 There
is extensive critical controversy surrounding the ending of Kate Chopin’s
novel The Awakening. One group of critics focuses on the novel as
a feminist text. They argue that Edna Pontellier’s awakening is one
of mental clarity, and her suicide is a triumphant act. By committing
suicide Edna is finally freeing herself from social constraints and possession.
Her suicide is an act of liberation, therefore Edna is the ultimate feminist.
The opposing group of critics read The Awakening as a naturalist text.
They believe Edna’s awakening to be a decline into insanity. Instead
of triumphing against the society and men who oppress her, Edna gives herself
up to the ocean in a symbolic return to the womb, allowing the ocean to
possess her. While there is evidence to support both arguments, that
is also their flaw--both arguments can be laid out in detail and substantially
supported, yet they are presented as mutually exclusive. Chopin intentionally
leaves the reader with this ambiguity. By trying to resolve it, we
miss the point of the novel. For purposes of comparison, I will use
the article “Kate Chopin and the American Realists” by Per Seyersted as
a basis for the argument of the feminist perspective, and the article “Feminist
or Naturalist” by Nancy Walker as a basis for the argument of the naturalist
perspective. A synthesis of these arguments will reveal Chopin’s
use of Edna’s demise to critique society while also critiquing Edna’s move
away from societal standards.
After
‘awakening’ to the oppressive role she holds in society, Edna responds
by committing suicide. She is emotionally unequipped to deal with
awakening and is unable to live within society according to the ideals
she has established for herself, illustrated through her suicide and the
events preceding it. Edna’s mother died when she was very young,
and she is raised by her emotionless sister. Because of this, Edna
is still a child emotionally and continually looks for a motherly influence.
The novel begins with the Pontellier family’s vacation, staying in the
Lebrun cottages on Grand Isle. Edna states early in the novel that
“I was a little unthinking child in those days, just following a misleading
impulse without question,” and that she often feels the same way this summer
(Chopin 17). It is during this vacation that Edna meets Robert, who
will eventually become the love of her live, though he is not her husband,
Madame Ratignolle, and Mademoiselle Reisz. When she drowns, Edna
is very childlike and unthinking, returning to the island where these three
people helped her discover her ‘awakened’ self. Edna has come full
circle, and now she is trying to return to the most childlike state, that
of the fetus. Her act of stripping off her clothes is not a gesture
of self-liberation but rather a “regression to. . . infancy. . . her experience
of rebirth is. . . backward to the womb” (Wolkenfeld 246). Throughout
the novel Edna illustrates her yearning for a mother and her need for a
mother figure, while shunning her own motherly duties. Madame Ratignolle
becomes Edna’s mother figure, and she refers to her as a “mother-woman..
. . They were women who idolized their children, worshipped their
husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals”
(Chopin 9). Madame Ratignolle eagerly accepts this role, recognizing
Edna’s childlike innocence by protecting and advising her.
Madame
Ratignolle’s childbirth is the first event prompting Edna’s suicide.
Edna observed “with an inward agony, with a flaming, outspoken revolt against
the ways of Nature, [witnessing] the scene of torture” (Chopin 104).
During the childbirth, Edna obscurely recalls her own experience of childbirth,
but almost as if it happened to someone else and not herself. At
this time Edna only vaguely remembers that she herself has children, as
Madame Ratignolle implores her to “think of the children. Edna.
Oh think of the children! Remember them!” (Chopin 104). Edna
finally realizes the commitment and obligation she has to her children
“and that children can demand the mother’s life, even if they cannot claim
the woman’s soul” (Edwards 284). This realization is magnified when
she returns home and Robert, her true love, has gone. Not only can
she not escape her family, but now she must also live without the man that
she loves.
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