The Awakening

(Chopin novel)

The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin,

first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans
and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end
of the 19th century, the plot centers on
Edna Pontellier and her struggle between
her increasingly unorthodox views on
femininity and motherhood with the
prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-
the-century American South. It is one of
the earliest American novels that focuses
on women's issues without
condescension. It is also widely seen as a
landmark work of early feminism,
generating a mixed reaction from
contemporary readers and critics. The
novel's blend of realistic narrative, incisive
social commentary, and psychological
complexity makes The Awakening a
precursor of American modernist
literature; it prefigures the works of
American novelists such as William
Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway and
echoes the works of contemporaries such
as Edith Wharton and Henry James. It can
also be considered among the first
Southern works in a tradition that would
culminate with the modern masterpieces
of Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora
Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and
Tennessee Williams.
The Awakening

First edition cover

Author Kate Chopin

Working title A Solitary Soul

Country United States

Language English

Genre feminist literature

Set in New Orleans and

Louisiana Gulf coast,
1890s
Publisher Herbert S. Stone & Co.
Publication date April 22, 1899

Media type Print: hardcover

Pages 303

OCLC 1420631
Dewey Decimal 813.4

LC Class PS1294.C63 A64 1899

Text The Awakening at

Wikisource

Summary
The novel opens with the Pontellier family
—Léonce, a New Orleans businessman of
Louisiana Creole heritage; his wife Edna;
and their two sons, Etienne and Raoul—
vacationing on Grand Isle at a resort on
the Gulf of Mexico managed by Madame
Lebrun and her two sons, Robert and
Victor.

Edna spends most of her time with her

close friend Adèle Ratignolle, who cheerily
and boisterously reminds Edna of her
duties as a wife and mother. At Grand Isle,
Edna eventually forms a connection with
Robert Lebrun, a charming, earnest young
man who actively seeks Edna's attention
and affections. When they fall in love,
Robert senses the doomed nature of such
a relationship and flees to Mexico under
the guise of pursuing a nameless business
venture. The narrative focus moves to
Edna's shifting emotions as she reconciles
her maternal duties with her desire for
social freedom and to be with Robert.

When summer vacation ends, the

Pontelliers return to New Orleans. Edna
gradually reassesses her priorities and
takes a more active role in her own
happiness. She starts to isolate herself
from New Orleans society and to withdraw
from some of the duties traditionally
associated with motherhood. Léonce
eventually talks to a doctor about
diagnosing his wife, fearing she is losing
her mental faculties. The doctor advises
Léonce to let her be and assures him that
things will return to normal.

When Léonce prepares to travel to New

York City on business, he sends the boys
to his mother. Being left home alone for an
extended period gives Edna physical and
emotional room to breathe and reflect on
various aspects of her life. While her
husband is still away, she moves out of
their home and into a small bungalow
nearby and begins a dalliance with Alcée
Arobin, a persistent suitor with a
reputation for being free with his
affections. Edna is shown as a sexual
being for the first time in the novel, but the
affair proves awkward and emotionally
fraught.

Edna also reaches out to Mademoiselle

Reisz, a gifted pianist whose playing is
renowned but who maintains a generally
hermetic existence. Her playing had
moved Edna profoundly earlier in the
novel, representing what Edna was starting
to long for: independence. Mademoiselle
Reisz focuses her life on music and herself
instead of on society's expectations,
acting as a foil to Adèle Ratignolle, who
encourages Edna to conform. Reisz is in
contact with Robert while he is in Mexico,
receiving letters from him regularly. Edna
begs Reisz to reveal their contents, which
she does, proving to Edna that Robert is
thinking about her.

Eventually, Robert returns to New Orleans.

At first aloof (and finding excuses not to
be near Edna), he eventually confesses his
passionate love for her. He admits that the
business trip to Mexico was an excuse to
escape a relationship that would never
work.

Edna is called away to help Adèle with a

difficult childbirth. Adèle pleads with Edna
to think of what she would be turning her
back on if she did not behave
appropriately. When Edna returns home,
she finds a note from Robert stating that
he has left forever, as he loves her too
much to shame her by engaging in a
relationship with a married woman.

In devastated shock, Edna rushes back to

Grand Isle, where she had first met Robert
Lebrun. Edna escapes in an ultimate
manner by committing suicide, drowning
herself in the waters of the Gulf of
Mexico.[1]
Kate Chopin plaque, New York City library walk: "The
bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition

and prejudice must have strong wings."

Main characters
Edna Pontellier [ɛd.na pɔ̃.tɛl.je] – a
respectable Presbyterian from Kentucky,
living in Creole society in Louisiana. She
rebels against conventional
expectations and discovers an identity
independent from her role as a wife and
mother.
Léonce Pontellier [le.ɔ̃s pɔ̃.tɛl.je] –
Edna's husband, a successful
businessman who is unaware of his
wife's unhappiness.
Mademoiselle Reisz [mad.mwa.zɛl ʁajs]
– Her character symbolizes what Edna
could have been if she had grown old
and had been independent from her
family. Despite viewing Reisz as
disagreeable, Edna sees her as an
inspiration to her own "awakening."
Madame Adèle Ratignolle [ad.ɛl
ʁa.ti.ɲɔl] – Edna's friend, who represents
the perfect 19th-century woman, as she
 is totally devoted to her husband and
children.
Alcée Arobin [al.se a.ʁɔ.bɛ̃] – known for
seducing married women and pursues a
short-lived affair with Edna, satisfying
her while her husband is away.
Robert Lebrun [ʁɔ.bɛʁ lə.bʁœ̃] – has a
history of charming women he cannot
have but finds something different with
Edna and falls in love. Robert's flirting
with Edna catalyzes her "awakening",
and she sees in him what has been
missing in her marriage.

Style
Kate Chopin's narrative style in The
Awakening can be categorized as
naturalism. Chopin's novel bears the
hallmarks of French short story writer Guy
de Maupassant's style: a perceptive focus
on human behavior and the complexities
of social structures. This demonstrates
Chopin's admiration for Maupassant, yet
another example of the enormous
influence Maupassant exercised on
nineteenth-century literary realism.

However, Chopin's style could more

accurately be described as a hybrid that
captures contemporary narrative currents
and looks forward to various trends in
Southern and European literature.

Mixed into Chopin's overarching

nineteenth-century realism is an incisive
and often humorous skewering of upper-
class pretension, reminiscent of direct
contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde,
Henry James, Edith Wharton, and George
Bernard Shaw.

Also evident in The Awakening is the future

of the Southern novel as a distinct genre,
not only in setting and subject matter but
in narrative style. Chopin's lyrical portrayal
of her protagonist's shifting emotions is a
narrative technique that Faulkner would
expand upon in novels like Absalom,
Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury.
Chopin portrays her experiences of the
Creole lifestyle, in which women were
under strict rules and limited to the role of
wife and mother, which influenced her
"local color" fiction and focus on the
Creole culture.[2] Chopin adopted this style
in her early short stories and her first novel
At Fault, which also deals with some of the
issues of Creole lifestyle. By using
characters of French descent she was able
to get away with publishing these stories,
because the characters were viewed as
"foreign", without her readers being as
shocked as they were when Edna
Pontellier, a white Protestant, strays from
the expectations of society.[3]

The plot anticipated the stories of Eudora

Welty and Flannery O'Connor and the plays
of William Inge, while Edna Pontellier's
emotional crises and her eventual tragic
fall look ahead to the complex female
characters of Tennessee Williams's plays.
Chopin's own life, particularly in terms of
having her own sense of identity—aside
from men and her children—inspired The
Awakening. Her upbringing also shaped
her views, as she lived with her widowed
mother, grandmother and great-
grandmother, all of whom were intellectual,
independent women. After her father was
killed on All Saints' Day and her brother
died from typhoid on Mardi Gras, Chopin
became skeptical of religion, which she
presents through Edna, who finds church
"suffocating". Being widowed and left with
six children to look after influenced
Chopin's writing, which she began at this
time. Emily Toth argues against the view
that Chopin was ostracized from St. Louis
after the publication of The Awakening,
stating that many St. Louis women praised
her; male critics condemned her novel.[4]
Aspects of Chopin's style also prefigure
the intensely lyrical and experimental style
of novelists such as Virginia Woolf and the
unsentimental focus on female intellectual
and emotional growth in the novels of
Sigrid Undset and Doris Lessing. Chopin's
most important stylistic legacy is the
detachment of the narrator.

Symbolism
In the novel, there are several occasions in
which Kate Chopin uses symbolism.
Symbolism, a literary device, is the use of
symbols to signify ideas and qualities by
giving them symbolic meanings that are
different from their literal sense.

Birds – In the beginning of the book, a

parrot is in a cage shouting to Mr.
Pontellier “Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en!
Sapristi! That’s all right!” this translates to
“Leave dammit”. It is clear that the parrot
represents Edna’s unspoken feelings
towards her husband. It also represents
how Edna is caged in her society, without
much freedom to live as she pleases. As
Edna is walking towards the ocean in the
end of the novel we see a bird with a
broken wing. Many have a different
interpretation of this injured bird. Some
would say that the bird is a representation
of Edna finally breaking away from the
idea of Victorian womanhood, this is
because throughout the entire novel we
see caged birds and now we are finally
seeing a bird that is free despite its injury.
Other say that this injured bird represents
Edna’s failure to live outside of the
expectations that society had placed on to
her at this time.

Ocean – The ocean can be interpreted to

represent many different things. While the
Pontellier family are vacationing at the
resort Edna teaches herself how to swim.
This signifies her “awakening”, her
realizing that she holds some sort of
independence. It is as if this first swim
was Edna’s first taste of freedom and after
that she becomes more and more
rebellious. The ending of the book all
depends on how the reader perceives it to
be. Many questions whether or not Edna
dies in the end of the novel. If Edna is
thought to be dead, then it is an ironic
death because the sea is where she
discovered herself. Those that believe
Edna purposely kills herself justify her
death as saying the ocean is what Edna
believed what would free her from the
chains that were placed on her by society.
Piano – Throughout the novel many
characters play musical instruments,
specifically the piano. At the resort when
Adele is playing the piano it is almost like
déjà vu for Edna; just as the event that
occurred in the ocean at the novel's
beginning, Edna is once again being
awakened. It is as if she has a better
understanding of herself and her feelings
after hearing the woman play the piano.
Edna also feels that same emotion when
Mademoiselle Reisz plays the piano. It is
as if the music that comes from this
instrument represents how these women
inspire Edna to become a stronger and
more independent woman.
Themes
Solitude

One of the most prominent themes in The

Awakening is solitude. As referenced
previously, Chopin's work once contained
the word in its title when it was originally
called A Solitary Soul.

Through Edna Pontellier's journey, Kate

Chopin sought to highlight the different
ways that a woman could be in solitude
because of the expectations of
motherhood, ethnicity, marriage, social
norms, and gender. Chopin presents
Edna's autonomous separation from
society and friends as individually
empowering while still examining the risks
of self-exploration and subsequent
loneliness. In an attempt to shed her
societal role of mother and wife, Edna
takes charge of her limited life and makes
changes to better discover her true self.
For example, Edna leaves her husband and
moves into a new house to live by herself,
a controversial action since a true woman
would never leave her husband. Although
Edna's journey ultimately leads to an
unsustainable solitude due to lack of
societal support, "her death indicates self-
possession rather than a retreat from a
dilemma."[5] She takes control over what
she still has agency over: her body and her
self.

By making Edna's experiences critically

central to the novel, Chopin is able to
sound a cautionary note about society's
capacity to support women's liberation. As
shown through Edna's depressing
emotional journey, isolation, and eventual
suicide, Chopin claims that the social
norms and traditional gender roles of the
19th century could not tolerate an
independent woman. Chopin's The
Awakening questions the value of solitude
and autonomy within a society unable to
positively sustain women's freedom.

Gender roles and social

constraints

The themes of romance and death in The

Awakening aid Chopin's feminist intent of
illuminating the restrictive and oppressive
roles of women in Victorian society. Edna's
longing for Robert Lebrun and affair with
Alcée Arobin explicitly show Edna's
rejection of her prescribed roles as
housewife and mother as she awakens to
her sexuality and sense of self. Edna has
an emotional affair with Robert, who
leaves in order to avoid shaming her in
society. Afterwards, Edna has a physical
affair with Alcée. Through these affairs,
Edna exercises agency outside of her
marriage and experiences sexual longing
for the first time. However, through these
affairs Edna also discovers that no matter
which man she is with, there is no escape
from the general oppression women face;
Edna's society has no place for a woman
like her, as she must either be an
exemplary housewife and mother like
Adèle Ratignolle or an isolated outsider
like Mademoiselle Reisz.[6] Edna's ultimate
decision to commit suicide at the end of
the novel exemplifies how few options
women had in society at this time. Leaving
society all together was Edna's way of
rejecting and escaping this oppressive
dichotomy. One critic stated that the book
leaves one sick of human nature, while
another one stated that the book is morbid
because it is about an unholy love that
tested traditional gender roles of the late
1800s and that the book belongs to the
overworked field of sex fiction.[7] However,
this was the original criticism of the book.
When the book was reevaluated years later
it was then recognized as canonical due to
the feminist theme. This later then led to
many other women writers of the
Nineteenth century to become recognized
for literary themes on gender roles viewed
by their regions, culture, or religion.[7]

Musical romanticism

When Edna first hears Mademoiselle Reisz

play, she develops a strong appreciation
towards music and art. At the ball at the
Grand Isle, when Edna is seen with Robert
listening to Mademoiselle Reisz play a
piece by Chopin, the piece sends shivers
down her spine.[8] Camastra states that

The emotional fluidity of music is

not solely responsible for Edna's
evolving constitution. Such an
assertion would deny any
individual agency on her part and
misrepresent the synthesis of
artistic form and content that
serves as a musical parallel to
Edna's experiences. Chopin's
music successfully integrates the
opposition of "the 'classical'
concern for form and the
'romantic' urge of inspiration."
Edna ostensibly adheres to
prescribed feminine standards
 before witnessing an iconoclastic
revelation of her senses.

Therefore, due to Edna's fascination with

romantic melodies, it causes Edna to
'Awaken' and desire new things to free
herself from confinement.[8] The theme of
solitude is also related with musical
romanticism. Camastra states that Edna
comes to the same despondency that the
writer Maupassant arrived to. Maupassant
attempts to commit suicide a few months
before his actual death in 1893.
Maupassant fictionalized spirits and
Frederic Chopin internalized them in his
music. In "The Awakening", Edna is
fascinated by the musical poet's repertoire,
and is forced to confront the spectral
presence of an existential yearning for
something else that eventually drives her
to commit suicide.[8]

Publication and critical

reception
The Awakening was particularly
controversial upon publication in 1899.
Although the novel was never technically
banned, it was censored.[9] Chopin's novel
was considered immoral not only for its
comparatively frank depictions of female
sexual desire but also for its depiction of a
protagonist who chafed against social
norms and established gender roles. The
public reaction to the novel was similar to
the protests that greeted the publication
and performance of Henrik Ibsen's
landmark drama A Doll's House (1879), a
work with which The Awakening shares an
almost identical theme. Both contain a
female protagonist who abandons her
husband and children for self-fulfilment.

However, published reviews ran the gamut

from outright condemnation to the
recognition of The Awakening as an
important work of fiction by a gifted
practitioner. Divergent reactions of two
newspapers in Kate Chopin's hometown of
St. Louis, Missouri, reflect this. The St.
Louis Republic labeled the novel "poison"
and "too strong a drink for moral babes,"[9]
and the St. Louis Mirror stated, "One would
fain beg the gods, in pure cowardice, for
sleep unending rather than to know what
an ugly, cruel, loathsome Monster Passion
can be when, like a tiger, it slowly
awakens. This is the kind of awakening
that impresses the reader in Mrs. Chopin's
heroine." Later in the same year, the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch praised the novel in "A
St. Louis Woman Who Has Turned Fame
Into Literature." As Chopin was the first
woman from St. Louis to become a
professional writer, she was of particular
interest there.[10]

Some reviews clucked in disappointment

at Chopin's choice of subject: "It was not
necessary for a writer of so great
refinement and poetic grace to enter the
over-worked field of sex-fiction" (Chicago
Times Herald). Others mourned the loss of
good taste; The Nation claimed that the
book opened with high expectations,
"remembering the author's agreeable short
stories," and closed with "real
disappointment," suggesting public
dissatisfaction with the chosen topic: "we
need not have been put to the
unpleasantness of reading about her."[11]
The Nation also called Chopin "one more
clever writer gone wrong."

Some reviews indulged in outright vitriol,

as when Public Opinion stated, "We are
well-satisfied when Mrs. Pontellier
deliberately swims out to her death in the
waters of the gulf."[12]

Chopin's work also garnered qualified,

though still negative, reviews. The Dial
called The Awakening a "poignant spiritual
tragedy" with the caveat that the novel was
"not altogether wholesome in its
tendencies." Similarly, The
Congregationalist called Chopin's novel "a
brilliant piece of writing" but concludes,
"We cannot commend it." In the Pittsburgh
Leader, Willa Cather set The Awakening
alongside Madame Bovary, Gustave
Flaubert's equally notorious and equally
reviled novel of suburban ennui and
unapologetic adultery—though Cather was
no more impressed with the heroine than
were most of her contemporaries. Cather
"hope[d] that Miss Chopin will devote that
flexible, iridescent style of hers to a better
cause."

Legacy and historical context

Chopin did not write another novel after
The Awakening and had difficulty
publishing stories after its release. Emily
Toth believes this is in part because
Chopin "went too far: Edna's sensuality
was too much for the male gatekeepers."
Chopin's next book was cancelled, and
health and family problems consumed her.
When she died five years later, she was on
her way to being forgotten. Per Seyersted,
a Norwegian literary scholar, rediscovered
Chopin in the 1960s, leading The
Awakening to be remembered as the
feminist fiction it is today.[10]
In 1991 The Awakening was dramatized in
a film, Grand Isle, directed by Mary
Lambert and starring Kelly McGillis as
Edna, Jon DeVries as Leonce, and Adrian
Pasdar as Robert.

In "Wish Someone Would Care", the ninth

episode of the first season of the HBO
series Treme that aired in 2010, Tulane
professor Creighton Bernette (John
Goodman) assigns the novel to his class
and briefly discusses it with his
students.[13] Later in the episode, he lets
his students out early and takes a care-
free stroll to his favorite spots in New
Orleans before ultimately taking his own
life in the Mississippi River.

In the 1890s, when Chopin wrote The

Awakening, a range of social changes and
tensions that brought "the woman
question" into public discussion influenced
Chopin's novel.[4]

Louisiana, the setting for The Awakening,

was a largely Catholic state where divorce
was extremely rare, and women were
expected to stay loyal and faithful to their
husbands, and men to their wives. This
explains some reactions The Awakening
received in 1899.[4]
Linda Wagner-Martin writes, "sometimes
being considered 'European' (or at least
certainly 'French') rather than American,
these types of works were condemned for
the very ambivalence that made them
brilliant and prescient pieces of writing."
Chopin's The Awakening and other novels
in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries were censored due to their
perceived immorality, which included
sexual impropriety, an argument supported
by the initial reviews of the book found in
newspapers at the time.[14] Nevertheless,
Margo Culley stresses that Kate Chopin
was not the only woman challenging
gender ideologies in this period; writing a
novel brought her views into public
prominence.

One of the main issues that nineteenth

century readers had with the novel was the
idea of a woman abandoning her duties as
a wife and mother. As this was so strictly
reinforced as the main purpose of
women's lives, a character who rebels
against these social norms shocked
readers. An "Etiquette/Advice Book" of the
time proclaimed: "if she has the true
mother-heart the companionship of her
children will be the society which she will
prefer above that of all others."[4]
References
1. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York,
NY: Bantam Classic, 1981.
2. "Creoles" . Kate Chopin. Loyola
University New Orleans. 2009. Retrieved
November 11, 2013.
3. Koloski, Bernard, ed. (November 11,
2013). "Kate Chopin At Fault" .
Katechopin.org. Kate Chopin International
Society. Retrieved November 11, 2013.
4. Kate Chopin, The Awakening: An
authoritative text Biographical and
historical contexts criticism, ed. By Margo
Culley, (University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, 1994),pp. 113–119
5. Massie, Virginia Zirkel. "Solitary
Blessings: Solitude in the Fiction of
Hawthorne, Melville, and Kate Chopin."
Louisiana State U, 2005.
6. Clark, Zolia. "The Bird that Came Out of
the Cage: A Foucauldian Feminist Approach
to Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Journal
for Cultural Research 12.4 (2008): 335-347,
Academic Search Complete. Web.
7. Sarah M. Corse (June 2002). "Gender
and Literary Valorization: The Awakening of
a Canonical Novel". Sociological
Perspectives. 45 (2): 2139–161.
doi:10.1525/sop.2002.45.2.139.pdf .
JSTOR 10.1525/sop.2002.45.2.139 .
8. Nicole Camastra (2008). "Venerable
Sonority in Kate Chopin's "The
Awakening" ". American Literary Realism.
40 (2): 154–166.
doi:10.1353/alr.2008.0003 .
9. Benjamin, Franklin. Colonial literature,
1607–1776 . New York: Infobase
Publishing, 2010: 88. ISBN 0-8160-7861-0
10. Emily Toth (July 1999). "Emily Toth
Thanks Kate Chopin". The Women's Review
of Books. Old City Publishing, Inc. 16
(10/11): 34. doi:10.2307/4023250 .
JSTOR 4023250 .
11. Review from "recent novels" reprinted
from The Nation 69 (3 August 1899) In
Critical essays on Kate Chopin, ed. By Alice
Hall Petry, (New York, 1996)
12. Review from 'Book Reviews' reprinted
from Public Opinion 26 (22 June 1899) 794.
In Critical essays on Kate Chopin, ed. By
Alice Hall Petry, (New York, 1996)
13. Keith Phipps (June 13, 2010). "Wish
Someone Would Care" . The A.V. Club.
Retrieved May 30, 2011.
14. Linda Wagner-Martin, The Forbidden
Scandalous and Banned Novels , accessed
March 26, 2013.

External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to: The
Awakening

Wikisource has original text related to this

article:
The Awakening

The Awakening at Project Gutenberg

(plain text and HTML)
The Awakening at Internet Archive and
Google Books (scanned books original
editions)
The Awakening public domain
audiobook at LibriVox
Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=The_Awakening_(Chopin_novel)&oldid=84726
4856"

Last edited 1 month ago by an anon…

Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless

otherwise noted.