A Feminist Analysis of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's The Awakening

The novel The Awakening centers upon a woman experimenting with her own sexual desires and her obligatory female social roles; a woman who "struggle[s] to assert an individual identity beyond the bounds of that inscribed by the dictators of patriarchy" (Le Marquand 2). These desires to stray from the norm, and to become her own person, were brought about and 'awakened' by Mrs. Pontellier's interest in art; in fact, Edna's experimentation with art directly corresponds to her lifestyle and sexual experimentation. All of the changes in the novel connect to the confusion her role as a female artist has created, including her opinions of the people around her, her ignited romantic desires, the decay of her relationships and eventually, her own death.

At the start of the novel, Edna seems to be the epitome of nineteenth century American ideals; she is twenty-eight, "married to a wealthy and attentive husband, the mother of two healthy children - from all appearances Edna Pontellier has everything to make a woman happy" (Rosowski 27). The reader is first introduced to Edna "through the eyes of her husband" (Toth 218), as Mrs. Pontellier, the case with most Victorian-era women. Eventually, "the narrator calls her 'Edna Pontellier' and finally 'Edna', while the character is 'becoming herself and casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world'" (Toth 219). Edna does initially participate somewhat in the arts, but her interest is "strictly of the nineteenth-century 'lady's accomplishment' variety" (White 70). She seems to have at least partially accepted the role of mother and spouse, albeit with some dissatisfaction. It seems as though women "have choices made for them or assume responsibilities unknowingly" (Rosowski 33); such is the case with Edna. She performs the basics for her two young children, but is not the perfectly motherly woman that her friend Adele appears to be. When her husband Leonce alerts her that one of her sons is sick, Edna simply responds that the children were fine when she checked them. Since this is not the worried response her husband expected, Leonce remonstrates her for her "habitual neglect of the children" (Chopin 18).

Although Leonce is not a particularly unlikable character - actually, he seems to be "as loving and attentive as any husband of the time might be" (Tuttleton 201) - it is worth noting that "it is the workings of the society which Chopin seeks to critique, not the individual" (Le Marquand 4). Essentially all "nineteenth century marriages cast women as the objects of others rather than as the free subjects of their own fates" (Fox-Genovese 35), and it was commonplace for Leonce to behave the way he does. Nevertheless, Edna does not wish to settle quietly into her assigned social role; she sees it as restrictive and inappropriate for her. In fact, Edna describes Adele's perfect assimilation to the role of mother as being a "colorless existence which never uplifted it's possessor beyond the region of blind contentment" (Chopin 56). Instead, Edna eventually sees her children as "antagonists who had overcome her" (Chopin 136), and feels only fleeting motherly emotions toward them. Although her treatment is not necessarily negative for the children - "their sturdiness and independence seem to be a result of their mother's benign neglect of them" (Berman 61) - it is certainly an example of what can result from unhappiness in an enforced stereotype. Under the surface, Edna wishes for a colorful existence in which she is free to be herself; an existence she could find as an artist.

Although "motherhood dominates both the lives of Adele and Edna" (Skaggs 90), only Adele is "apparently unable to perceive herself as an individual human being, possessing no sense of herself beyond her role of wife and mother" (Skaggs 94). When Edna visits the picturesque family home of the Ratignolles, she leaves not feeling comforted by what could await her, but feeling depressed: "The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui" (Chopin 56). Edna believes Adele to be "the picture of sensuous beauty" (Barker 132), and thinks that Adele has wasted herself by giving "her body over to her role as a mother-woman through her biyearly pregnancies" (Barker 132). Chopin places Adele in the novel to provide a "striking illustration of the patriarchal ideal of the submissive female who writes her history only through her family" (Skaggs 90); although Adele seems "faultless" (Chopin 16), the reader can recognize through her "the shortcomings of a person's settling for less than full development as a human being" (Skaggs 91). Adele is everything Edna should want to be, but instead serves as the model of everything that Edna seeks to distance herself from. Edna does not wish to be the mother-woman Adele is, "idolized their children, worshiped their children, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals" (Chopin 6). This dislike of the pre-determined role her sex has been given in her society leads to Edna delving deeper into her art as an alternative to her traditional role as a mother-woman.

Although "Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz [both] take her art and her life seriously" (Toth 215), Mademoiselle Reisz provides an opposite example to Edna of what she could be: a female artist. Reisz's piano playing "moves Edna quite literally to tears" (Skaggs 92), and is a prime example of how art can be channeled through a woman and shared with the outside world. Edna recognizes this, and although she can not decide "whether or not she likes Mademoiselle Riesz" (Skaggs 95), she is certainly inspired by Reisz's music to delve deeper into her own art. Her "response to [Reisz's] music is certainly sexual" (Cutter 94); "but what Edna awakens to through Mademoiselle Reisz's playing is not a specific sexual desire, directed to or at something, but rather an understanding of how much her desire has been repressed" (Cutter 94). Edna looks at Reisz as an idol to whom she can look for advice, a woman who "serves as Edna's artistic mentor" (White 72). Riesz "counsels Edna on more than one occasion that genuine art demands courage, words that Edna internalizes" (White 72), and exemplifies "sacrifice and singleness of purpose in her devotion to music" (White 72).

But Mademoiselle Reisz is shunned by society, and gives Edna a glimpse of what life could be if she were to fully accept her new found sexuality and explore her independent life as an artist. Chopin emphasizes this exclusion from the mainstream through Reisz's physical appearance: while Adele is a shining example of the stereotypical role of her sex, "Reisz's physical appearance contrasts harshly with Adele's beauty" (Skaggs 94). Reisz was a homely woman, with a small weazened face and body and eyes that glowed" (Chopin 8). A woman such as Reisz, ignoring society's insistence on her acceptance of the role of spouse and mother, reflected a "view of sex [that] was as liberating for the American woman of the [18]80s and 90s as it was threatening to the foundations of a genteel society" (Bender 100).

As Edna begins to truly experiment with her art, painting becomes more than just a hobby and surpasses something in which Edna merely "dabbled with in an unprofessional way" (Chopin 12). The act of painting is what initially sparks her repressed desires for purpose beyond the role she has been given:
Edna's moment of awakening (chapter 6), in which she begins to realize her position in the universe as a human being and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her is directly preceded by the painting scene (chapter 5), in which she attempts to sketch Adele. Edna's awakening is in part prompted by the aesthetic, sexual, and social issues she confronts in attempting to paint Adele. (Barker 122)

Edna, whose mother had been absent for the most essential parts of her development, feels a need to connect with a maternal figure while still having the desire to dismiss a maternal role for herself. Her art "frequently focuses on women and is frequently sensual" (Cutter 95). This desire, Barker argues, "corresponds to [Julia] Kristeva's 'homosexual-maternal aspect' - an identification with the mother in which the realm of the semiotic prevails" (134). There is an underlying Freudian connection with and desire for the maternal body in Edna, which she interprets as something that is more socially acceptable - a desire to paint Adele. In fact, "Edna's own romantic ardor disrupts her art" (White 72) as she paints Adele: "A subtle current of desire passed through her body, weakening her hold upon the brushes and making her eyes burn" (Chopin 17). This idea of homosexual desires being awakened is supported by the fact that, in the painting scene, "Edna's desire is directed toward Adele, not Robert" (134). Robert is forced to observe the painting, even by "placing himself in a position of authority and intimacy between the two women" (134).

This psycho-analytical approach, however, is slightly lacking, since "[Edna's] final desire to merge with the maternal ocean as a pre-Oedipal desire for pure union is problematic when it is used to explain away all of the complexities of the novel" (134). Instead of focusing on one particular undercurrent or theme, "Chopin creates an intricate blend of social and psychological elements: the maternal body serves as an emblem for Edna's struggles precisely because it is at the union of the social and biological, the conscious and unconscious, the symbolic and semiotic" (134). While there will always be Freudian undertones to be analyzed in most works of literature, with The Awakening "it is impossible to ignore the feminist implications of Edna's dramatic stripping away of all of the restrictive aspects of her life: marriage, Victorian social rules [. . .] and finally even clothing" (White 65). To assist in this awakening of desires, both for the maternal body and later for freedom from her husband and family in any way possible, Edna turns to the creative medium of art.

After this initial spark of desire caused by Edna's exploration of the alluring act of painting, she recognizes the potential for another kind of life, and "become conscious of the lack of satisfaction provided by her usual social and domestic relationships" (Skaggs 89). "Both friends Even her family physician can not recognize what is happening to Edna: "In echoing the prevailing turn-of-the-century medical dismissal of women's complaints, Dr. Mandalet dismisses the significance of Edna's unhappiness" (Berman 50). Edna has always been seen as "a possession to be traded back and forth between men" (Cutter 92), from the point when her father "invented" (Chopin 56) her. Although Edna is inscribed with the basic maternal instincts, which are essentially unavoidable after pregnancy, she simply can not be the doting, obsessively attentive woman that Adele is. An example of "maternal self-effacement" (Barker 122), Adele is capable only of finding completion and fulfillment through caring for her children.

Yet Edna, in her attempt to create a different role and life for herself, is forced to struggle against the stereotypes "operating against women" (Skaggs 89) as she seeks to become conscious of her full potential and attain the "emotional satisfactions the author [Chopin] believes are requisite to a fully realized human life" (Skaggs 89). But women "were expected to be less self-centered than men, more inclined to subordinate their desires to the preservation of their families" (Berman 49); Edna is dissatisfied with her husband's expression of this Victorian Creole ideal. She does not appreciate that "he becomes agitated whenever he believes Edna's actions devalue his considerable investment in her" (Berman 51): when Edna returns after an outing with Robert, her husband shows his "proprietary treatment of his wife when he scolds her for getting sunburned" (White 66), and "his gesture of dropping her rings into her hand as she returns from her swim reaffirms his ownership of her" (White 66). Mrs. Pontellier "seeks voice in her painting" (Cutter 95), because she recognizes that "the cult of domesticity offers her no viable mechanism for a self-defined subjectivity or voice" (Cutter 88).

The climax of the decay of Edna's familial connections is the desire to leave her home and family. She is "oppressed by culture forces that she does not understand" (Gray 1), but interprets as the individual oppression caused by her husband and children. She first begins to distance herself from her husband by selling her art; this source of income brings Edna a sense of independence, while conversely bringing her husband a threatening feeling. "Back at home in the French Quarter, Edna begins to ignore her wifely obligations. She takes long solitary walks, when she is supposed to be receiving callers; she has no sympathy with her husband's complaints; and she stops having relations with him" (Toth 210). Instead of attending to her duties, she goes on long strolls to contemplate her art. Leonce is confused at Edna's rejection of her pre-determined role; he suspects it is simply some illness that she has fallen prey to.

While most respectable women will be shy around a doctor, Edna seems more comfortable with herself; when the doctor touches her, there is "no repression in her glance or gesture" (Chopin 70); Dr. Mandalet, who used to know "Edna as a repressed, 'listless woman' [. . .] is surprised later in the novel to see her transformed" (Cutter 92). Mrs. Pontellier refuses to go to her sister's wedding, "a decision which reflects her feelings about her own marriage" (Berman 52), and instead insists her husband attend the wedding alone. She is attempting to distance herself in every way possible from the roles of society; watching her sister become yet another subservient autonomic wife functioning only to serve her husband and children is not something Adele wishes to experience. In addition, Edna's father and "harsh sister Margaret are all reminders of patriarchal forces that have entrapped Edna throughout her life" (Cutter 90). As she continues to distance herself from her husband, however, her art "grows in force and individuality" (Chopin 76) This prompts Edna to move into her own home, away from her husband, where she can "fully make the transition from amateur to professional artist, establishing her studio on her own, a transition that coincides with her awakening" (White 76). Edna had already begun this exclusion of her husband from her own existence while she was still in Grand Isle, after her initial awareness of art:

When Leonce commands Edna to come inside, she responds: 'Leonce, go to bed. . . .I mean to stay out here. I don't wish to go in, and I don't intend to. Don't speak to me like that again; I shall not answer you'. In the past, when her husband commanded she submitted, but now her 'will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant'. Edna combats her husband's verbal harassment with a voice that calls upon her own desires: 'I don't wish to go in and I don't intend to' (Cutter 95).

This new existence, which she will support with her own income from her art, allows her to expand upon her new sexual desires. "Edna desires the masculine privilege of traveling unencumbered and observing life" (Barker 136), being able to create her art in freedom. Without her finances from selling her art, she would never have been able to contemplate moving out and away from her husband's support and influence.
Shortly after she begins her new life, abandoning her children and husband, she begins to see other men; she begins an affair with Alcee Arobin, and entertains romantic ideas of Robert. Many saw this as completely unchristian when the novel was published: "According to the majority of 1899 reviews, The Awakening's Edna Pontellier is a selfish wife and mother who not only does not appreciate her good husband, but she also rebels in the worst possible way - by taking a lover or two" (Toth 209). Edna, however, should not be seen as selfish; "she became a mother without particularly wanting to be one, and she silenced her own voice" (Toth 210).

Because she was pressed into responsibilities she did not want, and knew she had no mind for, she had started the process of erasing her own identity. Painting, which allows an artist to be free both sexually and emotionally, gave Edna the opportunity to open her mind and to experience "several awakenings" (Toth 210).
The passion she once oppressed has become a realized possibility, now that she is financially independent and can see anyone she wishes romantically. She seeks "a role in which she is both freely sexual and autonomous" (Gray 1), but will eventually discover that "she can not exist in an alternative or oppositional female role" (Gray 1). Although she takes on lovers and attempts to sever her old ties, she still visits Adele and attempts to maintain a relationship despite the fact that Adele disapproves of her new socially unacceptable life. "Madame Ratignolle, the mother-woman, worries about Edna's reputation" (Toth 215), despite the fact that she initially supported Edna's endeavor. This outward show of perplexing desires Edna has to simultaneously break ties and continue relationships illustrates the inward confusion she is having about her own sexuality. Yet Edna continues to explore art, using it to support her sexually-free life: "Edna's painting grants her an active role in interpreting the world around her, and it also allows her greater control over her own art" (Barker 134).

The final representation of Edna's desire to be free is, of course, her own death. Throughout the entire novel, Edna had "struggle[ed] 'to make her internally persuasive voice - her impulses and desires - heard against the overpowering and authoritative voices of her culture, her religion, A Solitary Soul, (Tuttleton 205) centers around a theme of isolation that Edna feels can not be escaped, even by the most determined souls. Edna sees the touch of the ocean as "sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace" (Chopin 113).

In life, under the irresistible realm of ideology, Edna could exist only in a female role of limitation. In death, she symbolically enters the realm of nature as she wades into "the sea," and becomes enfolded in its vast space of innumerable waves. Heroically, Edna escapes oppressive ideology, but tragically, does so only in death (Gray 4).
Edna's choice of drowning in the ocean as a method of death could be seen as representational of her 'homosexual desires', as outlined by Kristeva; mainly, however, it should be seen as the attempt to escape a world she can not exist in, a world in which "man is subject and the absolute - woman is but 'other'" (Le Marquand 5). The confusion that her desires have created, awakened by her experimentation into art, culminates into her realization that she could never be happy and her subsequent death. Her "attempts to translate her rebirth into the actualities of her life" (Pizer 1) have failed, and death becomes the ultimate freedom; no longer will Edna be forced to deal with society's roles or society's disapproval. Before dying, in fact, she "cast[s] the unpleasant, pricking garments" (Chopin 113) she is forced to wear, and enters the ocean naked; a sort of final shock to prudish society.

Throughout The Awakening, Chopin utilizes art as a means for Edna to 'cast off' the unpleasant positions as wife and mother she has felt forced to accept. While Edna swims out farther and farther, she thinks "of Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul" (Chopin 114). Her family has contributed to her feelings of stifling confinement, and "have led to her destruction, as depicted by Chopin, because she has not been able to overcome the hold which the biology of motherhood and the social codes of marriage have had both on her emotions and on the beliefs and actions of others within the areas of life in which she functions" (Pizer 5). No matter what she is capable of artistically, Edna believes society just could not accept her new, 'awakened' state.

"Living in intimate familial and avid social interconnectedness, Edna found nothingness" (Tuttleton 206); yet living away from the relationships society deems important, Edna was able to achieve her own self-awareness. She refused to accept the role of subservient and acquiescent wife, and eventually separated herself from the world completely. Through art Edna Pontellier was forced to recognize the limits she ultimately could not circumvent. She refused to see herself "defined as someone's daughter, someone's wife, someone's mother, someone's mistress" (Tuttleton 190). Allen Stein summarizes it best:

Whatever one may finally think of Edna Pontellier, one must acknowledge that she has tried to meet head-on the issues that concern her as a woman and wife. She tries hard to understand her relations to her marriage, her society, her intimates. She tries to discern just how much freedom she can carve out for herself in the world she knows. Ultimately, she confronts frustration and apparent defeat, but her effort, whatever her shortcomings may be, is not without a certain courage. (41).

When this novel was published, "American culture in the late 1890s was not ready for an open assault on women's social identification with marriage, or even for an open defense of women's sexual and sensual individualism" (Fox-Genovese 34). Read properly, however, with a feminist influence and focusing on art as an underlying method of 'awakening', it can be seen that Chopin was not simply writing an attack on American Victorian society. With The Awakening, Chopin manages to portray clearly and effectively how the addition of the role of 'female artist', and the subversion of the traditional roles society places upon a woman, can awaken new desires that result in sharp changes of her opinions of the people around her, the gradual decay of her relationships and ultimately, tragic death.

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