Wakening
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Symbolism in Kate Chopins The Awakening
Kate Chopins The Awakening is a literary work full of symbolism. Birds, clothes, houses and other narrative elements are powerful symbols which add meaning to the novel and to the characters. I will analyze the most relevant symbols presented in Chopins literary work.
BIRDS
The images related to birds are the major symbolic images in the narrative from the very beginning of the novel:
“A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over:
`Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! Thats all right!” (pp3)
In The Awakening, caged birds serve as reminders of Ednas entrapment. She is caged in the roles as wife and mother; she is never expected to think for herself. Moreover, the caged birds symbolize the entrapment of the Victorian women in general. Like the parrot, the womens movements are limited by the rules of society.
In this first chapter, the parrot speaks in “a language which nobody understood” (pp3). The parrot is not able to communicate its feelings just like Edna whose feelings are difficult to understand, incomprehensible to the members of Creole society.
In contrast to caged birds, Chopin uses wild birds and the idea of flight as symbols of freedom. This symbol is shown in a vision of a bird experienced by Edna while Mademoiselle Reisz is playing the piano.
“When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him.” (pp26-27)
In this vision Edna is showing her desire for freedom, desire for escaping from her roles as wife and mother, from her husband Lйonce who keeps her in a social cage.
After these episodes, the images related to birds are absent form the narrative until the chapter 29. Following the summer on Grand Isle, where she had awakening experiences, she starts to express her desire for independence in New Orleans through her move to her own house, the pigeon house “because its so small and looks like a pigeon house” (pp 84). The nickname of the pigeon house is very significant because a pigeon house is a place where pigeons, birds that have adapted to and benefited from the human society, are kept cooped up.
In this house, Edna wants to enjoy “the feeling of freedom and independence” (pp 79), keeping only the things that she owns, “everything that she had acquired aside from his husbands bounty” (pp 84). In the end, however, the little house will not be the solution which Edna expected. While it provides her with independence and isolation, allowing her to escape from the gilded cage that Lйonces house constituted; the pigeon house becomes another cage. It represents her inability to remove herself from her former life, as her move takes her “just two steps away” (pp 79) from Lйonces house. Edna finds herself cooped again, being an exile and a prisoner at the same time.
Mademoiselle Reisz is one of the most important secondary characters of The Awakening. She provides Edna music that awakes her soul, letters from Robert and advice. She sees Edna as a bird, who is seeking to fly away from societys conventions and from her responsibilities as wife and mother. Mademoiselle warns Edna:
“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.” (pp 82)
Mademoiselle Reisz seems to know Edna. She knows that Edna will try to fly away from Creole society, but she is not certain if she will be strong enough to succeed. Mademoiselle is in many ways omniscient, warning Edna that her flight may not be successful. However, Edna does not understand Mademoiselle Reiszs advice:
“I am not thinking of any extraordinary flight. I only half comprehend her.” (pp83).
In the last scene of the novel, Chopin uses again the image of a bird, a very similar image to the one described by Mademoiselle Reisz to Edna:
“A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water”. (pp 113)
This bird embodies Ednas disillusionment as she learns that her ideals of freedom and independence are not reality in the Creole society of 19th century.
HOUSES
Edna lives in many houses in the novel: the cottages on Grand Isle, Madame Antoines on Chкniйre Caminada, Lйonces magnificent house in New Orleans and her “pigeon house”. These houses are used as symbols of the different stages that Edna undergoes through her awakening.
Grand Isle is a place of women (most men only visit it on weekends), full of symbols of domesticity, that is, tangible items that we typically associate with family and traditional values. Porches, pianos, mothers and children are props and properties of domesticity, the elements which belonged to the so-called