Summary of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening": Chapters 5 and 6

Adèle, Edna, and Robert sat together on Edna's porch often throughout the summer. Robert and Edna shared a special kind of intimacy; they often exchanged looks and smiles. Robert was always with Edna, which was expected, because since he was about fifteen years old, he always attached himself to one woman for the summer.

Robert had hung around Adèle last summer, and all she did was order him around. He thought she was very cruel for using him the way she had. She would dismiss him every time her husband came home, and then welcome him back when her husband had gone again. Adèle commented that maybe she did that because she didn't want to make her husband jealous, which made them all laugh. Creole men did not get jealous; they had lost their ability to be passionate from the disuse of it.

Robert continued to tell stories about how Mrs. Ratignolle consumed his thoughts, both waking and asleep; he was completely enthralled with her. Every once in a while Adèle would chime in saying: "Blaguer-farceur-gros bête, va!" (14). Robert often took this tone when he spoke to Mrs. Ratignolle; however, he never spoke that way when he was just with Edna. She knew full well that Robert had expressed feelings of love to Adèle, but gratefully he had never done so to her.

Edna sat with her sketching supplies in her lap; sketching gave her an indiscernible kind of joy, nothing else ever made her feel the way she did when she sketched. She had always wanted to sketch Adèle and that day seemed like the perfect time to do so. Robert sat down on the step below Edna so that he could watch her sketch. While she was sketching, Robert laid his head on her arm. She gently brushed him off, but he repeated the act, and she had to push him away again. She could not allow him to get away with this subtle sign of affection. Her sketch didn't look anything like Adèle, and she was unhappy with it so she put a big smudge down the middle of it.

Edna's two sons came back to the house, and she had them carry her paints into the house. She hoped to have a pleasant conversation with them, but they were more interested in the bonbons that had arrived. They held their hands out and accepted what their mother gave them, and then they left again.

Adèle folded up her sewing gear into a nice neat package, and then complained that she felt faint. Edna went for the cologne bottle and fan. She sprayed the cologne on Adèle while Robert fanned. Adèle soon felt better, and Edna had a sneaky suspicion that Adèle faked being faint to get attention.

Edna watched Adèle walk back towards her cottage, and noticed that she walked with an air of majesty. Her three children ran up to her; she took the smallest one from the nurse and carried it. She was not supposed to carry her children per the doctor's orders, but she did not seem to care.

Robert asked Edna if she was going to go swimming, and she said no. He went and picked up her straw hat and put it on her head; Edna got up and walked with him down to the beach, the sun was going down and there was a cool breeze.

Chapter 6

Edna could not explain her impulse to, at first, say no to Robert, but then to give into his request. "A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,-the light which, showing the way, forbids it" (17). She was beginning to understand her place as an individual in the world. These thoughts were not usually given to someone who was only twenty-eight years old, and especially not a woman.

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace" (17).

Chapter 7:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2519533/summary_of_kate_chopins_the_awakening.html?cat=4

Chapter 1:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2493917/summary_of_kate_chopins_the_awakening.html?cat=4

Character Descriptions and Paper Topics:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2487006/kate_chopins_the_awakening.html?cat=4

Works Cited:

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1995.