“The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant, was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded.”
This is how Kate Chopin describes the climactic “awakening” that her principle character, Edna Pontellier, has while on a summer vacation at a resort on Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico. Chopin’s novel was published in 1899 and received widespread criticism in the United States. Such criticism was aimed at two aspects of the work—the book presents an illicit affair in morally relativist terms, and Edna Pontellier modeled an independent, proto-feminist woman which was largely shunned in the Victorian codes of nineteenth century America. In other words, Chopin’s novel was problematic because it was a bad influence. Critics thought that Chopin might convince women to “liberate themselves,” to borrow later feminist terminology, and reject motherhood, the primacy of men, and upset the very stark gender norms of Victorian America.
Bearing that criticism in mind, I found that critics were probably warranted to fear that Chopin’s novel would have influence on readers, because the potential appeal of her novel, especially to women of the early twentieth century, was due to the realism of Edna Pontellier. Readers could relate…easily. In the twenty-first century, men and women alike would probably find much to appreciate in Chopin’s rendering of tortured love and toxic relationships. If you are a fan of music by Lauv’s numerous odes to tortured and unrequited love, then you will almost certainly find something memorable in this novel. So, what is this novel about?
Edna married a successful creole businessman out of New Orleans named Leonce Pontellier and had two children, Etienne and Raoul, with him. She lives what most would consider an upper class lifestyle. The family vacations in the summer months at Grand Isle, and returns to New Orleans in the Fall to a luxurious estate, where Edna is the hostess to the movers and shakers of New Orleans. For years, Edna has acclimated herself to this lifestyle and lived in a sort of automatic fashion from day-to-day. She tends to the children, takes care of the household, and manages a set of servants who attend to her and the children in cleaning, cooking, and child rearing. Picturesque, no?
The problem occurs when Edna is twenty-eight years old and visits the family vacation home at Grand Isle. Here is where the narrative begins. Edna takes up a friendship with Robert Lebrun, only a couple of years her junior. Robert’s family also vacations at Grand Isle in the summers, and he has become the de facto patriarch of the Lebrun family after his father’s untimely death. Robert is a known quantity among the elite women who visit Grand Isle—he is considered an upstanding young man and although he spends much of his time escorting married women to and fro, his character and integrity by all accounts are impeccable. However, as Edna spends more time with Robert during those summer months, both glean that they are falling in love with one another.
Edna begins to ruminate on what she finds attractive about Robert and what she finds unappealing about her husband, Leonce. Leonce is overbearing, patriarchal, misogynistic, and inattentive to her needs. Her husband rarely takes time to have a conversation with her and instead spends much of his time at the club playing billiards with men he hopes will grant him favorable business deals and partnerships. While home, Leonce castigates Edna for failing to be a good mother and homemaker. By comparison, Robert seems to take immense interest in what Edna cares about, whether that is her foray into art and sketching, or her opinions about a range of topics. Furthermore, Robert seems more attentive to her needs and selflessly willing to take care of her. This is where the relativistic nature of the novel comes into play—a romantic affair is morally wrong; however, Chopin makes a compelling case that in this specific case, given the circumstances Edna endures, her decisions regarding Robert (and also one other male suitor) seem justified. The reader begins to root for the immoral adulteress. This is precisely why The Awakening was considered a book worth burning in 1899.
Subsequently, Edna has an “awakening” and changes dramatically in the novel. For her entire life, Edna has considered herself “possessed” by Leonce and beholden to his commands or the children’s demands. She begins to understand that the life she is leading was not really the one she chose. She married because she was told she ought to. She married Leonce because he was favorable to her father. There was little of the romantic involved in this courtship and all the convenience of maintaining one’s socioeconomic status in life. Now, Edna finds that the decisions she made with haste in her youth have saddled her with incredible burdens in the present. Now, she is married to a man who cares little really for her needs, thoughts, or desires. In other words, she is taken for granted as another form of property possessed by her husband much like a home. Meanwhile, just beyond this glass enclosure she can all but touch what she believes is true, unmitigated, and unabashed love with a kindred spirit: Robert.
This tortured love continues for much of the novel as Robert first exits to Mexico on a business venture, then returns to New Orleans where he confesses his love to Edna, and then as he again leaves the scene. At one point, Robert exclaims that his mind is torn asunder by his love for Edna and her inability to reciprocate due to her marriage: “You seem to be forcing me into disclosures which can result in nothing; as if you would have me bare a wound for the pleasure of looking at it, without the intention or power of healing it.” There’s no possibility here for these two to ever be “together,” given the social strictures of New Orleans and Creole society during the time. Robert will lose all reputation as an honorable man and Edna will go against every conceivable social convention surrounding motherhood.
In the end, Edna returns to Grand Isle where her awakening began. She remains tortured by an impossible love. She feels trapped in a loveless marriage and overwhelmed by the responsibility of two children—a family who commands ownership of her in all conceivable ways. “I would give up the inessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children,” Edna remarks early in the novel, “but I wouldn’t give myself.” In other words, Edna is willing to make sacrifices for her children and her husband, but the idea that she can invalidate herself, her identity, and her separateness as a human being, is impossible. Despondent and resigned, Edna swims as far out as she can into the Gulf of Mexico at Grand Isle and treads water until her muscles fail and she drowns. In her final moments, her mind is transported back to her childhood when she was a young girl pining over a handsome cavalryman come to call on another lady.
This is a powerful story that can still resonate with many readers today, and was certainly radical in its presentation of illicit love during the time of its publication. It is little wonder why Edna Pontellier became a model for the early feminist movement in the twentieth century.
