35

Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin, born Catherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis in 1850, devoted her entire

fictional career to the espousal of the cause of women in search of their own

identities. The early deaths of her father and grandfather prevented her from

experiencing the traditional submissiveness of women within her own family, where

she had seen only women exercising authority. After graduation from school she

became a belle in St. Louis high society. But soon she began questioning

Catholicism’s implicit authoritarianism, which dictated subservience of women to

male domination. She also became aware of the inanities involved in socializing.

After her marriage to Oscar Chopin in 1870, she continued to pursue her interest

in the performing arts, and persisted in her habit, then considered highly unusual for

women, of smoking cigarettes. She also indulged in another habit unusual for young

women – walking unaccompanied through the city. Her marriage ended with Oscar’s

early death in 1882. Her constant adjustment to loss of family members and to her

changing place in her personal community may have resulted in many of her

protagonists appearing to be constantly in search of moorings and self-knowledge.

Chopin then moved with her children to stay with her mother in St. Louis. With

encouragement from the family physician, Frederick Kolbenheyer, she began writing

about the Louisiana of her past. For Chopin, writing was the articulation of the dream

of female selfhood. She wrote about life as she saw it, particularly the life of women

and their struggle to find a place in the world. This goal of selfhood had a special

significance for nineteenth-century women, when the struggle for suffrage was

only part of the larger aim of gaining recognition in society and in law. Under the

patriarchal custom women were described only in terms of their relationships to

 36

men—daughter, wife, mother, sister, widow. Women, as Simone de Beauvoir put it,

were simply men’s “other”(de Beauvoir). Kate Chopin attempted to show in her

fiction what it means to be a female in a patriarchal society.

Seyersted states in his Introduction to The Complete Works of Kate Chopin –

Mrs. Chopin was influenced by the feminism of Madame de Stael and George

Sand and the realism of Flaubert and Maupassant…She turns to aspects of the

feminine condition which were taboo to the two women and of little interest

to the two men, even introducing an existentialist philosophy which

foreshadows Simone de Beauvoir (Seyersted 32).

When her first collection of Louisiana stories, Bayou Folk , was published in

1894, she was hailed as a local colorist. But her interest was not so much local color

as human existence ‘ stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional

standards have draped it’ (Seyersted, CW 17). Her original stories of Creole and Cajun

life were based on her experience of life in Louisiana. Her next collection of stories

was published in 1897- A Night in Acadie . Her first novel At Fault was published in

1890. But in 1899 the publication of The Awakening , a novel about marital

infidelity, brought with it such critical antagonism that it brought her literary career

to a close. The heroine Edna, who awakens to her physicality, independence and self-

knowledge, was unable to live as the object over which man rules. Such a freedom-

seeking woman who neglects her children was particularly condemned by society.

What was unthinkable was that woman’s sexual desire could be written about, and

that too without a note of censure from the author. Sex could never be a legitimate

subject for serious fiction. Kate Chopin was too early for her time.
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II

Short Stories

Chopin was a prolific short story writer. The titles of her short story collections

(Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie ) imply that she was a local colorist, but her

fiction probes much deeper into human nature than what is generally understood by

‘local color’. Her stories had a lyrical quality and were unconventional in form. Her

characters, at odds with social conventions, were often those who try to break free

from traditional, moral and social structures. The local color movement represented

native literature, often crude and psychologically naïve. Stories were written on

conventional lines and their themes had chauvinistic undertones. They concentrated

on the picturesque and local idioms. Short stories were an appropriate medium for

expressing regional characteristics.

Kate Chopin’s stories broke the tradition because they dared to focus on human

characters, their mind and heart instead of local customs. Her stories contain bold

realism and emphasize the woman’s awareness of herself and its daring assertion. Her

main themes are the quest of the female self, the ill consequences of suppressing the

genuine promptings of one’s heart and the legitimacy and purposefulness of the sexual

instinct in human life. As Lewis Leary comments, Chopin was the only writer of short

fiction in the nineteenth century apart from Sarah Orne Jewett and Henry James, who

could play with such a range of characters ‘troubled by a lack or excess or misuse of

freedom’ (Leary 141). From the beginning the theme of freedom, self-discovery and

self-reliance attracted her. While still in her teens, she wrote a short sketch called

“Emancipation: A Life Fable,” the story of an animal born in a cage , who finds the

door open and sees the light of freedom. It escapes, never to return, although freedom

means it has to fight for his own subsistence. This suggests that she had nurtured
 38

hopes of freedom (from restrictions, to enjoy a more expansive life-style) from a very

early age, and she might have developed earlier as a writer had her environment been

different.

Chopin’s stories portray three classes of women - those who are bound by

conventional traditions, those who feel the awakening of the urge for freedom, and

those who can dare to defy conventions and take the reins of their lives in their own

hands. Among those who are trapped in the narrow confines of societal expectations is

a young widow in “A Pair of Silk Stockings” who finds herself in possession of

fifteen dollars, which she planned to spend on her children’s needs. She indulges

herself for the first time and buys herself a pair of silk stockings. She was not thinking

at all. She seemed to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function.

She exchanges her cotton stockings for her new silk ones. The touch of silk on her

flesh feels so good. Then, on a sudden spree of self-indulgence, she buys herself shoes

and gloves, and two high-priced magazines. Feeling hungry, she dines at a restaurant.

The next temptation is a matinee at the theatre. This one afternoon of spending on

herself after years of scrimping and bargain-hunting was euphoric. On the way home

in the cable car she wishes it would never stop, but go on and on forever. This

touching and poignant story reveals the innermost corner of a woman’s heart – a

woman who, like so many of her sisters, is self-sacrificing and deprived of a life of

luxury.

The beautiful Madame Delisle, in “ A Lady of Bayou St. John ”, awaits her

husband who is away in Virginia. She lives alone with her slaves. Sepincourt, her

neighbour, who comes to see her often, offers to take her away to Paris. She feels a

delicious tumult in her whole being; for the first time she realizes what it means to be

a woman. She was willing to go anywhere with him. But fate had something else in
 39

store for her. A message arrives saying Gustave her husband was dead. After the

mourning is over, Sepincourt comes to propose marriage. He finds a changed woman.

For Madame Delisle such a thing was now impossible.

“Can you not see that now my heart, my soul, my thought – my very

life, must belong to another? It could not be different”…Many days

after that Sepincourt spent in the fruitless mental effort of trying to

comprehend that psychological enigma, a woman’s heart. (301-302)

Commitment to the ideal is much easier when the stifling reality of marriage is out of

the question. Madame Delisle lived to be ‘a very pretty old lady’, suggesting that

when the cares and duties of marriage do not take their toll on a woman, she retains

her vitality.

Euphrasie, in “A No Account Creole” almost sacrifices the chance of happiness

with Offdean because she is pledged to marry Placide. However, Placide, realizing her

love for Offdean, rides away on the night before the wedding, thus releasing her from

her promise. Euphrasie feels she has been saved from committing the sin of marrying

someone while she was in love with another man. Here we find that the spirit of

chivalry still persists in life on the plantations, as Placide spares the life of his rival

because of his chivalric spirit.

“The way to love a woman is to think firs’ of her happiness,” he muttered

reflectively. “ He thought a creole knew how to love. Does he reckon he’s

goin’ to learn a creole how to love?”(Chopin CW 101).

Most of the nineteenth century literature by women was created as a response to

patriarchal myths. “ A Visit to Avoyelles” shatters the myth that a woman needs to be

saved by a masculine hero. Mentine has no desire to be saved. The girl Doudouce had

wanted to marry seven years ago, now had four babies, and lived as poorly as the
 40

pine-woods people. He felt like thrusting her husband aside and gathering her and her

children up, to keep as long as life lasted. But she turned her face away from him. Her

lost beauty did not appear to concern her either.

The protagonist in “The Going Away of Liza” leaves her husband because she

craves to taste the joys of existence. She detested her life of drudgery, and in her

defiance she tells her husband that she had ‘shook the dust of the Rydon threshold’

from her feet forever. Chopin also shows that the consequences of such rebellious

actions are not always salutary, implying that although women might want to shake

off their bonds, they are not successful in a hostile world where the path of a lone

woman can be full of pitfalls. Her tales were always grounded in reality. Liza returns

one stormy night, torn and battered, turning a frightened and beseeching face on her

husband. Abner looks at her soaking garments and the tears shining in her eyes. He

kneels upon the floor and takes the torn shoes from her feet (115).

In the story one also finds a graphic description of the life of working class

people. Abner, while discussing the life at the village with his mother, says -

“The same old lot at the station, a settin’ round the stove. It’s a puzzle to me

. how they live. That McBride don’t do work enough to keep him in tobacco.

Old Joseph – I guess he ain’t able to work” ( CW 113-114).

“Athenaise” is the story of a young girl who flees from marriage. She leaves her

husband Cazeau to stay with her parents. She finds a supporter in her brother

Monteclin, to whose remark that he hates Cazeau, like her, she replies –

“No, I don’t hate him…It’s jus’ being married that I detes’ an’ despise.

I can’t stan’ to live with a man, to have him always there; his coats and

pantaloons hanging in my room, his ugly bare feet – washing them in

my tub , befo’ very eyes, ugh!”(431).

 41

When Cazeau comes to take her back, she has to return with him, for his tones, his

mere presence brought to her a sudden sense of hopelessness, an instinctive

realization of the futility of rebellion against a social and sacred institution. Monteclin

helps her to run away, and sets her up in a rented room in New Orleans. He had paid a

month’s rent in advance, but Athenaise meant to look for some suitable employment

so that she need not depend on her brother’s generosity. But apart from a few piano

lessons, her attempts at finding employment are fruitless. Soon she begins to feel

unwell. Discussion with Sylvie, the landlady, dispels her ignorance regarding the

reason behind her indisposition. She is stunned, and slowly suffused by a wave of

ecstasy. Impatient to let her husband know of her pregnancy, she writes to him. She

knows he would forgive her. Returning to her husband now seems the most natural

course to take. Thus Chopin reveals that matrimony is a state that has to be endured,

particularly when motherhood becomes part of the picture. The idea of female

submission to male supremacy has been internalized by women to such an extent that

they may never achieve emancipation in the true sense. Nor is there always a pot of

gold awaiting the woman at the end of the rainbow. Chopin looked beyond

emancipation and saw the practical difficulties of a woman trying to succeed alone in

a man’s world.

In “ The Story of an Hour”, Louise Mallard hears of her husband’s death in a

railroad disaster. After the first storm of grief is over, she locks herself into her room.

Gradually she begins to feel a sensation creeping over her. One whispered word

escapes from her lips -“free, free, free.” The years to come would belong to her

absolutely. She would live for herself. She need not bend her will to another’s ever

again. It was not that she had not loved her husband at all, but -

What could love, the unsolved mystery count for in face of this possession of
 42

self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her

being. ‘Free! Body and soul free!’ she kept whispering (464).

When she came down the stairs, someone opened the door and entered. On seeing her

husband, alive, she gave a piercing cry and fell. The doctors said she died of heart

failure. She had tasted the joy of freedom. The shock of having it taken away so soon

had killed her.

Chopin clearly thinks that marriage is not the goal of a woman’s existence. She

can and does survive alone if she so chooses. However, there is one area where such a

woman misses out. Being a mother herself, Chopin realizes that a woman’s life is not

complete if she cannot experience the joys of motherhood. In one such story, aptly

titled “Regret”, middle-aged Mamzelle Aurelie all of a sudden realizes what she has

missed by not having children. She had never thought of marrying. She was now fifty;

she wore a man’s hat about the farm, and had not yet lived to regret her decision to

remain single. Her neighbour Odile leaves her children with her when she has to go

away to visit her dying mother. Mamzelle Aurelie gets used to the constant excitement

around the house. When Odile returns to claim her children, she feels the painful void

that their departure leaves in her life. ‘She cried like a man, with sobs that seemed to

tear her very soul’ (378).

Mildred Orme, in “ A Shameful Affair” is taken by surprise when kissed by a

farmhand while she was trying her hand at fishing. She finds that the kiss was the

most delicious thing she had known in her twenty years of life. When he apologizes a

few days later for having taken the liberty and asks for forgiveness , she replies –

“Someday…someday - perhaps; when I shall have forgiven myself”(136). It took a

while for the meaning of her reply to dawn on him. She was admitting that she had

been as much of an offender as he.

 43

Breaking up a marriage is not a very easy decision to take. Women in the

nineteenth century were reluctant to take the plunge because of the uncertainties of

the life that awaited them. The protagonist in “Madame Celestin’s Divorce”, whose

husband had been away for six months, was comtemplating divorce. Lawyer Paxton,

who passed by her house every day, was more than willing to help her. She knew she

would face opposition from the community. Even her mother was of the opinion that

it would bring disgrace upon the family. Lawyer Paxton was thinking of proposing

marriage after the divorce came through. But one night Celestin came home, and

Paxton encountered a different Madame Celestin. Sometimes women need to take the

path of least resistance and fall in with social expectations. Not many are bold enough

to take the step for freedom.

“La belle Zoraide ”, a mulatto, had been brought up by Madame Delariviere as

her godchild. Zoraide had skin the colour of café-au-lait. Her mistress had told her

she would have a beautiful wedding at the Cathedral. She wanted her to marry

Ambroise, the mulatto servant of Doctor Langle. But Zoraide had fallen in love with

Mezor, who was a negro.

“Doctor Langle gives me his slave to marry but he would not give me

his son. Then, since I am not white, let me have from out of my own race

the one whom my heart has chosen” (769).

Zoraide was pregnant; Mezor was sold and sent away. When the baby was born,

Zoraide was told it was a still-birth. She lost her mind, holding on to a bundle of rags

and calling it her infant. La belle Zoraide lived on, but now she was called Zoraide la

folle. In this story Chopin uses the narrative technique of a story within a story.

Manna Loulou, the negress, is telling the story to her mistress. Here Chopin’s theme
 44

is that tragedy results when a woman is robbed of her right to be her own person and

to love whom she will.

“A Respectable Woman” is the story of a wife who feels strong sexual attraction

towards another man who is not her husband. Her husband had invited his friend

Gouvernail to spend a week with them. Sitting on a bench with him one night, while

he was talking, she wanted to reach out her hand and touch him. She wanted to

whisper against his cheek – she might have done so had she not been a respectable

woman. She took the early morning train to the city and did not return till Gouvernail

was gone from under her roof. Thus she removed herself from temptation, lest her

own feelings betrayed her into doing something that was not ‘respectable’.

“Lilacs” is an effort to balance desire for freedom with realistic limitations.

Adrienne Farival visits the convent every year at lilac time. One year she is turned

away as the Mother Superior learns she is a professional singer in Paris. Adrienne’s

duplicity is spurred by a desire to recapture lost childhood innocence. Chopin

attempts to balance the conflicting demands of discipline and freedom, and distrusts

the suppression of feeling required by religious life.

In the category of those who defy conventions to seize the reins of life in their

own hands is Paula Von Stolz in “Wiser than a God”. She nurses her sick mother, and

after her mother’s death, throws all her energies into developing into a musician. Her

father and mother had dreamed she might make her mark in the musical world

someday. George Brainard, who has been a frequent visitor, expresses his love for her

but his proposal of marriage is rejected. The reason she gives is-

“Because it doesn’t enter into the purpose of my life…What do you know

of my life…is music anything more to you than the pleasing distraction of

an idle moment? Can’t you feel that with me it courses with the blood
 45

through my veins? That it’s something dearer than life, than riches, than

love?”(46).

She loved him, but that did not deflect her from the course she had chosen. She went

on to become a renowned pianist in Leipsic. Chopin foreshadows Willa Cather, whose

heroine Thea Kronborg places career before love and matrimony.

The story “ A Point at Issue!” records the unconventional marriage of Eleanor

Gail and Charles Faraday.

Marriage was to be a form, that while fixing legally their relation to each

other, was in no wise to touch the individuality of either; that was to be

preserved intact. Each was to remain a free integral of humanity,

responsible to no dominating exactions of so-called marriage laws (50).

Faraday was to give her the freedom to acquire the culture which she had been denied

during her girlhood. Marriage, which often marks the closing of a woman’s

intellectual existence, was in her case the portal through which to seek perfection. To

acquire a thorough knowledge of the French language Eleanor was to stay in Paris,

while Faraday returned to his work in Plymdale. The public was shocked at the

‘effrontery of the situation.’ Such an arrangement was ‘indecent’ and ‘improper’(51).

Society was unable to accept such an avant-garde and innovative marriage. Here

Chopin was the forerunner of Edith Wharton who wrote of marriages where the

married couple maintain their individual liberties.

In “Miss Witherwell’s Mistake”, Mildred’s father sends her away from home to

stay with her aunt because she has been discovered having a love affair. It is hoped

that she would come back reconciled to ‘the worldly wisdom of those who know the

world so much better than she’(60). Miss Witherwell’s mistake is sending her to the
 46

Battery office to check her proof-sheets. Roland Wilson, who was to be shut out of her

life, happens to be the assistant editor at the office. Mildred takes her fortune into her

own hands, and marries her lover. Miss Witherwell is left with no alternative and has

to accept a fait accompli.

Marianne, “The Maid of Saint Philippe”, carried a gun across her shoulder as

easily as a soldier might. Her stride was like that of a stag on the hillside. She stood

by her father’s side when all the settlers abandoned their homes to escape subjection

by the English. She was not afraid of the desolate life, she worked and hunted and was

more than a son could be. Returning from her hunt one evening she found him lying

dead. Then her heart was as strong as oak and her nerves were like iron. Friends from

the village came to ask her to leave Saint Philippe, where it would be unseemly for

her to live alone. Captain Vaudry offered his love, and along with marriage, a life of

luxury. But the free air of the forest and stream was in her blood. “ I was not born to

be the mother of slaves”, she said… “Freedom is left for me!…Hardships may await

me, but let it be death rather than bondage.” The choice was hers. She chose to pay

the price for independence.

A Night in Acadie is the second volume of Chopin’s short stories. “At the

’Cadian Ball” is a story which shows that sometimes it pays for a woman to take the

aggressive position in a love affair. Alcee Laballiere reaches the Ball after midnight

and is ensconced in a corner whispering sweet nothings to Calixta, the belle of

Spanish descent all the men were after. Clarisse, hearing of her lover’s departure,

follows him to the ball, and calls him out saying something had happened at home.

Alcee divines that the real reason for this subterfuge was her fear of losing him, and

he realizes the extent of the love she feels for him. The hazard that Clarisse had taken,

coming out in the middle of the night on the trail of her lover, paid good dividends.
 47

A sequel to this story, “The Storm” is an unconventional treatment of marriage. It

shows how a woman can take what she wants, and yet keep her marriage intact.

During the storm Calixta’s husband and son are stranded in town. Alcee, who is

Calixta’s former lover, seeks shelter from the storm, and during the absence of her

husband the two are brought together.

As she glanced up at him the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place

to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire…The

generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a

white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own

sensuous nature that had never yet been reached (594-595).

After the storm, Alcee leaves. When her husband returns, they sit down to a relaxed

meal as a very happy family. Calixta’s marriage to Bobinot is not unhappy, neither

does her episode with Alcee disrupt her marriage in any way. Rather, her marriage

seems to have been nourished. Chopin’s point of view here is that freedom is

nourishing. “The Storm” is remarkable because of the statement it makes in the

suffocating, convention-ridden society of the 1890’s.Chopin reiterates her belief that it

is a woman’s birthright to be passionately fulfilled. Sensuous passages found in the

story were found abominably ‘coarse’ in a woman writer.

Although Chopin opposed sensual repression, she also recognized the importance

of following moral precepts. “Ti Demon” deals with Marianne, a young woman who

insists on her right to flirt with others although she is engaged to Ti Demon. On

discovering her with an admirer, her fiancé beats the man half to death. The story

reflects the author’s views that flouting social and moral conventions does not always

have a salutary effect.

“In Sabine” is the story of ‘Tite Reine, or little queen. Riding through the parish of
 48

Sabine, Gregoire came across the log-cabin of Bud Aiken, who had run off and

married ‘Tite Reine. She confessed to Gregoire that Bud was killing her.

“I tell you, he beats me; my back an’ arms - you ought to see - it’s all blue.

He would a’ choked me to death one day w’en he was drunk…Oh, don’t

leave me yere, Mista Gregoire! Don’ leave me behine you!” she

entreated, breaking once more into sobs(329-330).

The imploring look in her eye made him stay on. Bud woke up in the morning and

called for his wife. There was no answering “I’m comin’, Bud. Yere I come”. She had

fled with Gregoire in the middle of the night, away from bondage and slavery.

Apart from her theme of woman’s self-expression, her stories also offer charming

idiosyncracies of the Natchitoches people. She used a wealth of local material, but she

did not focus on the Creole past. Her focus was more on the universal rather than the

regional aspects of life. Neither did she write about Southern issues, although she

dealt with problems like slavery and miscegenation, she concentrated on the

psychology of the individual instead of on social issues. One such story dealing with

miscegenation is “Desiree’s Baby”. Desiree was a foundling Madame Valminde had

brought up as her own daughter. Armand Aubigny had fallen in love with her and

married her. When Madame Valmonde visits Desiree to look at her child, she finds her

ecstatic. “Oh Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it

is a boy, to bear his name”(242). But the situation changes. As the baby grows older, a

change is noticed. His complexion resembles that of the quadroon boy. An awful

change comes over her husband’s manner, until at last he expresses his desire for her

to leave. When she asks him what he meant, he replies “ It means the child is not

white; it means that you are not white” (245). She takes the child and disappears

forever. When making a bonfire of the child’s belongings, Armand discovers a letter
 49

from his mother which says ‘our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who

adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery.’ Desiree had

paid for the sins of Armand’s mother.

Chopin portrays human characteristics in such a manner that her views never

impose on the reader. She did not preach any change in the social system. The only

story that deserves the term ‘social criticism’ is “Miss McEnders” which shows the

awakening of a social reformer to the rottenness in her own family. Miss McEnders

takes her custom away from the seamstress Mlle Salambre on finding that she is an

unwed mother. She is shocked when Mlle visits her and defiantly challenges her to

find out how her father had made his money. She denounces the servants, horses and

luxury which dishonest wealth brings. As for Mr. Meredith Holt, who was Miss

McEnders’ fiance, she says he is not fit to be the husband of a self-respecting barmaid.

The social reformer, Miss McEnders, is left with her world of self-righteousness

crumbling around her.

Chopin’s women were objectionable to the editors. After the hostile criticism to

her later novel The Awakening, Chopin wrote “Charlie”, which was her revenge on

the males who had killed her creativity. She dismembered the father who forbids his

daughter to act the role of a man. Charlie rode and hunted, wore short hair and

trouserlets and dusty boots. When her father is injured in an accident, she takes over

the running of the plantation and becomes his right hand. Now with all the dignity and

grace which the term implied, she was the mistress of Les Palmiers. She would not

marry her suitor because she didn’t want to leave her father without a right arm. The

father is now dependent on the daughter whose freedom he had wished to curtail.

“Two Portraits” is a twin tale about the Wanton and the Nun, where the little girl

Alberta is brought up in diametrically opposite ways – and according to the way her
 50

initiation into life takes place, she develops her individual characteristics. Alberta is

capricious. She gives her love only when and where she chooses. She does not know

shame or reserve. Sometimes her wantonness becomes vixenish. Alberta the Nun is

her opposite. She knows that ‘it is not with the hands and lips and eyes that we reach

God, but with the soul; that the soul must be made perfect and the flesh subdued’

(464). Chopin uses the omniscient point of view in telling her stories, but she

frequently withdraws from the narrative and runs into dialogue, which induces the

reader to plunge into the consciousness of her characters.

She dramatized almost all her tales. “ Wiser than a God” and “ A Rude

Awakening” start with words spoken by one of the characters. A first person narrator

is used in “ Juanita”, “Cavanelle”, “Vagabonds” and “Elizabeth Stouck’s One Story.”

The epistolary style is used in “A Point at Issue”. Chopin also uses the technique of

story–sequence. “The Storm” is a continuation of “At the ‘Cadian Ball”. Her

characters appear and reappear in different stories. By repeating her characters she

helps them to grow into complex and individual persons. Gregoire, who is a

secondary character in At Fault, enacts the hero in “In Sabine”. In her novels she uses

the circular or spiral structure – the first and last scenes are enacted in the same place.

In At Fault the plot begins and ends at Place du Bois, and in The Awakening it is

Grand Isle.

The Louisiana society in her fiction is French at heart. The Creoles have a deep

impress of Gallic culture and traditions on their lifestyle. French is their favourite

vehicle of expression. To lend authenticity to her stories the text is interspersed with

French phrases. Some characters speak in French sentences, such as a comment

passed by Zaida in “A Night in Acadie” – “Tiens! T’es pareille comme ain mariee,

Zaida” (491). Men and women in ordinary professions are chosen as her protagonists.
 51

Mamzelle Fleurette in “A Sentimental Soul” ran a little store selling newspapers,

pencils and erasers. The intense religious fervour of the region comes out when

Mamzelle Fleurette goes to confession because she is in love with another woman’s

husband. The historical aspect is not neglected either. She depicts the bitter

consequences of the Civil War in some of her tales. Families disintegrated, the

descendants of rich landowners wandered in search of work. The former plantations

are described in “ A No-Account Creole”:

In the days of Lucien Santien and his hundred slaves, it had been very

splendid in the wealth of its one thousand acres. But the war did its work,

of course(82) .

In “ The Return of Alcibiade” we see the effects of the war in mental illness.

Monsieur Jean Baptiste is insane because his son has been killed in the war.

In her writing she was inspired by Guy de Maupassant, whose short stories she

also translated. Like Maupassant, she had a unique vision of life. She had insight into

character, and allowed her characters to reveal themselves through their actions.

Among the other short story writers she admired were Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary E.

Wilkins Freeman, whose realistic studies of New England life impressed her. Her

stories gave her the opportunity to portray the full range of her ideas about marriage,

and to revise many of the myths associated with women and marriage in the 1890’s.

Much of her fiction suggests she believed the demands of married life to be

diametrically opposed to a woman’s achieving her own personal selfhood.

III

Novels

Chopin’s early novel At Fault (1890) lacks the intensity of her more mature novel

The Awakening (1899). Yet it has keenness of insight and depicts the plight of a
 52

woman struggling “with a seemingly irreconcilable difference between the social

reality of an ‘outward existence’ and the private vision of an ‘inward life’ (Koloski

89-94).

The story of At Fault centres on Therese Lafirme, who manages the plantation

efficiently after the death of her husband. When Hosmer, a divorced businessman

from St. Louis, declares his affection for her, she insists on reconciling him with his

former wife. Her Catholic background makes divorce repugnant to her. She tells

Hosmer he has been guilty of deserting his wife.

“You married a woman of weak character. You furnished her with every

means to increase that weakness, and shut her out absolutely from your

life and yourself from hers. You left her then as practically without moral

support as you have certainly done now, in deserting her. It was the act of

a coward”(769).

She forces Hosmer to remarry his wife. He agrees to it as he feels her to be a woman

with moral perceptions keener than his own. Thus the morality and integrity of

Therese come through at the cost of her own happiness. That she does this after

considerable inner struggle is evident.

“I have seen myself at fault in following what seemed the only right. I feel

as if there were no way to turn for the truth. Old supports appear to be

giving way beneath me …But do you think, David, that it’s right we

should find our happiness out of that past of pain and sin and trouble?” (872).

We find that Therese questions herself whether her concern for other people and the

good accruing from it could counterbalance the personal discomfort into which she

was often driven by her own agency.

 53

At the end of the novel Therese and Hosmer are united as a result of an accident,

when Hosmer’s wife dies in the river. Chopin makes the point here that self-

fulfillment cannot be wrested at the cost of another’s happiness. She also speaks of

marital unhappiness, and the danger of overlooking the needs of the spouse in the

interest of one’s own selfish desires.

Therese tries to represent the stabilizing force in society, by upholding old

customs and traditions. Melicent, Hosmer’s sister, has a desire to be free from the

restraints of convention. Her selfishness and dabbling in ‘culture’ may be

foreshadowings of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening . Hosmer can in some ways be

said to anticipate Edna’s businessman husband who leaves his wife too much on her

own. According to Lewis Leary, Chopin is experimenting in her first novel,

‘producing rough first designs of what later would be fashioned to art’ (Leary, Other

Novel 74).

The women characters of At Fault differ from nineteenth century women.

Motherhood rarely occupies their attention; work rarely intrudes upon their time.

Excessive leisure brings a sense of uselessness. However, Therese Lafirme shows

business acumen in managing a farm of four thousand acres. Chopin herself had taken

on the same task when her husband Oscar died in 1882. Therese was feminine,

dressed tastefully, - she was a woman who knows who she is and what she wants.

Chopin’s point here is that being feminine does not necessarily rule out efficiency and

practicality. Therese also had other feminine qualities such as warmth of heart and a

caring nature. She goes to visit Marie Louise who is her old nurse and whom she calls

Grosse Tante, asking her to move her cabin back from the river bank.

“Some day you will find yourself out in the middle of the river – and

what am I going to do then? –No one to nurse me when I am sick – no

 54

one to scold me – nobody to love me”(809).

The religious fatalism of the old negress is seen when she refuses to remove her cabin

to a safer place. “If the good God does not want to take care of me, then it’s time for

me to go”(809).

Chopin’s major novel, The Awakening (1899) was denounced as immoral by

contemporary reviews, but later became a text of feminist literature. H.E. Scudder, the

editor who accepted “ Athenaise” for the Atlantic, suggested that she write another

novel. She began work on The Awakening, and two years later, in April 1899, it was

published by Herbert S.Stone & Co. of Chicago and New York. During her lifetime

the novel went out of print and was briefly reissued in 1906, after her death.

In the early stages of her career, Chopin had tried to follow the literary

advice and literary examples of others, and had learned that such dutiful

efforts led only to imaginative stagnation. By the mid-1890s, when she

came to write The Awakening, Chopin had come to believe that the true

artist was one who defied tradition, who rejected both the convenances

of respectable morality, and the conventions of literary success.

(Showalter, SC 65-66)

The contemporary reviewers were so hostile that Chopin discontinued writing after its

first publication. A reviewer from the Los Angeles Sunday Times said:

…the novel is unhealthily introspective and morbid in feeling…when

she writes another book it is to be hoped that she will choose a theme

more healthful and sweeter of smell (“Fresh Literature” ).

It was French critic Cyrille Arnavon, writing on American realism in 1946, who

finally acknowledged the significance of Chopin’s last novel. When the novel was

written, American women were grappling with the question ‘What is woman’s role?
 55

How does patriarchy limit female selfhood and sexuality? Edna, the twenty-eight year

old wife of Leonce Pontellier, a successful businessman in New Orleans, is already

dissatisfied with a husband who sees his wife as his possession. Edna was reproached

for being an inattentive mother. She loved her children, but she could not occupy

herself with them constantly. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her

heart; she would sometimes forget them. Mr. Pontellier termed this as –

…her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother’s place to

look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full

with his brokerage business. He could not be in two places at once;

making a living for his family on the street, and staying at home to see

that no harm befell them ( Chopin, Awakening 7).

It was difficult for Mr. Pontellier to define exactly where his wife failed in her duty

towards their children. But he felt it nevertheless. It was because Edna Pontellier was

not a mother-woman. Grand Isle, where they had gone to spend their summer

vacation, seemed to be full of mother-women.

It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings

when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They

were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and

esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow

wings as ministering angels(9).

A perfect example of these mother-women, and a perfect foil for Edna, was her friend

Adele Ratignolle. She was the bygone heroine of romance and ‘the fair lady of our

dreams’. She was fond of Edna, and often brought her sewing and came to sit with her

in the afternoons.
 56

But Edna was not like the other Creole women. She was not satisfied with her

married life. Mr. Pontellier returned late at night from Klein’s hotel. He reproached his

wife with her inattention to her children, smoked his cigar and went off to sleep. She

sat on the porch and cried.

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 over her soul’s summer day. It was

strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly

upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps

to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to

herself. (8)

Although her husband was a good provider, she did not share the bond of

companionship with him. However, she found a companion and admirer in young

Robert Lebrun, who, as was his wont, had come to spend the summer with his mother

at Grand Isle. Their companionship did not raise any eyebrows, since each summer at

Grand Isle, Robert had devoted himself to some fair dame or damsel. His attentions

were not taken seriously. He urged Edna to go bathing, and Edna, in spite of initial

reluctance, found herself agreeing.

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her, - the light which,

showing the way, forbids it.

At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to dreams,

to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome her the

midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the

universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual

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to the world within and about her(14)

Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early

period she had ‘apprehended instinctively the dual life – that outward existence

which conforms, the inward life which questions(14) .

Robert, who had been spending a lot of time with her, held away from her on

certain days. ‘She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away

from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much

about the sun when it was shining (27). Yet when Robert left for Mexico without

telling her about his impending departure, she was unable to control her emotions,

‘striving to hold back and to hide, even from herself as she would have hidden from

another, the emotion which was troubling - tearing - her. Her eyes were brimming

with tears.’ Somehow she felt that she had lost that which her newly awakened being

demanded.

What she felt for Robert in no way resembled that which she felt for her husband.

She harboured thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. One part of

herself was always private, not to be revealed to anyone. She preserved the sanctity of

her inner being. She had once told Madame Ratignolle that she would never sacrifice

herself for her children. In trying to explain herself to her uncomprehending friend she

said -

“I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my

life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it more clear;

it’s only something that I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing

itself to me” (46).

Edna was always irritated by the social graces that had to be observed. On her

day for receiving callers she would go out. Mr. Pontellier was aghast that she did not
 58

even leave an excuse. ‘Why, my dear, I should think you’d understand by this time

that people don’t do such things; we’ve got to observe les convenances…’(49). Edna,

however, was not interested in keeping up appearances. Those whom she considered

as friends were a select few. When she visited her friend Adele Ratignolle, she caught

a glimpse of domestic harmony, but she had no longing for it. ‘It was not a condition

of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui’

(54). She began to go out for walks by herself; she neglected her household. Mr

Pontellier was worried about her. As he confided to the family physician, Doctor

Mandelet-

Her whole attitude- toward me and everybody and everything - has changed.

You know I have a quick temper, but I don’t want to quarrel or be rude to a

woman especially my wife; yet I’m driven to it, and feel like ten thousand

devils after I’ve made a fool of myself. She’s making it devilishly

uncomfortable for me…She’s got some sort of notion in her head concerning

the eternal rights of women; and – you understand – we meet in the morning

at the breakfast table (63).

It is evident to the reader, though not explicitly stated, that Edna’s husband no longer

held any physical attraction for her, thus leading to the breakdown of conjugal

relationship. Such a situation is difficult for the husband to accept. Mr. Pontelllier

showed great forbearance with his indifferent wife. Edna’s father, the Colonel, when

visiting the Pontellier household, took the side of his son-in-law. In his opinion, Mr.

Pontellier was far too lenient. “Authority, coercion are what is needed. Put your foot

down good and hard; the only way to manage a wife.” The Colonel was perhaps

unaware that he had coerced his own wife into her grave (68).
 59

Mr. Pontellier left for New York on work, and Edna breathed a sigh of relief.

Even the children were gone, carried off to Iberville by their grandmother. Edna felt

that a ‘radiant peace settled upon her.’ At the races, where she went with Mrs.

Highcamp, she made the acquaintance of Alcee Arobin. At first she recoiled from the

intimacy that he gradually began to demand. Even if he pressed his lips upon her

hand, ‘she felt somewhat like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into

an act of infidelity’…The thought was passing vaguely through her mind “What

would he think?” She did not mean her husband. She was thinking of Robert Lebrun.

(74). Edna had a little money of her own from her mother’s estate, and she was

beginning to sell her sketches. She decided to move out of her husband’s house, and

set up in a tiny house on her own. ‘Instinct had prompted her to put away her

husband’s bounty in casting off her allegiance…whatever came, she had resolved

never again to belong to another than herself’ (76). Arobin began to visit her regularly.

She found that she liked the touch of his fingers through her hair.

One of these days…I’m going to pull myself together and think – try

to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don’t

know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly

wicked specimen of the sex.. But some way I can’t convince myself

that I am. I must think about it (79).

Edna fell prey to Arobin’s seductions, but it was Robert whom she longed for. On his

return from Mexico, when Robert confessed he had had wild dreams of Edna

becoming his wife if Pontellier set her free, she replied –

“You have been a very, very foolish boy, dreaming of impossible things

when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one

of Mr. Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where

 60

I choose. If he were to say ‘Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she

is yours,’ I should laugh at you both”(102).

Called away to assist at Adele Ratignolle’s childbirth, she returned to find Robert had

gone, leaving behind a note which said “I love you. Good-by – because I love you”

(106). Edna realized that Robert did not understand her, he would never understand.

He did not respect her right to govern herself. Despondency came upon her.

There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert, and

she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of

him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone. The children

appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her, who had

overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul’s slavery for the rest

of her days. But she knew a way to elude them (108).

The next morning she went down to Grand Isle, and having shed her clothing – ‘like

some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known’

(109) she walked into the safe, close embrace of the sea.

Not only Robert, but the critics also failed to understand Edna. The meaning of

Edna’s awakening was misconstrued in contemporary reviews. An article appearing in

the Congregationalist commented –

It is a languorous, passionate love story of New Orleans and vicinity,

hinging on the gradual yielding of a wife to the attractions of other men

than her husband. It is a brilliant piece of writing, but unwholesome in its

influence. We cannot commend it. (“Literature”).

Some critics even termed her story as vulgar, as in this review published in Literature:

‘One cannot refrain from regret that so beautiful a style and so much refinement of

taste have been spent by Miss Chopin on an essentially vulgar story’ (“Fiction”). Even
 61

those who acknowledged her knowledge of the feminine character, failed to

understand the purport of the story.

That the book is strong and that Miss Chopin has a keen knowledge of

certain phases of feminine character will not be denied. But it was

not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter

the overworked field of sex fiction (“Books of the Day”).

There were comparisons of the story with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. In a review by

Willa Cather in The Pittsburgh Leader ( signed “Sibert”), the novel was called “ A

Creole Bovary”. Cather praised Chopin’s literary style, while at the same time

criticizing her theme - ‘…I shall not attempt to say why Miss Chopin has devoted so

exquisite and sensitive, well-governed a style to so trite and sordid a theme’

(“Books and Magazines”).

In response to the diverse critical comments which appeared in the reviews of

her book, Kate Chopin published this tongue-in-cheek ‘Retraction’-

Having a group of people at my disposal, I thought it might be entertaining

(to myself) to throw them together and see what might happen. I never

dreamed of Mrs. Pontellier making such a mess of things and working out

her own damnation as she did. If I had had the slightest intimation of such a

thing I would have excluded her from the company. But when I found out

what she was up to, the play was half over and it was then too late.

[St. Louis, Mo. May 28,1899] (“ Aims and Autographs of Authors”).

What her critics did not realize and what she knew she could not explain, was the

fact that Edna’s awakening did not refer to the awakening of her sexual desires.

It was the birth of her consciousness, a realization of the self which many a contented

housewife goes through life without being aware of. Women were conditioned to live
 62

their lives without expressing their true personality, without aspirations of their own.

The pinnacles of attainment were marriage and motherhood. Those who fulfilled the

duties of a married woman and a mother were accorded the approval of society.

A novel about a woman who dared to defy patriarchal prescriptions was bound to

meet with disapproval. Some of the criticism was even prompted by fear, lest any of

the women readers of the day chose to follow Edna’s example.

The Awakening is a novel about a woman’s emancipation from a claustrophobic,

middle-class marriage and its domestic routines. Edna had the courage to act upon her

artistic and sexual impulses, and even her act of suicide was an act of self-assertion

and refusal to return to her domestic trap. The novel speaks about a woman’s right to

choose her own destiny. It was difficult for nineteenth century society to realize the

concept of self-determination for women . Women had always been treated as

reproductive

toys, thus women having any identity other than that connected with a man was

unthinkable. Besides, readers in the 1890’s were not used to admitting publicly what

in private many of them might admit. A woman who searched beyond convention for

self-fulfillment was shocking.

Yet Edna’s fulfillment was not in the satisfaction of sensual desire. What she

required was freedom of spirit. When Robert speaks of making her his wife after

Leonce Pontellier sets her free, Edna is stung to the quick. She refuses to be

considered a piece of property belonging to her husband. The patriarchal conventions

that she rebels against are exemplified in the wife-managing techniques advocated by

Edna’s father who is visiting them, when he advises Leonce to exert his authority by

putting his foot down good and hard.

 63

She needs space; she needs to be alone. When her husband leaves for a business

trip to New York, she breathes a sigh of relief and feels a radiant peace settling upon

her. As soon as she returns from her summer at Grand Isle, we are told, she began to

do as she liked, going and coming as she liked, and lending herself to any passing

caprice. She spent more and more time alone.

…what it means in psychological terms is that she spends more and more

time fashioning and ideal state of romantic self-fulfillment which,

practically speaking, requires not even Robert (Justus 119-120).

Edna’s conversation with Dr. Mandelet shortly before her suicide shows how much

she wanted to be alone. ‘I want to be let alone… I don’t want anything but my own

way.’ Edna’s own way means refusal to accept social convention and insistence upon

both asserting and acting upon her wishes. She gives up household, marital and

maternal responsibilities, moves out of her husband’s house and begins to live alone.

Edna’s awakening to selfhood led to her self-annihilation, as she found no one would

accept her existence on her own terms. Even Robert could not understand her new-

found freedom. Her individualism alienated her from the rest of society. She found

herself totally alone. It is not surprising that Chopin’s original title for the novel was

‘A Solitary Soul’. Edna’s awakening was that of an individual who undergoes a

change of consciousness. This hints at the ritual of the rites of passage – in her case

the passage from the position of a married woman who is her husband’s personal

property to that of an independent and aware person willing herself towards growth

and fulfillment. The suicide at the end of the novel seems to imply that Edna fails to

make the passage successfully (Anastasapoulou 19). In the realm of woman’s inner space,

she makes a successful transition. But in man’s world or in ‘outer space’ she was unable

to make a stand. Chopin builds upon the conceptual imagery of Erik Erikson’s
 64

distinction between a male ‘outer space’ and a female ‘inner space’. Edna’s goal of

selfhood had particular significance for nineteenth century women since the American

Dream in that century was individualism. Edna showed a way of realising that dream.

On its publication in 1899, The Awakening created a furore among literary

critics of the time because of the author’s unconventional treatment of her heroine.

Chopin refused to deplore her heroine’s violation of social taboos, and allowed her to

walk into the sea as a celebration of her untamed, rebellious spirit. It is rather like

choosing the option of performing ‘jauhar’ to avoid falling into the hands of the

enemy. Edna’s rebellious, freedom-loving spirit echoes that of Chopin herself. In art

as well as in life, she was loath to be bound by convention. She wrote about those

women who dared to break free of traditions. For this she was not treated kindly by

the critics, especially since she dared to talk about women’s sexuality. She agreed in

general with the theory of sexual selection that Darwin had presented in The Descent

of Man , but she used her own self-knowledge as a woman to question his

interpretation of the woman’s role in a relationship. She rebels against his contention

that the woman is passive and inferior, and that she is a creature without desire .

Darwin had pointed out that males had ‘gained the power of selection’ by having so

long held the females in an ‘abject state of bondage’(Darwin 371) .In The Awakening

Chopin created Edna as a woman who exerts her natural sexual desire. She had the

power of self-assertion, which is the underlying principle of sexual and natural

selection. This view of sex was threatening to the genteel American society of the

90’s.Chopin’s argument was that the female plays a far more active and passionate

role in the ‘sexual struggle’ than Darwin had suggested. In the novel, however, Edna

is unaware of her needs, and in some ways, cannot fathom her own behaviour. But

her conversation with Dr. Mandelet shortly before her death proves that she is sure
 65

about her right to self-assertion . “ I’m not going to be forced into doing things … I

want to be let alone…I don’t want anything but my own way.” Dr. Mandelet perceives

Edna as some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun. This animal can be said to

be the allegorical beast of ‘Emancipation’, and the cage in which she awakens and

from which she attempts to free herself is the cage of marriage. The latent sensuality

which stirs within her finds vent in her intimacy with Alcee Arobin. But this does not

lead her to spiritual peace. She is still suffering from ‘ the old ennui’. She hankers for

something unattainable – spiritual freedom. Moments before her death when she

responds to the seductive call of the sea, her thoughts return not to Robert, but to the

bluegrass meadow of her childhood. Her emancipation was not in relationships with

men, but in merging with the universal, the ‘one’. Edna’s self-immolation seen from

this viewpoint is not suicide – it is a merging with the infinite. Thus she leaves the

confines of her conventional existence not for the dubious pleasures of extra-marital

affairs, but in response to the yearnings of her soul. Like Whitman, Mrs. Chopin was a

transcendentalist and her themes revolved around individualism, freedom and nature.

Chopin’s theme was revolutionary because it threatened the social structure in a

way that mere adultery does not. Edna rejected the Creole ideal of mother-woman

embodied by Adele Ratignolle, neither was she able to adopt the model of the

independent woman-artist embodied in Mademoiselle Reisz. Her dramatic death

suggests that her rejection of life was directed against the entire social structure, not

just morality.

Edna is trapped in the age-old patriarchal myth that women are ruled by emotions.

That she is ruled by emotions becomes evident in such acts as taking off her wedding

ring and flinging it on the carpet. She stamps on it, but, as the writer observes, she

failed to make the slightest mark on it. In a sweeping passion she seizes a glass vase
 66

from the table and smashes it to pieces on the hearth. Both these acts show her

rebellion against the bonds of domesticity, and the plight of a woman in Catholic

society where divorce is rare. Passive domesticity or death, - were these the only two

options open to women?

Joan Zlotnick points out that adultery and suicide are not the goals that Chopin

recommends for women. But the author, who was the mother of six children before

she was thirty, is suggesting that society’s formula for the happiness of women -

namely marriage and motherhood, does not necessarily apply to all women. (Zlotnick

4). Per Seyersted, in writing her biography said that her ‘implicit approval of

characters who kick over the traces suggest that writing provided a vent for her

rebellious spirit’ (Seyersted, Biography 5). Many critics found The Awakening to be

just another story about the plight of women. Even Willa Cather who reviewed the

novel under the pen name ‘Sibert’ in the Pittsburgh Leader, spoke against the trite

and sordid retelling of a woman’s familiar tale(“Books and Magazines”). But not all

critics criticized her. In 1952 Van Wyck Brooks wrote about The Awakening:

But there was one novel of the nineties in the South that should have been

remembered, … one small perfect book that mattered more than the whole

life work of many a prolific writer (34).

In 1956 Kenneth Eble wrote an appreciative essay entitled “ A Forgotten Novel:

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening” –

…it is advanced in theme and technique over the novels of its day…

it anticipates in many respects the modern novel… One could offer the

book as evidence that the regional writer can go beyond the limitations

of regional material…The Awakening deserves to be restored and to be

given its place among novels worthy of preservation (Eble 261-269).

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In 1962 Edmund Wilson assured the book a place in the American canon when he

wrote of a novel ‘quite uninhibited and beautifully written, which anticipates D.H.

Lawrence in its treatment of infidelity’(Wilson 590).

In the 1970’s critics tried to define her place in the literary tradition variously

describing her as local colorist, regionalist, a romantic, a neo-transcendentalist, a

realist, a naturalist and an existentialist. She was the most daring writer of the time,

because she undertook to expose that part of a woman’s consciousness which was

never acknowledged, not to the world and not even to herself.

The author’s sympathy for Edna is evident throughout the story, although it is

presented with detachment. The point of view of the novel is not objective, but rather

omniscient and judicial. The author describes the thoughts and feelings of almost

every character. Occasionally the narrative perspective shifts to show Edna as others

see her, for instance as Dr. Mandelet or Mlle. Reisz do. The perspective is omniscient

in that it knows what Edna thinks and feels, and also more than Edna herself knows.

That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new

conditions in herself that colored and changed her environment, she did not

yet suspect.(102).

Edna is impulsive and ignorant of the consequences of her acts. She tells Adele -

‘sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again;

idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided.’ Her acts confirm this self-evaluation. She

thinks she is in love with Robert, yet she has an affair with Arobin, who means little to

her. She desires freedom from the bonds of marriage, yet she is unable to sustain a

prolonged independent existence. Thus the narrative stance has two aspects; the

partisan narrative stance shows a romantic vision of life’s possibilities, the alternate

stance is based on reality and acceptance of human limitations.

 68

The alternate vision also seems to say that ‘freedom’ can be found not in

uninhibited instinctual expression but in reason and in recognition of one’s

own capacities and limits as well as the limits imposed by the environment

(Sullivan 73).

Chopin never advocated any change in the social system. According to Per Seyersted,

to Chopin true art was incompatible with a zeal for reform. She was never a feminist

in the dictionary sense of the term. Neither was she an activist.

Even more than Grace King or Ruth McEnery Stuart, Kate Chopin had

considerable ambivalence toward the Woman Question, women’s

rights activities, and women’s clubs. She dissociated herself in essays

and interviews more thoroughly than they from feminist struggles

and other women writers (Taylor 151).

However, in his biography Seyersted describes Mrs. Chopin as a ‘crusader for the

rights of women.’ A wife, a mother, and feminine to the core, she was nevertheless a

believer in a woman’s right to self-realization. She dared to break the unwritten laws

of patriarchy, and showed the way to others. She will be remembered as a champion

of feminine independence.
69