Edna’s lack of pleasure and joy in her designated role as a housewife and doting mother. He understands how oppressed she feels, and offers her genuine advice in fear of the consequences her independence might bring.

  • Colonel-

The Colonel, or Edna’s father, is a strict protestant who believes that a man should control his wife. He wears padded uniforms, creating a strong and composed façade, and does not show much affection, especially to Edna. He has a gambling and drinking issue and it is even hinted at that he was the cause of his wife’s death.