The Awakening
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The Awakening is the name of an 1899 novel by Kate Chopin and a 1980 sculpture by J. Seward Johnson, Jr..
Kate Chopin's The Awakening examines the smothering effects of late 19th-century social structures upon a woman whose simple desire is to fulfill her own potential and live her own life. It is a story of both courage and defeat, lyrically written and boldly poignant. Written in 1899, it received only one printing, probably due to its controversial content, and was not rediscovered by the literary community until 1969. Since then, it has become a part of the canon of American literature.
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Primary characters
Edna Pontellier
Edna Pontellier is the 28-year old wife of Leonce Pontellier, a successful New Orleans businessman. She is richly beautiful. Edna is the only character in the novel to undergo a significant change in perception. She develops by dropping the pretense of being a "model wife" in the New Orleans Creole community and liberating her inner emotions and artistic ambitions. The other characters tend to consider Edna as a flawed wife (mother-woman), and she herself denies the idea that she should conform to the community standard of wifehood/motherhood. Whether she is a success or a failure in her new role has been the debate of many literary critics over recent decades.
Leonce Pontellier
Leonce Pontellier is a rather stuffy, traditional, 40-year-old male member of the New Orleans Creole community. As a highly successful business man, he expects his wife, Edna, to fulfill the role of perfect wife, mother, and socialite. Indeed, he views Edna as a part of his personal property. In his plans to counter Edna's bid for freedom, he reveals himself to be quite clever, though certainly unfeeling.
Robert Lebrun
Robert Lebrun is young, romantic, intelligent, and conservative. Robert has an all-consuming love for Edna, but is unable to express these true feelings, since she is a married woman.
Alcee Arobin
Alcee Arobin is a womanizer who pursues Edna Pontellier in a casual relationship that stimulates Edna's awareness of her own sexuality. He is fundamentally shallow and self-centered.
Adele Ratignolle
Adele Ratignolle, an acquaintance of Edna Pontellier's, is Edna's foil, or opposite. Adele lives to serve her husband and children, and dares not dream of anything else. Her attempts to counsel Edna ultimately fail.
Mademoiselle Reisz
Independent, bitter, and unattached to anyone, Mademoiselle Reisz is an accomplished pianist whose playing can move Edna Pontellier to tears. She comes to play the role of go-between for Edna and Robert Lebrun's relationship, and offers no judgment. Content with her own life, she becomes a role model for Edna in some ways.
Doctor Mandelet
As the Pontellier family's doctor, Mandelet is perhaps the only person in the book who has the potential to understand Edna's awakening to her inner self, but the opportunity is missed.
Plot summary
Edna Pontellier, the wife of a successful New Orleans business man and the mother of two, vacations with her family at a seaside resort. She spends a lot of time with Robert Lebrun, a romantic young man who has decided to attach himself to Edna for the summer. After many intimate conversations, boating excursions, and moonlight walks, they both realize that they are developing romantic feelings for each other. Edna realizes that there is much within herself that has remained dormant throughout her adult life.
When vacation ends and the Pontelliers return to New Orleans, Edna frees herself from the trappings of her old life, including her social position, her role as a mother, and her role as a wife. Moving out of her husband's house, she establishes herself in a cottage and hopes that Robert Lebrun will return soon from an extended business trip.
Upon Robert's return, Edna discovers that he is unable to come to grips with her newfound freedom. Indeed, he seems hopelessly bound by the traditional values of the French Creole community. Simultaneously, she discovers that her husband has set in motion a plan that will essentially force her to move back into his house.
Edna thereupon returns to the seaside resort in the off season. She makes arrangements for a lunch to take with her to the beach, and carries along a towel for drying off as well. Unable to resist the lure of the water, she swims out as far as she can and, having exhausted herself, drowns. Most readers interpret this final passage as a deliberate attempt at suicide.
Themes
In literature, a theme is what an author has to say regarding a broadly relevant topic. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin expresses the following:
- Women as Property. "The Awakening" chooses a time period and culture which regards women as the property of their spouses. This is exemplified at every turn, from Leonce Pontellier's straightforward comments, to the discussion of the topic by the narrator.
- Hopelessness and the Power to Act. Being property the protagonist is left powerless, feeding a sense of despondancy and hoplessness. This state of being is eventually nullified by a desperate act of defiance. Death nullifies the physical bodies emotional states.
- The Call of Art. Superficially, art entertains, exposes one to beauty, and provides escape. Experienced more deeply, however, art calls the individual to migrate into its realm; it is "the call of the wild". Edna's evolving response to Mademoiselle Reisz's music illustrates this along with her developing desire to become an artist in her own mind.
- Isolation versus Solitude. In The Awakening, society uses isolation as punishment for non-conformity, but the isolated individual can nullify isolation by embracing solitude. Isolation is externally imposed; solitude is internally embraced.
- The Demands of Society versus the Needs of Individuals. Society, in order to cohere, must impose certain expectations upon its members who are motivated to comply through economic and social rewards. Some individuals may find fulfillment in meeting society's expectations (e.g., Adele Ratignolle), but some, like Edna Pontellier, cannot. Society often sees this as rebellion, failure, and a general character flaw, as well as a threat to its own survival, and so refuses to accommodate such behavior.
- The Purity of Sexual and Artistic Desire. In Edna, independent sexual and artistic desire become the highest good. Traditional values, especially those imposed upon women, are swept aside.
- The Need to Be Taken Seriously. Leonce Pontellier dismisses Edna's aspirations as frivolous and is confident of his own power to force her to conform. To Edna, this is painful, frustrating, and unacceptable. Her need to be taken seriously transcends her obligations to those who will not take her seriously. Robert Lebrun, while initially seeming to take Edna seriously, ultimately shows every indication of being no different than Leonce.
- Escape From Control. For Edna, escape from control by others transcends the value of safety. If she had been a prisoner in a jail, she would probably have preferred being shot in the act of escape to rotting in a cell. Worse things can happen to a person than death.
- Motherhood versus Self-Determination Edna is concerned about the way she wants to be determined by herself and the moral standards which a family woman is expected by society caring for her children and her husband. It is a psychological tension in her "moral conscience".
Critical reception
Immediately after its release, reviewers frequently denounced the "unwholesome" content of this book, while simultaneously acknowledging that the writing style was outstanding. One critic remarked that he was well satisfied with Edna's death at the end. The harsh reaction to the book probably was the determining factor in the publisher's decision to stop publication after only a single printing.
Since 1969, when it was "rediscovered," the book has been often praised for its treatment of women's issues, and for its magnificent lyrical style. It is now a mainstay in the canon of American literature.
References
- Suzanne D. Green, An overview of The Awakening, in Exploring Novels, Gale, 1998.
- "The Awakening" in Novels for Students, Vol. 3, Gale Research, 1998.
- Margo Culley (Ed.) (1994). The Awakening: An Authoritative Text, Biographical and Historical Contexts, Criticism (2nd ed.) A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-96057-9.