Episode 25 – Dangerously Immersed in Ourselves: Chopin’s “The Awakening”
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening—“Dangerously Immersed in Ourselves”
By Karen E.B. Elliott
I remember the first time I read this book. It was back in college was I was earning my B.A. at a liberal arts, secular school. I loved the novel. It intrigued me. Perhaps it was because I identified with the main character as much as I could at the time; however, I certainly wasn’t married yet. I had not been pregnant nor had children to care for. As a woman I was allowed to vote and express basically any opinion I had as a woman. But exactly like the main character, I was white; I was raised with privilege in zipcodes my parents chose carefully in which to live in order to guarantee me of sustaining that privilege. So in that case, I complete “got” Kate Chopin’s main character.
I can recall my male professor’s interpretation of the ending (which I quickly came to learn is mostly everyone’s interpretation), and it just didn’t sit well with me. Even though I really liked him, I felt he was trying too hard—to please the women in the room—as if to say, “Hey ladies, I’m with you on this one.” He, like many of my professors, whether male or female, were self-proclaimed feminists. I, too, was a self-proclaimed feminist, but as a Christian. And that’s a hard one to explain or justify to the secular cynic or faithful Christ-follower. The interpretation of Edna’s apparent suicide (spoiler alert!) at the novel’s end appears to be read out of context in a frightening post-modern analysis of literature—where our feelings about the text (or any text) determine its meaning.
This approach raises serious questions, and any self-proclaimed intellectual would raise his or her eyebrows when anyone looks at a text in this manner. Interestingly enough, however, this is exactly what Edna does with her own life. Although Chopin wrote this at the turn of the 20th century, her main character is incredibly post-modern, and more accurately, Edna is the post-modern middle to upper class American. Whether Christian or secular, Edna represents the typical American who already has it all—everything’s going for her—but she wants more. Despite her education and wealth, she is trapped, but not by the very oppressive, anti-woman Louisiana society in which she lives—she is trapped by her inability to bow down to anyone or anything larger than herself. It is evident as the reader travels through her consciousness that she has an acute sense of God and His presence; in fact, she admits that “the Holy Ghost [has] vouchsafed wisdom” within her youthful mind and soul, but she is seduced by her own desires to do whatever she wants, no matter who it hurts (13).
Kate Chopin’s craft and technique is nothing short of inspiring. On the surface she appears to be a transcendentalist as Edna goes to the water and within nature to find herself—to find the answers of life—but she does no transcending of any kind; in fact, Chopin turns on her reader in not-so-subtle ways. Although at first, nature seems to “speak to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace,” and yet, when Edna enters the ocean with the intent to transcend, Chopin reminds the reader that the sea is not Edna’s native element; she had “attempted all summer to learn to swim. She had received instructions from both the men and women; in some instances even the children…A certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in the water, unless there was a hand nearby that might reach out and reassure her” (13; 27). Chopin furthers the futility of Edna’s efforts with her strong description of the ocean, and she intentionally recycles phrases—reuses them—particularly at the novel’s end so that her reader will be reminded of what’s really happening to her character. Like the natural elements, Chopin seduces her reader and invites them to look at nature’s veneer. She describes the sea as swelling “lazily in broad billows,” but then as the waves ascend onto “the beach, [the] little foamy crests…coiled back like slow, white serpents” (27). Biblically, serpent imagery only means one thing, and it’s not enlightenment; as a result of nature’s deception and therefore Edna’s self-deception, Edna gains ill-gotten confidence and “swam out alone…[and] as she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself. Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had left there. She had not gone any great distance—this is, what would have been a great distance…But to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome” (28). Unlike some, she is not able to journey through life alone, and she senses it here but does not heed her conscience.
Also, the last part of that particular passage predicts what happens in the end—Edna dies trying to find answers within nature; and remember, this novel was written the height of Darwin’s naturalistic theories, as they were beginning to be taken seriously in culture, and moreover, this means that if we’re merely natural beings, then what Edna is doing is not merely trying to find God or reason within nature as Emerson or Thoreau might have done; Edna is going to the next humanistic and Darwinian level, and she is attempting to turn her being into her own natural state—her own godliness, and she is, therefore, her own savior. Chopin, however, challenges this attempts, but also disguises it within the Creole, Louisiana culture, which is not by any means in tune with women either. It’s frustrating that Wyoming, which wasn’t even a state yet, just mere territory, had already given women the right to vote; whereas, Louisiana equated women with the mentally ill in regards to contracts or business dealings, not to mention that women, upon marriage, were literally property of their husbands—like his favorite cigar or the chair where he smoked it.
Of course, these are serious issues which cannot be overlooked and play into Edna’s awareness that she is oppressed; however, unlike Mademoiselle Reisz or even Adele Ratignolle, who have managed to find their own voices in their own ways by working within the boundaries of the law, Edna frustrates many of my students. Only a few are willing to pity poor Edna as the narrative progresses. Although they feel that the laws are unfair, they see her as the so-called oppressed rich white woman who lives the aristocratic high-life in New Orleans, eats bons bons regularly, and get to go to the very-nice vacation island (not house) for the summer. True, her husband is unfeeling and a little too old for her, but in a characteristically Darwinian, naturalistic manner, Edna allows her instincts (and privilege), not reason, dictate her actions, choices, and consequently, her fate. Chopin claims that Edna “fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between [she and her husband] in which fancy she was mistaken. Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her sister…to the marriage of a Catholic, and we seek no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for her husband” (18). Here, it is evident that Edna allowed her human drive and instinct to dictate her marriage acceptance, and note the diction and syntax—it’s hard to detest Leonce, and pity Edna; after all, it was her choice, and it is clear that she had a chance to get out of the engagement. This was no arranged marriage, and Edna, being an educated young woman, knew after she took her vows that “as the devoted wife of a man who worshipped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams” (18). But as she grows to realize where her choice got her, she turns to self-idolatry. She knows she made a decision which she does not want to take responsibility for. Edna begins to blame-shift and starts down a path of entitlement which eventually destroys, not liberates, her.
As a Christian, and from most faith-based worldviews, this can only lead to one place, and it’s not within the walls of a sanctuary, temple, or a state of nirvana; in fact, once Edna decides that she is going to live solely for herself, and herself only, she cannot even exist in a spiritual setting. Chopin claims that when Edna and her almost-lover Robert attend Sunday services, “a feeling of oppression and drowsiness overcame” her (35). Consequently, she indiscreetly walks out, and when Robert went to see if she was well, he “was full of solicitude [great concern or anxiety]”…as they stood outside “in the shadow of the church” (35). What’s interesting here is all the connotation and symbolism. Robert feels as Edna should, but Edna—note the spelling of her name—is trying to recreate her own Eden, but it’s obscure. She feels drowsy (not only because it’s incredibly hot in Louisiana when they hadn’t installed air conditioning, and she is wearing long sleeves over her corset), but because she’s not open to the Holy Ghost, who she claimed earlier might have given her some kind of wisdom or reason. Now, she is on her own, but interestingly enough, her almost-lover is not. Robert senses the path they might be headed toward, and it’s not in the Light; yes, he is definitely attracted to her, as she is to him; however, Robert knows that he must be responsible; he must live within the society in which he was born, whether he likes it or not. He also knows that Edna is not up-for-grabs—she is married, he continually reminds her. He resists his desire to be with her three times: the first is right after the aforementioned scene outside of the church; second, Robert leaves to gone on an extended business trip to Mexico so distance will help ease his temptations; and third, near the novel’s end, after he returns and he and Edna proclaim their desires and passions for each other, Chopin recycles previous phrases and notes that “her seductive voice [like the sea] together with his great love for her, had enthralled his senses, had deprived him of impulse but the longing to hold her and keep her” (109). This final comment is often willingly overlooked by my students, especially the young women. It’s usually the boys who break the romantic bubble and reinforce Robert’s integrity. Unlike Edna, he resists the desire to fulfill his own sinful passions (and to a Catholic, these are truly sinful…adultery will lead to divorce…which leads to excommunication…which leads to damnation). He, unlike Edna, knows that there are boundaries, and no matter how we feel, we aren’t allowed to break some of them. These decisions are too big to think of the physical world, our natural desires or instincts, and what we want or demand to have in the moment. Robert senses that many decisions affect the soul. This is why his sudden disappearance and final note upon Edna’s return to the room where they proclaimed their feelings is so crucial. He really does love here, which is why his note read, “Good-by—because I love you” (112). This moment is an allusion to 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. Love is not desire, passion, or physical attraction; it’s sacrificial. By keeping himself pure, he attempts to keep the woman he loves pure as well.
Edna, however, does not want this. She has a history, according to Chopin’s narrative, of making choices “in the moment,” and she hasn’t learned from her past. Nor does she want advice, and she certainly gets plenty of it from the other minor, but very significant, characters, who love her as well, care about her welfare, and genuinely want her to find happiness and contentment. Adele Ratignolle, at first appears as Edna’s nemesis (only because she’s really pretty and has a great figure, even after having tons of children), but she’s actually a wonderful mother and loving friend who warns Robert to stay away from Edna, so Edna won’t “make the unfortunate blunder of taking [him] seriously,” and her final words to Edna, as she senses Edna’s dangerous discontentment and where it might lead, are “think of the children,” which Edna admits at the end of her life that those words stuck to her with a “determination [that] had driven into her soul like a death wound” (19; 112). Even Doctor Mandelet, who “at [their final] parting, holding her hand [notices that Edna] seems to me to be in trouble…and that if you feel moved to give it [her confidence] to me, perhaps I might help you” (112). In fact, it’s not Robert who is the last man Edna thinks of before dying; it’s Doctor Mandelet and his kindness and uncanny perception that she herself doesn’t recognize until too late. But worst of all, and ironically, it’s the one woman who Edna admires and attempts to emulate who predicts who downfall—the unmarried Mademoiselle Reisz—who upon their final meeting embraces Edna who recalls that “she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong [because she claims that] ‘the bird that would soar above tradition and prejudice must have strong wings, [and] it is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth” (83), which tragically, Edna does.
Even with a “surface read,” Chopin continuously reminds the reader that Edna will fail; for example, Edna’s sleep is usually restless and when she awakes, Chopin often uses phrases like “grot3esque pandemonium” and “struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation” when describing Edna’s dreams (58). Even when she has moments apparent self-triumph, Chopin will quickly begin the next sentence with “But…there came over her…a sense of the unattainable” (89). Chopin refuses to let her readers take sentences out of context, so they cannot, like post-modernist Edna, determine the meaning of her life and death.
Because “she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself,” Edna faces a frightening theological issue, one which the reader is prepared for the moment Edna enters the water for the first time and believes she can swim—she can “do life” on her own and in her own way (80). Chopin prepares the reader with tons of symbolism; in fact, if students have difficulty understanding symbolic proliferation, then this novel illustrates it well—Chopin uses natural imagery in a Biblical manner to further the plot’s progression and the inevitable ending. There is a reason why water imagery is all over the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. The waters of Noah represent the judgment that humans deserve, and the waters of the Jordan river represent the grace we are permitted to have when Christ reaches down into the water and pulls us out of our troubles. But theologically, it is offered to all of us; however, we have to acknowledge that we can’t “do life” on our own, and we must reach for the hand of Christ for help. Chopin deepens these meanings with her powerful imagery. Life is about judgment, and not necessarily the inaccurate trendy way of looking at God’s judgment as if He loves to point His finger and damn everyone who doesn’t bow down to Him (although theologically speaking, He certainly has that right); no, the accurate manner is one in which Paul describes in the book of Romans as he predicts that the immorality of the ages will ensue, and that we don’t really need God to step in and judge us because “we will heap judgment upon ourselves.” This is exactly what Edna does, and what very perceptive thinkers like Mademoiselle Reisz predict.
There are two ways to interpret Edna’s suicide at the end, but only the third way (which I will argue) is contextually accurate, and Biblical. The first is the way my professors and the academic majority interpret it: Edna is a free spirit born in an unforgiving age who does not understand her and the liberties she deserves. While this is indeed true, she extends her liberties to adultery and the neglect of her two children. She, therefore, refuses to be possessed by any man, even her beloved Robert, so she “frees” herself by committing suicide during her final “stick it to the man” swim. The second interpretation is that Edna realizes that she can’t leave Robert. He has denied her, so she drowns herself so he will feel terrible about the note (which in modern-day culture would be the most recent Instagram post, or if you’re a little older, Facebook post), but her self-drowning makes an even bigger statement (except she won’t live to see his reaction). No, neither of these interpretations work—certainly not with a literary mindset which truly requires a deconstructionalist’s analysis and close reading of the text with everything kept in Chopin’s authorial context.
Instead, it’s Chopin, not Edna, who makes the final sobering statement. Although it appears that Edna is clearly depressed, and if you’re like me, you can sincerely understand Edna’s plight if you’ve ever had post-partum after child-bearing, and as Chopin writes, “Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never lifted”; it was not Robert’s note, the inconvenience or difficulty of raising children, her husband’s oblivious nature, or her desires to live independently as if she never married that are driving her to the water. Chopin claims that Edna “was not thinking of these things when she walked down to the beach” (115). It’s actually the water—the Gulf which Chopin gives divinity—that calls Edna toward the inevitable. Again, as stated earlier, Chopin claims that “the voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude” (115). Again, Chopin’s use of diction and repetition is vital here. Our human drive will use any method necessary to lure us into self-indulgence and self-destruction. In the same passage, Edna notices that “there was no living thing in sight” even though water is what sustains life on earth, and that she then notices “a bird with a broken wing…reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water” (115). It is evident here that death is coming, not freedom, just as Mademoiselle Reisz predicted. Yet Edna doesn’t turn back. She doesn’t heed the signs.
Chopin then brings her readers right along, showing that when Edna removes her clothes and stands naked on the shore, she almost feels natural and born again, as if she has the ability to save or free herself; however, Chopin immediately explains that “the foamy wavelets [of the water] curled up to [Edna’s] white feet, and coiled like serpents around her ankles…[even] the water was chill [because it’s winter which is also symbolic of death, not life], but she walked on…[because] the touch of the sea is sensuous” (115). Here, Edna is steeped in self-deception and Chopin’s Biblical imagery makes this disturbingly apparent, because it almost works on us. Chopin shows us through Edna’s circumstance that we, too, want to believe, even as Christians, that we can save ourselves—that prayer, even God, and Christ’s sacrifice is merely supplemental. If this weren’t true, then privileged Northern America and Western Europe wouldn’t be as secularized as it has become, and will continue to be, due perhaps, almost solely to our economic status and technocratic enlightenment.
Comparatively, it’s arguable, therefore, that Edna’s demise occurs because she enters the water searching for another awakening. She is soul-searching, as many of us do when we end up in the Self-Help section of the local bookstore; as a result, Edna similarly deceives herself and thinks she’s something that she’s not—exactly the weakling, so-called pretentious artist that Mademoiselle Reisz predicted earlier. Chopin’s last few paragraphs note Edna’s lack of strength and that “exhaustion was pressing upon and over-powering her”; she even thinks of turning back as she reflects on Mademoiselle Reisz’s comments, Robert, even her husband, her children, and taking Doctor Mandelet’s advice for counseling, “but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone” (115). What makes this difficult for me is that I’ve known too many Edna’s in my life, and I’ve watched them get in-over-their-heads by trying to swim life alone—determine the outcomes—with this don’t-tell-me-how-to-do-it gumption that most of us admire, but know where it leads. And the worst part is that Edna’s final thought or emotion isn’t freedom or liberation or even defiance; it’s one of terror which “flamed up for an instant” and then was gone as she’s sinking in a perverted type of baptism—the antithesis of what Christ intended and exemplified. Biblically, instead of immersion with cleansing and a rising from the judgmental waters of Noah where a person takes Christ’s hand as He pulls us from darkness to light with a warm washing off of our selves; instead, our self-orientedness only leads to drowning—there’s no one there to take our hand, or worse, there is, but we’ve been living our own way for so long that we don’t recognize the person or the help they’re offering, or perhaps in Edna’s case, she becomes too tired to grasp…reach…or fight for it.
Without even mentioning that Christ is the only way to fulfillment, Chopin does something that is very effective for the modern reader—she demonstrates what self-oriented secular life is like and what happens when post-modern, elitist philosophy is lived to its logical conclusion. Instead of saying, “Don’t touch that hot burner,” she puts our fingers, then our whole hand on it and makes it sizzle. Instead of saying, “You should stick it out and sometimes trust in God,” Chopin seems to invite us to live the lives we think are best for ourselves, and sadly, most Westerners, including myself, can identify with Edna all-too-well. Like her, many of us have great privilege, and as much as I want to like certain celebrities who go to under-developed nations to do a good deed, their daily lives, as expressed in the tabloids as I stand in the check-out line of the grocery store are evidence enough of their non-admitted, but apparent dissatisfaction with bowing down to their own ideas—self-made philosophies which only reveal our weaknesses and reinforce that we’re all in over-our-heads in worldliness (because we can afford to be). Like Edna, we’re too busy trying to re-create our own Edens and morph the God-given boundaries so we don’t have to do what God lovingly and graciously wants for us. Ironically, although it shouldn’t be, when we bow down to God and His plan for our lives, that’s when we find the freedom, the liberty, the chief end of happiness—even here in our flawed, and oftentimes, oppressive, societies and relationships.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Dover Publications, 1993.
