Edna Pontellier’s suicide is abrupt, affecting, and – above all – ambiguous. It may be viewed, on the one hand, as the inevitable defeat of a woman vainly striving for autonomy and self-agency within a patriarchal society. Conversely, Edna’s death can be seen as her triumphant escape from an oppressive world, an act of true independence. Critics and commentators of The Awakening have contended with both views; there are certainly many persuasive arguments for each. In the end, however, Edna’s decision to kill herself proves neither to be her inevitable defeat nor her triumphant escape. Because Edna’s “awakening” and subsequent death may be seen as a return to a mother figure, her suicide indicates the failure of society, which is unable to provide that mother figure, but also, more prominently, Edna’s own failure, as she is unable to rise above and better the society which nudges her to suicide. Rather than being reborn, as some critics have claimed, the regressive path of Edna Pontellier’s life indicates that she is un-born; her suicide ultimately conveys her inability to wholly mature.
The prime premise of the argument that Edna fails to mature is the notion of the sea as mother. In The Awakening, the “touch of the sea” is said to “[enfold] the body in its soft, close embrace” (34), evoking the image of a mother holding a child. Similarly, like a mother offering comfort, “the everlasting voice of the sea...[breaks] like a mournful lullaby” (14) as Edna cries through the night. The Gulf guides and encourages her as a mother would, furthermore, with “a loving but imperative entreaty” (31). Thus the language Chopin uses in describing the sea and Edna’s relationship to it consistently depicts the water as a maternal figure. As Dr. John Glendening has noted, furthermore, the novel, informed by the theory of evolution recently developed by Darwin, takes an “evolutionary perspective” (41) of the sea: as “the oceanic origin of life” (Glendening 54), the sea is, literally, a mother. Thus, Edna’s decision to kill herself by drowning can be read as her return to a maternal figure; the ocean, with its “musky odor of pinks” (Chopin 303) is, literally and figuratively, a womb.
To a great extent, Edna’s desire to take comfort, even through death, in a maternal figure indicates the failings of her society, which forces her into the unsatisfactory position of an object rather than a person. Her father, for instance, advocates the subordination of women: he advises Mr. Pontellier that “’authority...[is] what is needed...to manage a wife’” (186). That he is a Presbyterian minister as well as a colonel associates Edna’s father with the greater society at large; he becomes a representation of the societal aspects of military life and religion (perhaps suggesting a parallel between the two). Similarly, Leonce Pontellier, as a business man, represents the economic elements of society. His relationship with Edna - whom he looks and treats as one might “a valuable piece of personal property” (4) – highlights the notion that marriage is an economic arrangement. Robert Lebrun, the focus of romance within the novel, likewise treats Edna as a piece of property, stating that, as a married woman, she is “’not free’” (280). Thus, Edna’s society, the aspects of which – religion, marriage, economy, and love – are represented in various male figures, is thoroughly characterized by the objectification and subordination of women. This society is patriarchal – more pointedly, non-matriarchal. In such a world, Edna dares to shed what philosopher and historian Michel Foucalt termed the “social constructs” imposed upon her (Clark 342). She systematically casts off her various social identities – wife, mother, lover – until she is left without an identity, “like some new-born creature” (301). In such a state, her patriarchal society can offer her no mother, and thus she turns to the supreme matriarch, the sea. Edna’s suicide would seem, then, to be a triumph – ultimate freedom from the constraints of being a woman imposed by her patriarchal surroundings. In this naturalistic vein of thought, it can also be seen as a defeat: the tragic downfall of a woman endeavouring to escape her societal constraints.
However, these views of The Awakening, which depend on the premise that society’s constraints are impossible to escape in life, are undermined by the fact that, as the novel demonstrates, there are no unyielding limits, except those Edna erroneously perceives, confining her or womanhood at large. The best demonstration of this point is the character of Mademoiselle Reisz. Like Edna, she is an awakened woman, able “to echo...the feeling which constantly possessed [Edna]” (117). Like Edna, furthermore, Mademoiselle Reisz rejects the few roles traditionally available to women. Unlike Edna – and this is the crucial difference – Mademoiselle Reisz has developed a new role for herself – that of an artist – and has staunchly committed herself to it. In their survey of nineteenth-century female pianists, authors Debra Burns, Anita Jackson, and Connie Sturm write, “While women were encouraged to entertain their families and guests by playing beautiful music at the piano” – for example, as the Farival twins do – “they were equally discouraged...from taking their musical studies too seriously,” in the way that Mademoiselle Reisz does. Her music is not lady-like. Contrasting sharply with the piano-playing of Madame Ratignolle – who, conventionally, considers music merely “a means of brightening the home and making it attractive” (61) – Mademoiselle Reisz’s skill arouses “the very passions themselves” (66). Her music “shakes a man” (67), as one laudatory spectator exclaims. In brief, Mademoiselle Reisz not only defies the patriarchal system by refusing to embody any of the few roles available to her as a woman, she also creates a new role for herself as a serious female musician, thereby undermining the notion that awakened women (such as herself and Edna) have only the option of suicide to escape the apparent constraints of society. Edna’s suicide is not her inevitable defeat, then, but her failure to develop a role suitable for her.
Even the character of Madame Ratignolle, the very embodiment of the ideal of femininity that Edna is rebelling against, demonstrates the very malleability of the notion of womanhood which Edna fails to acknowledge in choosing suicide as the only alternative to the roles prescribed to her. Many readers are disinclined to consider Madame Ratignolle a strong female character; she is the superlative of those “mother-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” (Chopin 19). Despite this, however, as Kathleen Streater argues, Madame Ratignolle is indeed an “affirmation of feminist possibility” (Streater 406) by the fact alone that she plays a significant part in Edna’s awakening:
Madame Ratignolle...clasped [Edna’s hand] firmly and warmly. She even stroked it a little...The action was at first a little confusing to Edna, but she soon lent herself readily to the Creole’s gentle caress. She was not accustomed to an outward and spoken expression of affection, either in herself or in others...She was flushed and felt intoxicated with...the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like...a first breath of freedom. (Chopin 43-48)
Edna has only ever known “self-contained” (Chopin 44) women – that is an ideal of femininity she has been conditioned to by her Presbyterian society. Madame Ratignolle, as a Creole woman, is not self-contained: she openly flirts with Robert and speaks of her “accouchements” (23) with none of the prudery Edna is accustomed to and possesses at the beginning of the book. However, while Madame Ratignolle’s candidness and physical gestures awaken Edna to her own sensuality, inspiring her to confidence, Edna fails to wake to the deeper, absolute truth that if Creole women are different from her, and do not suffer at their society’s hands for that difference, then womanhood is a flexible ideal, open to the creation or the modification of “social constructs” (Clark 342) – womanhood is limitless. Therefore, one cannot say that Edna’s suicidal escape from the limitations placed on her within her society is a triumph. Edna fails, either in perceiving that these limitations are malleable, or, if she does perceive this fact, in acting on it. She lacks the insight and strength required to expand the boundaries of womanhood.
In this light, Adele’s advice to Edna to “think of the children” (Chopin 289) bears especial significance. The way in which Edna interprets the message indicates her failure to control her situation as an adult might, with foresight and a sense of responsibility – a failure which immediately precedes, and causes, her suicide. To “think of the children” is not necessarily to dwell on the constraints of motherhood – as Edna does, to her demise – but to consider the future – Edna’s own future as well as the future of womankind. Chopin herself believed that a woman’s experiential wisdom could be integrated into her family life; she wrote in her diary,
If it were possible for my husband...to come back to earth...I would unhesitatingly give up every thing that has come into my life since [he] left it...To do that, I would have to forget the past ten years of my growth – my real growth. But I could take back a little wisdom with me. (Whitson 62, emphasis added)
Despite these personal thoughts, however, Chopin takes heed to indicate that Edna does not need to return to roles she is unsatisfied with, for, as the book indicates, womanhood is malleable. Furthermore, The Awakening, by its mere existence, indicates its author’s conviction that a woman must share what she knows about the state of womanhood; as Streater contends, this belief relates to Adele’s advice regarding “the children,” for new ideas – as passed on by mothers, or authors, or teachers, or any other similarly positioned – are most likely to germinate in future generations (Streater 414-415). Edna’s interpretation of Adele’s advice, however, displays her immaturity. She understands and is absorbed by its shallow, surface meaning that she ought to consider Raoul and Etienne. Furthermore, rather like a self-centered adolescent, she thinks of herself and regards her children as “antagonists” (300) to her own well-being. Childishly, she refuses to take responsibility, either for herself, her children, or for the future of womankind. Finally, as if to emphasize that Edna has regressed into a childish, immature state, the book ends with her swimming to her death in a symbolic return to the womb. Rather than a rebirth, her suicide is more accurately an un-birth; she does not truly grow, though she has the knowledge to do so, but becomes a child again.
By writing The Awakening, Kate Chopin demonstrates a belief that women must assert the “little wisdom” (Whitson 62) they possess, as the author herself does. Drowning is not assertive: it is the inability to stay afloat, the inability to exert one’s life against the tides. The popular views that Edna’s suicide is an inevitable tragedy or – conversely but similarly – a triumphant escape from the constraints of society both fail to consider the malleability of womanhood that the book in question demonstrates. While The Awakening certainly criticizes, to a great extent, the patriarchal structure of late 19th century society, thoroughly demonstrating its negative effect on women, through the characters of Mademoiselle Reisz and Madame Ratignolle, among others, the novel indicates that this patriarchal structure is not fixed. Edna fails, either in recognizing this fact, or in acting on it. Rather than grow through her awakening, she becomes a child, ultimately killing herself in a symbolic return to the mother because she lacks the strength to be an adult.
Burns, Debra Brubaker, Anita Jackson, and Connie Arrau Sturm. “Contributions of Selected British and American Women to Piano Pedagogy and Performance.” IAWM Journal 8.1 (2002). Web. 2 Jul. 2010.
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Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Chicago: Herbert S. Stone & Co, 1899. Google Books. Web. 20 Jun. 2011.
Clark, Zoila. “The Bird That Came Out of the Cage: A Foucaldian Feminist Approach to Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.” Journal for Cultural Research 12.4 (2008): 335-347. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Jul. 2011
Glendening, J. “Evolution, Narcissism, and Maladaptation in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.” American Literary Realism 43.1 (2010): 41-73. Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Web. 1 Jul. 2011.
Streater, Kathleen M. “Adele Ratignolle: Kate Chopin’s Feminist at Home in The Awakening.” Midwest Quarterly 48.1 (2007): 406-416. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Jul. 2011.
Whitson, Kathy J. “Chopin, Kate.” Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. West Port: Greenwood Press, 2004. Google Books. Web. 1 Jul. 2011.
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