The Awakening Kate Chopin A womans sexual and

The Awakening Kate Chopin A woman’s sexual and spiritual rebirth Born again or born? 15 March 2005

Sexual & Spiritual (Re? )Birth • The Awakening (1899, more than a century ago, described as “sordid” and “immoral” by reviews). See Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening http: //www. pbs. org/katechopin/ – Awakened from what? – Wedlock = Deadlock, at least for Edna – Edna: young, beautiful, wife (and well married, too), mother – Yet she is unhappy & unfulfilled, and desires liberation from a cage of bourgeois matrimony

Edna’s Awakening • Chopin’s commentary: “Having a group of people at my disposal, I thought it might be entertaining (to myself) to throw them together a see what would happen. I never dreamed of Mrs. Pontellier making such a mess of things and working out her own damnation as she did. If I had the slightest intimation of such a thing I would have excluded her from the company. But when I found out what she was up to, the play was half over and it was then too late. ”

Edna’s Awakening • Consider Chopin’s remark in light of Emile Zola’s le roman experimental or the ideal of the naturalist stated as the selection of truthful instances subjected to laboratory conditions in a novel, where the hypotheses of the author about the nature and operation of the fores that work upon man can be put to the test.

Edna’s Awakening, its symbols & its metaphors • Call of the sea (chap. III, p. 699 -700) • Passions are aroused – “you are the only one worth playing for”(Mademoiselle Reisz to Edna) – Bathing (swimming) at midnight (IX, 714) – Robert: “he did not lead the way, however, he directed the way” (X, 714) • Edna learning to swim, determined to inhabit her physical self, to value it, luxuriate in its sinews and strengths (X, 714 -715) • Turning her face seaward. . . a quick vision of death smote her soul (715)

Edna’s Awakening, its symbols & its metaphors • Expected to answer husband’s request, “unthinkingly, ” as befits the “daily treadmill of life” • “I can’t permit you to stay out here all night” • Awakening gradually, as if from a dream (XI, 717718) • NOT a mother-woman (IV, 701) – Idolizing her children – Worshipping her husband – Esteeming it a holy privilege to efface herself as an individual and grow wings as ministering angels

Edna’s Awakening, its symbols & its metaphors • Edna (re)birthing herself (chap. XIII, 720 -723) – Revisionary mythmaking again: this time of Sleeping Beauty – Oppression of church service – Madame Antoine’s cot – Edna bathing herself, sleeping lightly at first (721) – AWAKENING, “with the conviction that she had slept long and soundly” – Hunger (722), eating bread & wine

Edna’s Awakening -- checklist for review • Women & Art – “I am becoming an artist” (XXI, 740) • Women & Thinking – “pull myself together for a while and think--try to determine what character of woman I am” – Imagery of “bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice” (XXVII, 754) – Edna seeming like a child, acting without thinking (XXXIII, 763) • Law of Society – “hair must be parted and brushed” (IV, 701) – Codes of society (XXVII, 754)