Realistic: The Awakening - Kate Chopin

• Published in 1899
• Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf Coast at the end of the 19th Century
• Plot centers around Edna Pontellier & her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South
• One of the earliest American novels that focuses on women's issues without concession
• Landmark of early feminism
• Precursor of American Modernist literature back of the novels blend of:
• realistic narrative
• incisive social commentary
• psychological complexity
• Prefigures works of American novelists such as William Faulkner & Earnest Hemingway
• Echoes works of contemporaries such as Edith Wharton and Henry James

Main Characters

• Edna Pontellier ~ a respectable Presbyterian from Kentucky, living in Creole society in Louisiana. She rebels against conventional expectations & discovers an identify independent from her role as a wife & mother
• Léonce Pontellier ~ Edna's husband, a successful businessman who is unaware of his wife's unhappiness
• Mademoiselle Reisz ~ Her character symbolizes what Edna could have been if she had grown old and had been independent from her family. Despite viewing Reisz fas disagreeable, Edna sees her as an inspiration to her own "awakening."
• Madame Adéle Ratignolle ~ Edna's friend, who represents the perfect 19th century woman, as she is totally devoted to her husband and children.
• Alcée Arobin ~ known for seducing married women and pursues a short-lived affair with Edna, satisfying her while her husband in away.
• Robert Lebrun ~ has a history of charming women he cannot have but finds something different with Edna and falls in love. Robert's flirting with Edna catalyzes her "awakening," and she sees him what she has been missing in her marriage.

Themes

• Solitude
• Through Edna Pontellier's journey, Kate Chopin sought to highlight the different ways that women could be in solitude: Because of
• the expectations of motherhood
• ethnicity
• marriage
• social norms
• gender
• Chopin presents Edna's autonomous separation from society & friends as individually empowering while still examining the risks & self-respecting and subsequent loneliness
• In an attempt to shed her societal role of mother & wife, Edna takes charge of her limited life and makes changes to better discover her true self.
• For example, Edna leaves her husband and moves into a house to live by herself, a controversial action since  a true woman would never leave her husband
• Although Edna's journey ultimately leads to an unsustainable solitude due to lack of societal support, "her death indicates self-possession rather than a retreat from a dilemma." She takes control over what she still has agency over: her body and herself.
• By making Edna's experiences critically central to the novel, Chopin is able to send a cautionary note about society's capacity to support women's liberation
• As shown through Edna's depressing emotional journey, isolation, and eventual suicide, Chopin claims that the social norms and traditional gender roles of the 19th century could not tolerate an independent woman.
• Chopin's The Awakening questions the value of solitude & autonomy within a society unable to positively sustain women's freedom
• Women's Independence, Desire, & Sexuality
• Feminism
• The themes of romance and death in The Awakening aid Chopin's feminist intent of illuminating the restrictive & oppressive roles of women in Victorian society.
• Edna's longing for Robert Lebrun and affair with Alcée Arobin explicitly show Edna's rejection of her prescribed roles as housewife and another as she awakens to her sexuality & sense of self.
• Edna has an emotional affair with Robert, who leaves in order to avoid shaming her in society afterwards, Edna has a physical affair with Alcée.
• Through these affairs
• Edna exercises agency outside of her marriage & experiences sexual longing for the first time
• Edna also discovers that no matter which man she is with, there is no escape from general oppression women face.
• Edna's society has no place for women like her, as she must either be an exemplary housewife & mother like Adéle Ratignolle or an isolated outsider like Mademoiselle Reisz
• Edna's ultimate decision to commit suicide at the end of the novel exemplifies how few options women had in society at this time.
• Leaving society altogether was Edna's way of rejecting & escaping this oppresive dichotomy
• Patriarchy
• Awakening
• Refers to Edna's sexual & feminist awakening
• Marriage and Motherhood
• Expression
• how people expressed themselves in relation to sexual expectations

Symbol's

• Music
• In turn-of-the-century literature, music is often used to reveal & interpret the dreams & hopes of the main characters
• i.e. the parrot, caged at beginning
• the mocking bird
• birds description in novel parallels life of Edna Pontellier
• Children
• Children are traditionally symbols of innocence, naivety, & purity
• Alsoused as contrasts to adult, showing how life experiences change & shape a person's character and values.
• The Sea
• Symbol of rebirth & cleansing
• Symbol of freedom & escape
• Often seen as perilous & filled with mystery, both of which need to be overcome to achieve the aformationed freedom
• Subplot: Edna's attempts to learn to swim
• Symbolic meaning? Trying to reach freedom/escape
• look at descriptions offered of Edna as she heads to the beach for her first lesson versus final swim
• Black and white
• symbolizes the presence of evil and goodness 
• "The Lady in Black" mentioned in The Awakening exemplifies, in Edna's mind, someone who is evil and untrustworthy
• HOwever
• Edna is still preoccupied with thoughts of the lady suggesting perhaps her own leanings or thoughts about those less innocent than first presented

Plot

• The Awakening opens in the late 1800's in Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular with the wealthy inhabitants of nearby New Orleans
• Edna Pontellier is vacationing with her husband, Léonce, and their two sons at the cottages of Madame Lebrun, which house affluent credes from the French Quarter
• Léonce is kind and loving but preoccupied with his work. His frequent business-related absences mar his domestic life with Edna
• Consequently, Edna spends most of her time with her friend, Adéle Ratignolle, a married Creole who epitomizes womanly elegance and charm.
• Through her relationship with Adéle, Edna learns a great deal about freedom of expression
• Because Creole women were expected and assumed to be chaste, they could behave in a forthright and unreserved manner.
• Explosive to such openness, liberates Edna from her previously prudish behavior and repressed emotions and desires
• Edna's relationship with Adéle begins Edna's process of "awakening" and self-discovery, which constitutes the focus of the book.
• The process accelerates as Edna comes to know Robert Lebrun, the elder, single son of Madame Lebrun
• Robert is knowing among the Grand Isle vacationers as a man who chooses one woman each year--often a married woman--to whom he then plays "attendant" all summer long.
• This summer he devotes himself to Edna and the two spend their days together lounging and talking by the shore.
• Adéle Ratignolle often accompanies them.
• At first, the relationship between Robert and Edna is innocent.
• They mostly bathe in the sea or engaged in idle talk!
• As the summer progresses, however, Edna and Robert grow closer, Robert's affections and attention inspire in Edna several internal revelations.
• She feels more alive than ever before
• She starts to paint again, as she did in her youth.
• She learns to swim
• She becomes aware of her independence & Sexuality
• Edna and Robert never openly discuss their love for one another, but the time they spend alone together kindles memories in Edna of the dreams and desires of her youth
• She becomes inexplicably depressed at night with her husband and profoundly joyful during her moments of freedom, whether alone or with Robert
• Recognizing how intense the relationship between him and Edna has become, Robert honorably removes himself from the Grand Isle to avoid consummating his forbidden love.
• Edna returns to New Orleans a charged woman.
• Back in New Orleans, Edna actively pursues her painting and ignores all of her social responsibilities.
• Worried about the charging attitude and increasing disobedience of his wife, Léonce seeks the guidance of the family physician, Doctor Mandelet
• A wise and enlightened man, Doctor Mandelet suspects that Edna's transformation is the result of an affair, but he hides his suspicions from Léonce.
• Instead, Doctor Mandelet suggests that Léonce let Edna's defiance run its course, since attempts to control her would only fuel her rebellion.
• Léonce heeds the doctor's adivce, allowing Edna to remain home alone while he is away on business.
• With her husband gone and her children away as well, Edna wholly rejects her former lifestyle
• She moves into a home of her own and declares herself independent--the possession of no ore.
• Her love for Robert still intense, Edna pursues an affair with the town seducer, Alcé Arobin, who is able to satisfy her sexual needs.
• Never emotionally attached to Arobin, Edna maintains control throughout their affair, satisfying her animalistic urges but retaining her freedom from male domination.
• At this point, the self-sufficient and unconventional old pianist Mademoiselle Reisz adopts Edna as a sort of Protégé, warning Edna of the sacrifices required of an artist.
• Edna is moved by Mademoiselle Reisz's piano playing and visits her often. She is also eager to read the letters from abroad that Robert sends the woman.
• A woman who devotes her life entirely to her art, Mademoiselle serves as an inspiration and model to Edna, who continues her process of awakening and independence.
• Mademoiselle Reisz is the only person who knows of Robert and Edna's secret love for one another and she encourages Edna to admit to, and act upon, her feelings.
• Unable to stay away, Robert returns to New Orleans, finally expressing openly his feelings for Edna.
• He admits his love but remains her that they cannot possibly be together, since she is the wife of another man.
• Edna explains to him her newly established independence, denying the rights of her husband over her and explaining how she and Robert can live together happily, ignoring everything extraneous to their relationship
• But despite his love for Edna, Robert feels unable to enter into the adulterous affair
• When Adéle undergoes a difficult and dangerous childbirth, Edna leaves Robert's arms to go to her friend. She pleads with him to wait for her return.
• From the time she spends with Edna, Adéle senses that Edna is becoming increasingly distant, and she understands that Edna's relationship with Robert has intensified. She reminds Edna to think of her children and advocates the socially acceptable lifestyle Edna abandoned so long ago.
• Doctor Mandelet, while walking Edna home from Adéle's, urges her to come see him because he is worried about the outcome of her passionate but confused actions.
• Already reeling under the weight of Adéle's admonition, Edna begins to perceive herself as having acted selfishly.
• Edna returns to her house to find Robert gone, a note of farewell left in his place. ("Goodbye, because I love you.")
• Robert's inability to escape the ties of society now prompts Edna's most devastating awakening.
• Haunted by thoughts of her children and realizing that she would have eventually found even Robert unable to fulfill her desires and dreams, Edna feels an overwhelming sense of solitude.
• Alone in a world in which she has found no feeling of belonging, she can only find one answer to the inescapable and heartbreaking limitations of society
• She returns to Grand Isle, the site of her first moments of emotional, sexual, and intellectual awareness, and in a final escape, gives herself to the sea.
• As she swims through the soft embracing water, she thinks about her freedom from her husband and children, as well as Robert's failure to understand her, Doctor Mandelet's words of wisdom, and Mademoiselle Reisz's courage.
• The text leaves open the question whether the suicide constitutes a cowardly surrender or a liberating triumph.
• Edna is called away to help Adéle with a difficult childbirth
• Adéle pleads with Edna to think of what she would be turning her back on if she did not behave appropriately
• When Edna returns home, she finds a note from Robert stating that he has left forever, as he loves her too much to shame her by engaging in a relationship with a married woman
• In devastated shock, Edna rushes back to Grand Isle, where she had first met Robert Lebrun
• Edna escapes in an ultimate manner by committing suicide, drowning herself in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Kate Chopin's Style

• Narrative style - narration
• Maupassant's style - a perceptive focus on human behavior & complexities of social structures
• Demonstrates Chopin's admiration for the French short story writer Guy de Maupassant
• Hybrid that captures contemporary narrative currents & looks forward to various trends in Southern & European literature
• Chopin becomes skeptical of religion which is seen in The Awakening
• Kate Chopin's narrative style in The Awakening can be categorized as naturalism
• Naturalism -->A literary movement or tendency from the 1880's to 1930's that used detailed realism to suggest that social condition, hereditarily, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character, a mainly unorganized literary movement that sought to depict believable everyday reality as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic idealistic or even supernatural treatment.
• Mixed into Chopin's overarching 19th century realism is an incisive and often humorous skewering of upper class pretension reminiscent of direct contemporaries such as 
• Oscar Wilde
• Edith Wharton
• Henry Lares
• George Bernard Shaw
• Chopin's lyrical portrayal of her protagonist's shifting emotions is a narrative technique that Faulkner would expand upon
• Aspects of Chopin's style also prefigure the intensely lyrical and experimental style of novelists such as Virginia Woolf and the unsentimental focus on female intellectual and emotional growth
• Most important stylistic legacy? --> detachment of the narrator
• One of the main issues 19th Century readers had with The Awakening was the idea of a woman abandoning her duties as a wife and mother. As this was so strictly reinforced as the main purpose of women's lives, a character who rebels against those social norms shocked readers. An "Etiquette/Advice book" of the time proclaimed "If she has the true mother-heart the companionship of her children will be the society which she will prefer above that of the others."