Symbolism In The Awakening
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In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna chooses not to fill her family’s expectations. As she takes her final steps into the sea she thinks to herself: “they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul” (655). Edna treasures her independence and freedom, so she chooses death over familial oppression. However her transformational journey leads to more than the rejection of her self-sacrificing familial roles as wife and mother also her death.
We first meet Edna on her way back from a swim with Robert Lebrun, as Chopin begins to establish Edna’s burgeoning transformation in the context of her relationship with Robert and to the sea. While Robert and Edna’s relationship develops, Edna becomes increasingly dissatisfied with her marriage to Lĩonce Pontellier and her traditional roles as wife and mother to her two children, Rauol and Etienne. Edna learns to swim, takes up painting, befriends Madame Reisz, an eccentric old woman that plays the piano, and moves into her own house. After Robert leaves for Mexico, she engages in an affair with Alceĩ Arobin, until Robert returns and they affirm their love for one another. However, Robert, afraid of the social repercussions of their affair, leaves town. As a result of losing Robert, failing to find fulfillment in her life without a man, and failing to reconcile her roles as a good and faithful wife and mother while becoming an artist and falling in love, Edna commits suicide by drowning herself in the sea.
The sea, or green-world token is present throughout the novel as Edna engages in her innermost thoughts and her relationship with Robert, the green-world lover. Although Edna engages in the transformational journey to the point of changing her behavior, she is not happy with the results. She can find no happy medium between being the model wife and mother that her friend, Madame Ratignolle represents and the independent artist that Madame Reisz represents, while pursuing her relationship with Robert and staying true to herself.
From the beginning of the story, the reader is alerted to the fact that Edna is experiencing an inner struggle to reconcile her relationships with Mr. Pontellier, Robert, and herself. When Edna comes back from her swim with Robert, Mr. Pontellier criticizes her; “What folly! to bathe at such an hour in such heat!” (Chopin 522). From the outset, Mr. Pontellier is opposed to the engagement with the water that Robert and Edna share. He is neither cognizant of the fact that Edna and Robert are falling in love, nor is he supportive of Edna’s transformation.
Later on in the story after Edna has taken up painting and refuses to receive callers, Mr. Pontellier calls up his friend, Dr. Mandelet to evaluate Edna’s mental state. Mr. Pontellier’s action is indicative of the women artist’s position in society at the time, what Virginia Woolf refers to as the “crazy woman in the attic.” During the late 1800’s, women that pursued their lives independently were thought of as insane. Madame Reisz represents this stereotype in the novel as the single, eccentric, piano-playing, abrasive old woman who encourages Edna to pursue her art. In contrast, Madame Ratignolle represents the ideal woman in society, a dedicated wife and mother, beautiful, graceful, and of a delicate disposition. Edna falls in the middle of these two extremes as a wife and mother who wishes to pursue her artwork and live independently. Ultimately, Edna’s inability to create a life for herself between those of Madame Reisz and Madame Ratignolle results in her failure of individuation.
The pressure that Edna feels to be a good wife and mother is apparent after a spat between Edna and Mr. Pontellier during which Mr. Pontellier insists that their son Raoul has a fever and reproaches Edna for not looking after the children. Edna goes out to her front porch to cry. It is after midnight, and Chopin writes, “There was no sound abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the top of a water-oak, and the everlasting voice of the sea, that was not uplifted at that soft hour (526).” Chopin notes the sea during Edna’s hour of sadness because the presence of the sea, the green-world token, helps Edna “cross the threshold of her adventure” by provoking her innermost reflections (139):
She could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life. They seemed never before to have weighed much against the abundance of her husband’s kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit and self-understood.
An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul’s summer day. (527)
In addition to the sea, water imagery in the form of tears and mist are present in the scene, which emphasize Edna’s feelings of unhappiness. Edna is unhappy because of her unsatisfactory relationship with her husband, and inner turmoil.
This scene can also be thought of as phase one of Annis Pratt’s transformational journey, which consists of “an acute consciousness of the world of the ego and of a consequent turning away from societal norms,” or “a splitting off from family, husbands, or lovers” (139). Indeed, Edna is first prompted to inward reflections after fighting with her husband.
Also note the water imagery, which clearly connects Edna and Robert. ““Are you going bathing?” asked Robert of Mrs. Pontellier. It was not so much a question as a reminder” (534). When Edna begins to refuse, Robert insists, “You mustn’t miss your bath. Come on. The water must be delicious; it will not hurt you. Come” (534). Robert seems to be coaxing Edna to take what Pratt calls, the “plunge into the unconscious” (141). Edna’s inner dialogues by the water also allude to the plunge, which occurs during the final stage of the rebirth and transformational journey wherein the protagonist encounters her “’shadow,’ the self-destructive potential manifest in the personal realm as social rebellion” (Pratt 141). We find later on in the story that Edna’s affair with Robert, among other things, becomes a form of social rebellion because it challenges the social more of marriage and the Victorian ideal of female chastity.