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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Counterintuitive Effects of Edna Pontellier’s Suicide in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
By: Anastasiya Golovan
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Background
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening was a groundbreaking novel, especially for its time, due to its radical feminist undertones and theme of women’s independence. In the late 1800’s, women were expected to fit a certain mold in a patriarchal society, being submissive to their husbands and children with little opportunity for personal growth and pleasures. The feminist movement was still in its early stages so many of Chopin’s revolutionary themes about women’s self-discovery, sexuality, and suicide were not commonly accepted. Rebellious, conviction-driven suicide is not completely uncommon, even seen in works of writers like William Shakespeare in his famous play about star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Though it is typical for suicide to be morally questioned, it is often romanticized in writing, seemingly making it the valiant solution to the angst brought on by an oppressive society. What sets apart the suicide in The Awakening is the ambiguity behind it and the uncertainty of the protagonist’s true heroism through her suicide.
Abstract
Kate Chopin was a revolutionary author for her time. Her two novels and close to one hundred short stories have been read and analyzed for nearly a century. Even today, her novel, The Awakening, is argued to be a modern novel instead of a classic novel because of its themes that still apply to contemporary culture. Chopin’s use of setting, direct and indirect characterization and symbolism illustrate Edna’s journey and struggle to an independence that consumes her. Though Chopin’s settings and characters are all from the past, her themes of women’s self-discovery, liberation, and rebellion engage a wide audience, having been true through the 19th Century and into the 21st.
My literary analysis essay probes the counterintuitive effects of the protagonist, Edna Pontellier’s, suicide not only in her own battles that she has fought against society as well as her internal battles, but also in terms of the feminism that this book portrays. I refute the common interpretation that Edna’s suicide in Chopin’s The Awakening is an act of heroism. I examine Edna’s journey of self-realization leading to her “awakening” and ending in suicide, revealing the irony behind Edna’s newfound freedom when she allows herself to be to be taken by the sea. Many critics interpret Edna’s suicide to be noble. It is viewed as her moment of autonomy when she leaves behind everything despicable about the patriarchal society she lives in, trading her oppressive life for eternal liberation, but her suicide is actually a childlike decision brought on by the culmination of the mess she created that she can no longer live with in addition to her emotional dependence on a love and life she cannot have. Edna wins many battles towards the “self-ownership” she so desperately desires, but in the end, due to her suicide, she loses the war.
Sources:
Gray, Jennifer B. “The Escape of the ‘Sea’: Ideology And ‘The Awakening’.” The Southern Literary Journal 1 (2004): 53- 73. JSTOR Arts & Sciences V. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.
Gray discusses the steps towards Edna’s awakening and the ideologies in her society as the ultimate culprits in her fate.
Ramos, Peter. “Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics And Identity in ‘The Awakening’”. College Literature 37.4 (2010): 145-165. Literary Reference Center. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.
This paper argues that Edna’s actions reveal the danger of withdrawing from all societal and gender roles in favor of an elusive and detrimental freedom.
Sources:
Kohn, Robert E. “Edna Pontellier Floats Into The Twenty-First Century.” Journal of Popular Culture 43.1 (2010): 137-155. SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.
This article analyzes whether the ending of The Awakening should be understood to include a depiction of suicide and if the novel can be seen as a modernist text.
MacDonald, Erin E. “Necessarily Vague": Kate Chopin's Gender- Awakening. Domesticgoddess.com, 24 May 1999. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.
This paper focuses on how gender roles influence Edna so that despite her independence, she does not have the skills to survive in her society to be able to live the life she desires.
Sources:
Harris, Sharon M. “The Awakening.” Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1-2. Literary Reference Center. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.
This piece focuses on Edna’s choices she makes throughout the novel as they relate to her society’s perspective.