Kate Chopin’s The Awakening—“Dangerously Immersed in Ourselves”

By Karen E.B. Elliott

I remember the first time I read this book.  It was back in college was I was earning my B.A. at a liberal arts, secular school.  I loved the novel.  It intrigued me.  Perhaps it was because I identified with the main character as much as I could at the time; however, I certainly wasn’t married yet.  I had not been pregnant nor had children to care for.  As a woman I was allowed to vote and express basically any opinion I had as a woman. But exactly like the main character, I was white;  I was raised with privilege in zipcodes my parents chose carefully in which to live in order to guarantee me of sustaining that privilege.  So in that case, I complete “got” Kate Chopin’s main character.

I can recall my male professor’s interpretation of the ending (which I quickly came to learn is mostly everyone’s interpretation), and it just didn’t sit well with me. Even though I really liked him, I felt he was trying too hard—to please the women in the room—as if to say, “Hey ladies, I’m with you on this one.”  He, like many of my professors, whether male or female, were self-proclaimed feminists.  I, too, was a self-proclaimed feminist, but as a Christian.  And that’s a hard one to explain or justify to the secular cynic or faithful Christ-follower.   The interpretation of Edna’s apparent suicide (spoiler alert!) at the novel’s end appears to be read out of context in a frightening post-modern analysis of literature—where our feelings about the text (or any text) determine its meaning.

This approach raises serious questions, and any self-proclaimed intellectual would raise his or her eyebrows when anyone looks at a text in this manner.  Interestingly enough, however, this is exactly what Edna does with her own life.  Although Chopin wrote this at the turn of the 20^th century, her main character is incredibly post-modern, and more accurately, Edna is the post-modern middle to upper class American.  Whether Christian or secular, Edna represents the typical American who already has it all—everything’s going for her—but she wants more. Despite her education and wealth, she is trapped, but not by the very oppressive, anti-woman Louisiana society in which she lives—she is trapped by her inability to bow down to anyone or anything larger than herself.  It is evident as the reader travels through her consciousness that she has an acute sense of God and His presence; in fact, she admits that “the Holy Ghost [has] vouchsafed wisdom” within her youthful mind and soul, but she is seduced by her own desires to do whatever she wants, no matter who it hurts (13).

Kate Chopin’s craft and technique is nothing short of inspiring. On the surface she appears to be a transcendentalist as Edna goes to the water and within nature to find herself—to find the answers of life—but she does no transcending of any kind; in fact, Chopin turns on her reader in not-so-subtle ways.  Although at first, nature seems to “speak to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace,” and yet, when Edna enters the ocean with the intent to transcend, Chopin reminds the reader that the sea is not Edna’s native element; she had “attempted all summer to learn to swim. She had received instructions from both the men and women; in some instances even the children…A certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in the water, unless there was a hand nearby that might reach out and reassure her” (13; 27).   Chopin furthers the futility of Edna’s efforts with her strong description of the ocean, and she intentionally recycles phrases—reuses them—particularly at the novel’s end so that her reader will be reminded of what’s really happening to her character.  Like the natural elements, Chopin seduces her reader and invites them to look at nature’s veneer.  She describes the sea as swelling “lazily in broad billows,” but then as the waves ascend onto “the beach, [the] little foamy crests…coiled back like slow, white serpents” (27).  Biblically, serpent imagery only means one thing, and it’s not enlightenment; as a result of nature’s deception and therefore Edna’s self-deception, Edna gains ill-gotten confidence and “swam out alone…[and] as she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself. Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had left there. She had not gone any great distance—this is, what would have been a great distance…But to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome” (28).  Unlike some, she is not able to journey through life alone, and she senses it here but does not heed her conscience.

Also, the last part of that particular passage predicts what happens in the end—Edna dies trying to find answers within nature; and remember, this novel was written the height of Darwin’s naturalistic theories, as they were beginning to be taken seriously in culture, and moreover, this means that if we’re merely natural beings, then what Edna is doing is not merely trying to find God or reason within nature as Emerson or Thoreau might have done; Edna is going to the next humanistic and Darwinian level, and she is attempting to turn her being into her own natural state—her own godliness, and she is, therefore, her own savior.  Chopin, however, challenges this attempts, but also disguises it within the Creole, Louisiana culture, which is not by any means in tune with women either.  It’s frustrating that Wyoming, which wasn’t even a state yet, just mere territory, had already given women the right to vote; whereas, Louisiana equated women with the mentally ill in regards to contracts or business dealings, not to mention that women, upon marriage, were literally property of their husbands—like his favorite cigar or the chair where he smoked it.

Of course, these are serious issues which cannot be overlooked and play into Edna’s awareness that she is oppressed; however, unlike Mademoiselle Reisz or even Adele Ratignolle, who have managed to find their own voices in their own ways by working within the boundaries of the law, Edna frustrates many of my students.  Only a few are willing to pity poor Edna as the narrative progresses.  Although they feel that the laws are unfair, they see her as the so-called oppressed rich white woman who lives the aristocratic high-life in New Orleans, eats bons bons regularly, and get to go to the very-nice vacation island (not house) for the summer.  True, her husband is unfeeling and a little too old for her, but in a characteristically Darwinian, naturalistic manner, Edna allows her instincts (and privilege), not reason, dictate her actions, choices, and consequently, her fate. Chopin claims that Edna “fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between [she and her husband] in which fancy she was mistaken. Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her sister…to the marriage of a Catholic, and we seek no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for her husband” (18).  Here, it is evident that Edna allowed her human drive and instinct to dictate her marriage acceptance, and note the diction and syntax—it’s hard to detest Leonce, and pity Edna; after all, it was her choice, and it is clear that she had a chance to get out of the engagement.  This was no arranged marriage, and Edna, being an educated young woman, knew after she took her vows that “as the devoted wife of a man who worshipped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams”  (18). But as she grows to realize where her choice got her, she turns to self-idolatry.  She knows she made a decision which she does not want to take responsibility for. Edna begins to blame-shift and starts down a path of entitlement which eventually destroys, not liberates, her.

As a Christian, and from most faith-based worldviews, this can only lead to one place, and it’s not within the walls of a sanctuary, temple, or a state of nirvana; in fact, once Edna decides that she is going to live solely for herself, and herself only, she cannot even exist in a spiritual setting. Chopin claims that when Edna and her almost-lover Robert attend Sunday services, “a feeling of oppression and drowsiness overcame” her (35).  Consequently, she indiscreetly walks out, and when Robert went to see if she was well, he “was full of solicitude [great concern or anxiety]”…as they stood  outside “in the shadow of the church” (35).  What’s interesting here is all the connotation and symbolism.  Robert feels as Edna should, but Edna—note the spelling of her name—is trying to recreate her own Eden, but it’s obscure.  She feels drowsy (not only because it’s incredibly hot in Louisiana when they hadn’t installed air conditioning, and she is wearing long sleeves over her corset), but because she’s not open to the Holy Ghost, who she claimed earlier might have given her some kind of wisdom or reason. Now, she is on her own, but interestingly enough, her almost-lover is not.  Robert senses the path they might be headed toward, and it’s not in the Light; yes, he is definitely attracted to her, as she is to him; however, Robert knows that he must be responsible; he must live within the society in which he was born, whether he likes it or not.  He also knows that Edna is not up-for-grabs—she is married, he continually reminds her.  He resists his desire to be with her three times: the first is right after the aforementioned scene outside of the church; second, Robert leaves to gone on an extended business trip to Mexico so distance will help ease his temptations; and third, near the novel’s end, after he returns