ASSIGNMENT 13:
Kate Chopin, The Awakening (pt. 3)

Before leaving her husband's house for the cottage next door, Edna Pontellier devises an elaborate dinner party. With Leonce away on "business" in New York, her children safely in the hands of in-laws, and her affair with Arobin having reached its climax and inevitable demise, Edna invites a "select" group of friends to join her for a birthday celebration that will also ceremonially celebrate the separation from her husband. The details of that scene are worth reading closely.

Edna presides over the table dressed in gold satin and lace. The table itself is decked in "pale yellow satin," wax candles in a "massive brass candelabra," with "full, fragrant roses" heaped everywhere. She has discarded the "ordinary stiff dining chairs" and replaced them with overstuffed and "commodious" sofas and chairs drawn from around the house. There are cocktails of brightest crimson ("like a garnet gem") before each guest. In the midst of this splendor, one of the dinner guests even weaves a pagan garland of roses to drape over the young man sitting beside Edna. Presiding over this regal, red-and-gold setting, Edna seems to be nothing less than a mythical goddess (initially, Chopin tells us, there had even been twelve guests invited; and though-one had to decline, the sense that Edna is surrounded by disciples at a kind of last supper is a clear to be drawn from the scene).

Nevertheless, amidst this splendor Edna feels the "old ennui overtaking her . . . a chill breath that seemed to issue from some fast cavern wherein discords wailed." Why? Amidst this great hedonistic feast, why is it that a gloom overwhelms the novel's protagonist? Why does the merriment tip over into unexplained morbidity? Why does Edna seem both powerful and vulnerable at the same time?

Some critics have argued that the morbidity in Edna's mood at this point is an important signpost, indicating Chopin's theme in its strongest form. They read The Awakening as a critique of Victorian myths of love, and argue that Edna has over-idealized passionate love and romantic art. She recognizes her over-estimation of love and art at this moment, and thus begins the seemingly inevitable progress towards her death at the novel's end. Other critics have argued that Edna's behavior in this scene is typical of her over-reliance on fantasy, that she has failed to realistically confront the reality of what oppresses her creativity, failed to realistically challenge the roles set aside for women and mothers, and so lapsed into hedonistic fantasies where she becomes a kind of goddess. These critics say that Edna thus represents the fate of any woman who would try to claim for herself a life of erotic, artistic, and spiritual freedom beyond the conventions of a stiff-backed society. The Edna Pontellier they see is like a smarter, more mature, cultivated, and self-possessed Daisy Miller; but a woman who still meets much the same fate.

Another important and contentious issue involves Edna's death, in the concluding chapter. Is it a suicide? Or is she in fact still just swimming, although perhaps fatally, out to sea, at novel's end? It's certain that Chopin does not narrate Edna's death, so that any assertions by critical readers will necessarily be projected from evidence in the text, in concert with their understanding of the kind of novel Chopin writes. To be concise: If we read The Awakening as a mostly realistic fiction, in which a protagonist, motivated by natural "drives" over which she has limited control, must confront the rigid barriers of law and morality, then Edna's death--a suicide--will be the reading that's more or less demanded by conventions of realism. If, on the other hand, we read The Awakening as a novel heavily tinged with elements of myth and fantasy, seen for example at Cheniere Caminada and at the dinner party scene when Edna looks for all the world like a goddess, then her seemingly fatal swim might instead be emblematic of her transition, or her metamorphosis, into another domain--one simply beyond the familiar and limiting world Chopin has constructed.

Reading Assignment

1. Kate Chopin, The Awakening (pp. 535-558).

Writing Assignment

Your assignment for this concluding exercise on The Awakening is to write an essay of about 2,000 words, on one of the following topics. Your essay should have a clearly stated thesis, which is developed in a well organized, well supported discussion. Your essay should take care to defend and expand on its thesis by looking at several scenes, or sections of narration, or related passages, in some detail. Your essay should also be titled, and it should use an appropriate form of parenthetical documentation to indicate the sources of any quoted material.

1. Edna Pontellier is caught in the contradictions of how others see her, and how she sees herself. Analyze several incidents where this difference becomes apparent, and use those analyses to argue for a reading of the novel's conclusion. Is it a suicide, or an act of self-actualization--an "awakening"?
2. Compare and contrast the character of Daisy Miller, in James's novel, with Edna Pontellier. In particular, pay close attention to the ways that each character responds to the tight restrictions placed on them by society. How are they similar, yet different? Use these comparisons to discuss the endings of both novels: Daisy's death, Edna's apparently fatal swim.

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