by Ryan Cofrancesco
Edna’s awakening began during her family’s time at their summer home in Grand Isle, Louisiana. She spent those days of summer weather near the beach with a male companion who appreciated her and truly conversed with her. "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 to the world within and about her" (p. 14). She was awakening to the reality that she was living as an object; most people around her treated her as a means to some end, rather than the end herself. Nearly the entirety of this novel is a continuous climax in which Edna is changing herself - aiming to reclaim her self and become her own person.
In a way similar to that of the black slave of the ante-bellum American south, Edna’s discontent arose only with knowledge of her situation. When she first began to sense it, "An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish" (p. 8). When that anguish, caused by the inattention and scolding of her husband, brought her to tears, she dismissed it as "just having a good cry all to herself" (p. 8). She did this crying alone, as she had no outlet with whom to share these emotions. Her society saw frank expression of any sort to be unwomanly and, "She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves" (p. 46). She had indeed mastered a dual life, mixing "that outward existence which conforms, [and] the inward life which questions" (p. 14). The diction of this sentence appears to be quite important: that outward conformity is aptly described as an "existence," where as "life" comes with the forbidden questioning.
This realization initially met with difficulty. "She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet, half-darkness which met her moods...She carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from her. Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it" (p. 50). This was the first physical manifestation of her discontent that is shown. But, her failure to destroy the wedding band is followed by a wave of passion in which "she seized a glass vase from the table and flung it upon the tiles of the hearth. She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear" (p. 51).
Civility soon reclaimed her, but drowsy acceptance of her place in life did not. Just as a slave who has tasted freedom can never be satisfied with bondage again, so Edna was not going to be duped into happiness by the material and social patterns she had conformed to in the past. "She began to do as she liked and to feel as she liked" (p. 54). She had begun a physical and psychic change that practically had the effect of making her a different woman. Robert Lebrun, the man with whom Edna aspired to feel the new experience of passionate love, made the complimentary observation to Leonce that, "’Some way she doesn’t seem like the same woman’" (p. 59). Because of these changes, "There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual" (p. 89).
A large part of this metamorphosis was to cast off all parts of her old self. As she told her friend Madame Ratignolle, "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" (p. 46). Among the first things she resolved to give up were the social benefits that came from having a day each week during which she was to stay home and receive visitors. This convention shackled her to her house one seventh of her life, and she cast it off without remorse. Next, she cast off the house itself. During one of her husband’s extended trips to New York City, she investigated the availability of a very small house nearby her husband’s prominent address. She wrote to inform him of her plans to move herself there but, "Without even waiting for an answer from her husband regarding his opinion or wishes on the matter, Edna hastened her preparations" (p. 80) to move into her own (relatively) humble shelter. She was emboldened by the fact that "she had resolved never again belong to another than herself" (p. 76) and she aspired to be free of the physical entrapment of their lavish home.
The third unessential that she gave up was perhaps the most difficult to her, and it may have been done without her even realizing it. She had given up her children. Early in the story we learn that, "She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them" (p. 19) and that, "Their absence was a sort of relief, though she did not admit this, even to herself. It seemed to free her of a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her (p. 19). Then, on the night before her premeditated suicide, "The children appeared before 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" (p. 108). Although she had visited her children since moving into the smaller house, she had no intention of them coming to live with her again - that was part of the attraction of the house’s small size. She divorced herself from them not only in death, but also in living intention.
She had also ranked her husband among the unessentials that she could do without. When the womanizing Alcee Arobin "leaned forward to kiss her, she clasped his head, holding his lips to hers. It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really responded. It was a flaming torch that kindled desire" (p. 80). The satiation of that desire, which this awakened Edna no doubt intended to accomplish, was probably impossible to reconcile with her marriage to Leonce. Further, in the dawn of this new life, Edna had found extra-marital love. "’I love you’ she whispered" to Robert Lebrun in passion on the afternoon before her suicide. "’Only you; no one but you. It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream...Now you are here we shall love each other, my Robert. We shall be everything to each other. Nothing else in the world is of any consequence" (p. 103). Thus, she had cast off the veil, the burqua of her married relationship in action and in desire.
After this passionate thrust of vows with Robert, she leaves him to attend to a close friend who is experiencing a medical emergency. She makes him promise to be there waiting for her when she returns. But, he breaks the promise. He leaves behind a note that says, "I love you. Good-by - because I love you" (p. 106).
The following morning she travels to Grand Isle, and commits suicide by swimming into the Gulf of Mexico far enough so that she could not swim back to safety.
This author is confused by this ending. Why would Chopin end the story with Edna succumbing to despondency that she had always been able to overcome, especially after such huge steps had been accomplished towards self-realization, enrichment and personal power? Why have Edna awake from a deep, personal slumber of oppression only to fall into the permanent slumber of physical death? Early in the novel Edna had been thrilled by her newfound ability to swim, having overcome the fear of deep water. "Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim...But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realize it powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with self confidence" (p. 27). This milestone brought her courage and aspiration, as she wanted to swim where not woman had swum before. She had found this tool of empowerment and liberation - why would she use it to kill herself?
That being expressed, the symbolism and statement of this final scene is incredible. After changing into her old, faded bathing suit, Edna "cast the unpleasant, pricking garments from her, and for the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her" (p. 108). Edna had acquired her self. At this final moment she was herself without modification, embellishment, or confinement. And, she held the power to do what she wanted. She would not be forced to do anything else - including live.
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