Deconstruction: The Awakening

This post, as with all literary analysis, will contain spoilers if you have not read the story.  The novella is available online through the Gutenberg Project. –Tyler

In The Awakening, Kate Chopin paints a masterpiece of the Creole culture, and one woman’s struggle to survive in it. Edna Pontellier, the story’s protagonist, undergoes an awakening. She is transformed from the confused, soft, delicate, little flower of LeoncePontellier into an independent, artistic, free woman of the world. Almost. Edna, even when she asserted her freedom, was powerless, unable to overcome her culture. In her desperation, she takes the only action she feels that she has left: She swims way out into the ocean to drown. Her suicide depicts the hopelessness of the whole struggle, of her inescapable powerlessness. What if, however, Edna wasn’t so powerless after all? Edna’s position as a woman afforded her great power, not a dearth of it. She held sway over men more than she was aware, and her suicide was a rash decision, which ultimately made Edna her own greatest foil. Chopin goes to great lengths to impress upon her audience the stark hopelessness of the woman of that culture, but the text unravels around the assumed helplessness of women, showing Edna to be, in fact, a woman of great power, even if she never realizes it.

The Awakening is really told in three parts. The first details the, ostensibly, sleeping Edna Pontellier. She is quiet, submissive, if a little lost in the Creole culture in which she’s found herself. She has within her “[a]n indescribable oppression, which…” sets as early as the third chapter the tone of her hopelessness and her powerlessness. The oppression she felt was involuntary, a result of her husband’s reproach of her “habitual neglect of the children,” (8). She was supposed to be, according to her culture, the quintessential “mother-woman,” who “idolized [her] children, worshiped [her] husband, and esteem[es] it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals…” (10). The whole of the culture told her she was powerless, but at the same time, Chopin tells us that Mr. Pontellier is discouraged that his wife, “the sole object of his existence,” sometimes failed to pay the utmost attention to him. Traditionally, the reading of that passage places Edna no higher than an esteemed possession (Pokin), especially in light of Leonce’shaving looked at her like “one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage.” Leonce is merely making an observation on her appearance, and as such, an appraising look is certainly not inappropriate. If Leonce is discouraged by her inattention, he cannot really view her as a piece of furniture or property. One cannot reasonably expect property to be attentive, as it just exists. If that is the case, Leonce cannot think that way about his wife.

As for being the “sole object of his existence,” Edna, then, holds an extremely powerful position in regard to Leonce. Rather than being merely an esteemed possession, she is the very anchor to Leonce’s existence, and without her, his very self would be in jeopardy. Edna has much more power than she thinks she does, especially over the men in her life, who were supposed to be the objects of her worship and adoration. It seems the tables could easily be turned, and Edna could be the object of such adoration, but she just doesnot know it.

Next, we see the awakened Edna Pontellier. During Edna’s awakened period, the narrator of the story grasps the power that Edna really has. Chapter XXXVI contains the small, but in no way insignificant paragraph around which the whole of the story deconstructs. The narrator says, “Her seductive voice, together with his great love for her, had enthralled his senses, had deprived him of every impulse but the longing to hold her and keep her.” Even with just the power of femininity, Edna had Robert, as it states, enthralled. She holds a lot of power over the men in her life. In light of this passage, Edna’s importance in Leonce’s life is made even clearer. The real problem, though, is Edna doesn’t realize her power. She doesn’t realize the sway she holds over men through her femininity, and as a result, she endures undue and ultimately meaningless feelings of oppression. She lives her life in constant unhappiness because she’s trapped in her situation, but in reality, she is not trapped at all; she just does not know what power she holds.

The final part of the story is Edna’s refusal to recognize her power and her subsequent suicide. She becomes so disgusted with her life that she swims as far out into the ocean as possible and drowns there. She threw away any power that she may have held, in favor of death. That teaches nothing and holds no significant meaning to life or to anything else. She was merely another person who gave up on what she saw as an impossible situation. She was not as powerless as she thought she was, nor was she as powerless as Chopin would make her out to be, but she gave up anyways. This is not so much a story about the plight of women, then;rather, the story is an exercise in futility.

Another aspect of the story which raises questions of the validity of its meaning is the contradictory advice that Edna receives from Mms. Reisz and Mrs. Ratignolle. On the one hand, Madame Ratignolle speaks of duty and the proper place of a Creole wife, but on the other hand, Mme. Reisz tells Edna that she should follow her dreams, and express herself. This inner struggle is key to the progression of the novel as Edna begins to follow the latter piece of advice instead of the former. Of course, Edna cannot know the result of choosing one over the other; however, the reader is able to glean the lesson: the situation is utter hopelessness. The choice, then, is merely semantic. If she stays with Leonce, she is stuck with a life of dissatisfaction, oppression, and desperation. If she goes out on her own to live her life of freedom and art, she is doomed to poverty and ostracism, and ultimately, death. The choice presented is a false dichotomy, and as such, the very notion of “choice” is meaningless.
The choice is meaningless because the very concepts that Mrs. Ratignolle and Mms. Reisz are trying to extol upon Edna are so indefinable that they really say nothing at all. “Duty” and “art” are dynamic and fluid terms and as such, cannot impart any universal truths. Edna Pontellier died for the sake of nothing.

Even if Edna held no power but her femininity, she still had control over her own life. Even though the choice between oppression and death is meaningless, the actual act of committing suicide shows a great force of power. The choice to live or die is entirely hers, and no one can take that away. The novel portrays her suicide as being an act of desperation, of hopelessness, of giving into her powerlessness. In actuality, that’s the greatest amount of power a person can have. She had the power over life and death, and she exercised that power. While her death may have been for a meaningless cause, it still shows a great amount of power in her life, which contradicts the privileged message of the text.

If the story was supposed to impart the “truth” of the hopeless plight of the women of the Creole culture, it has failed. The story, through its ambiguities and contradictory language, has, in fact, shown how empowered Edna Pontellier was, not how oppressed and helpless she was. Her power lay in her womanhood, she just never realized it. She was also led astray by two women who filled her head with notions of “duty” and “art,” and while the art was more appealing, neither of them held any real meaning. Who can define art, beauty, freedom, duty, or oppression, for that matter? The standards of all of these words have changed repeatedly though history, and what force makes them solid, concrete now? Cannot art be the proper rearing of one’s children? Cannot oppression be living a life alone? Cannot duty be doing what’s best for one’s self? The language is ambiguous, and the story contradicts its own purported meaning by giving Edna Pontellier immense power over her life. In the end, The Awakening says nothing because its foundation is too shaky to support the weight of any real truth.