The Awakening And Selected Stories (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
I read this for a 'Novel Appreciation' U3A group I convene. I enjoyed it though some readers found it dull because it was, to the modern reader, old hat or because they found the characters hard to get hold of.I agree that it's old hat in terms of the woman-awakening-to-selfhood theme, but I liked it because of that - a pioneering piece of work whose contemporary unpopularity validates the point it's making. There was a general agreement that the men were not presented unsympathetically (and I was the only man at the meeting), as if Chopin had been at least charitably disposed towards well meaning chaps who didn't really get women because they were trapped by their own comfortable patriarchal expectations. Arobin is the glaring exception - a straightforward, selfish seducer, happy to disregard the consequences of his actions for the women he makes love to, and apparently unaffected by the disapproval of other men (although they seem not unhappy to associate with him socially). I'm not sure I'm quite so sympathetic to the blokes. On the one hand, as my group thought, the men are not so clear cut as to be perceived as universally bad simply because they belong to a patriarchal system. Dr Mandelet has people’s best interests at heart (171) [page references are to the Penguin Classics edition: letters designate the quarter of the page to refer to] even if he is probably conservative – ‘Woman, my dear friend, is a very peculiar and delicate organism’ (119a) - and likely to recommend Edna compromise her happiness for the sake of her husband and family. He is also fearful that Arobin will lead Edna astray (124c). Leonce is not a bad husband: he may be a typical husband, and assertive of his male right to expect his wife to behave in a certain way (48); but he is a good administrator of their domestic affairs (150-151), loves his children, buying them bonbons, and treats his wife with a hamper of delicacies that he sends out to Grand Isle and which Edna appreciates (50c). He also cares enough about Edna to call on Dr Mandelet about ‘what ails her’ (XXII 116ff). Yet a close reading of the text usually suggests that when men are behaving generously or kindly towards women it is because they feel guilty for the way their patriarchal actions may have overstepped the mark (50c) or because they wish to keep women pacified to provide for their own masculine wellbeing that is dependent on domestic routine and social respectability. Moreover, Mme Ratignolle’s concern for Edna (153) may reflect the fear that dominates women and keeps them in thrall, for to be ostracized or to be different is not to be happy. Then there is Robert. He is, to all appearances, the gentleman – he goes to Mexico, to extract himself from the pain of living in the same place as the woman he loves but who is not free to marry him. But he is not trying to eradicate the potential difficulties for Edna, only the difficulties he perceives for himself (166-167). Unable to sacrifice his feelings for Edna, he returns, and awakens and makes possible Edna’s fulfilment, only to abandon her with the emphatic ‘Good-by – because I love you’ (172d) which is, in reality, self-serving. His future as an honourable respecter of the rights (and rites?) of marriage is assured; the trouble is, her unhappiness is as well.And Arobin is a bounder, and Edna's father, the Colonel, who recommends 'coercion' as the way of keeping women in order, is a tyrant and a drinker. Hmmm...So, on the whole, I reckon that the men, although on the whole apparently amiable, decent company, and responsible and respectable family fellows, are shown to be comfortably unimaginative in their attitude to women and to their wives. They are not bad, but they are not blameless.As regards the not being able to get hold of the characters issue, I simply disagree. Again, close reading allows us to explore what is not said, and this encourages us to imagine what a character may be feeling. One member of the group said that she just couldn't believe that Edna was so unaware of the significance of Robert's attentions in the early part of the narrative. I partly agree, but rereading allows you to see that Edna is living in a world that is dreamlike, a world in which very pleasant things are happening to her, but which she cannot admit the truth of because it would be too disturbing to her very comfortable existence, that easy life occasioned by her 'husband's bounty'. But the signs of discontent are there: she bursts into tears late at night when Leonce has gone to bed after returning from the hotel/club late only to wake her up and berate her for not seeing to Raoul's mild illness - by weeping, it is as if she is acknowledging that her situation is desperate; and her response to the announcement that Robert is off to Mexico is dramatic - she goes faint (I think). I found myself feeling that Chopin was presenting Edna's world as something of a Deamtime, a period of becoming, marked by very little decisiveness, and none of it, when it does happen, rational. It strikes her as a good idea to move to the 'pigeon house', so she does it; she declares her love for Robert because she wants to. Edna is presented as a woman who is not in control of her life - she lets things happen to her and follows her 'whims' (Dr Mandelet's word). She is in thrall to nothing other than her own awakening senses and self. After all, she allows Arobin to seduce her. She is certainly not struggling to resist the sensuality and the appetite (hunger) that has awoken in her. She abandons a ‘sense of reality’ and is open to whatever ‘Fate’ may put in her way. And when Robert takes away from her the prospect of a new reality, the creation that may have emerged from the Dreamtime is aborted. Some of the reading group had found themselves floundering a bit with the social context of the novel and that may have alienated the characters for them. I think it helped that I had read both 'Ethan Frome' and 'The Age of Innocence': I found that Chopin's characters, like Wharton's, are enjoyed as products of their rarefied societies, that small changes and nuances in their outward behaviour can give us clues to their motives and to what they are thinking. In many ways, a man like Leonce Pontellier is what he has been conditioned to be by the routines and idees fixes of his life: what you see is what you get, he is simply not a man of much complexity. The Colonel, however, excites a lot more interest. Yes, he 'coerced' his wife to death, and he drinks a lot of 'toddies'; we wonder what being brought up by him was like. It's a chained dog and the clank of spurs (father's?) that Edna remembers as she's about to drown - symbols of thwarted liberty and the authority that represses? - as if she's pleased to surrender herself to death as a release from a world of constriction.Having said 'drown', I'm still thinking about the ending. She isn't said to drown, although I think the implication is she does, and that makes the ending of the novel pretty dispiriting. If Chopin had felt there was something that Edna could have gone back to shore for, might she not have arranged for Edna to swim back sooner before she was exhausted? Instead, Chopin implies, although society is not uncomfortable or necessarily unforgiving (I'd hope Dr Mandelet would smooth things over), the likelihood is that Edna's behaviour would be seen as one of those things that that 'peculiar and delicate organism' that is woman does. Her lusting after solitude and self-discovery and sensuality would be seen as hysteria; society would find a way of neutering her, albeit with the kindest possible intentions.And I'm still thinking about the role of Mlle Reisz.I thought this a very worthwhile read. I think there are aspects of the narrative technique that I'd like to look at again, including the curious occasional authorial comments of a general nature in the present tense. I'm not sure how to respond to them, or if they are an error of narrative judgment.
I can’t remember how I discovered Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’. I have had the book for years. I must have got it during one of my weekend bookshop visits. I used to buy a lot of Bantam classics those days and I think I got it then. I normally remember the bookshop from which I had bought a book, but I can’t remember the bookshop from which I had got Kate Chopin’s book. By some deductive reasoning, I have narrowed down the suspects to two. And that is where it will stay, I think.I don’t know why Chopin’s book was lying unread on my shelf for so long. It is not too long and the story is interesting. Well, fortunately for me, the stars got aligned this weekend and I picked the book to read. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop. I put down everything else I was doing – tasks, chores, TV – and read it till I finished it. Here is what I think.‘The Awakening’ is about Edna Pontellier, who is in her late twenties, happily married by conventional standards, has a husband who is successful in his profession and takes care of her and two children who are delightful and undemanding. She has all the material comforts that a woman of her era would need. She also has a wonderful circle of friends, especially Adèle Ratignolle, who is her closest friend and Robert Lebrun who is always there with her during the summer. Once, while spending the summer holiday near the sea, with Robert for company during most days, something happens to Edna. Her heart opens up and she sees something new and it is the end of life as she knows it. She starts falling in love with Robert. She wants to do something new – like painting. She starts yearning for more independence. She wants to move away from her husband and her family, though she loves them, and get her own house and paint in that house. All these new thoughts and emotions explode in her heart at around the same time. As Chopin says while describing this event :But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in this tumult!Things become complicated for Edna after that. Is Edna able to leave her home and chart an independent life path successfully? What does her family feel about it? Can Edna part from her husband, whom she likes, and her children, whom she loves? What does her best friend Adèle have to say about it? Does Robert return her love? And if things don’t work out what would Edna do? The answers to all these questions form the rest of the story.‘The Awakening’ has been frequently compared to ‘Madame Bovary’. I haven’t read ‘Madame Bovary’ and so I am not able to compare. On its own, I think it is a story of a woman who is trying to discover herself and her relationship to the world around her and in the process how her heart opens up to new vistas and she strives for freedom and an independent expression of her vision which contradicts with the social norms of her era and the complexities which arise from that and how it affects her and how she copes with them. It is a beautiful story, though with a tragic ending, and I loved it. It is definitely one of my favourite reads of the year. (The introduction said that the book was banned in America, when it was published, for its ‘indecency’. I couldn’t believe it when I read that. The book didn’t deserve to be banned. It deserved literary awards. I can imagine how heartbroken Kate Chopin must have been when the literary world spurned her masterpiece.)The edition of the book I read had a beautiful introduction by Marilynne Robinson, she of ‘Housekeeping’ and ‘Gilead’ fame. It also had eight short stories. I liked most of the stories. My favourite was ‘Désirée’s Baby’. (If you are curious about it, here is the story – an orphan girl is adopted by a childless couple. When she grows up, a young man from a distinguished family meets her one day and falls in love with her at first sight. They get married and a year later she becomes a mother. Puzzlingly, though our heroine and her husband are white, the baby is not. The husband starts hating his wife after that. What happens after that? What is the truth? – you should read the story to find out. It read like a Heinrich von Kleist story to me.). I also loved ‘A Reflection’ and ‘A Pair of Silk Stockings’.There is a small, interesting story behind ‘Désirée’s Baby’. I first discovered ‘Désirée’s Baby’ through a book that I read years back called ‘River Town’ by Peter Hessler. It is Hessler’s account of his time in China when he spent a couple of years teaching English in a small town in Sichuan province near the bend of the Yangtze river. Hessler said in the book that he frequently read and discussed ‘Désirée’s Baby’ with his students in English class. I am happy to have finally read it. Now I wonder what Hessler discussed with his students on the story. I should go back and read ‘River Town’ again.I will leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book. Kate Chopin’s prose is beautiful and brilliant. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining.The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned newly awakened being demanded.Robert’s going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing. There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested. There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why, - when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood. “There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the impression of an oar upon the water.”Have you read ‘The Awakening’? What do you think about it? Have you read ‘Désirée’s Baby’?
What do You think about The Awakening And Selected Stories (2004)?
This was my second time to read Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the last time being in the late 1990's when I was in my twenties. I think I appreciated it even more now after decades of adulthood and years of marriage.I also understood it differently. It seemed less like the standard narrative of a woman rebelling against her social situation and marriage (though there is obviously that), in other words, less like Madame Bovary and A Doll's House, and more like a Virginia Woolf novel in which a unique feminine consciousness is awakened. I was also even more appreciative of Chopin's lovely writing, though this was not new to me. I remember my first encounter with her. I was in high school and was driving home late one night listening to NPR. The station we picked up locally sometimes had readings of short stories. That night I caught part of "Desiree's Baby" (which was also included in a small number of short stories in this volume supplementing the novel). I found the story startling to listen to and lyrically beautiful. It was the first time I'd even heard of Chopin, leaving me wondering why we hadn't learned about her in school (which I hope has been corrected in school curricula of recent decades?).
—Scott
I have read this book twice before, in High School and College, and did not enjoy it. I hoped, now that I am closer in age to Edna, and a mother, I might understand it better this time. Unfortunately, this was not the case.When this book was first written, it was taboo, radical. Now Edna's activites seem to me a thrill search, like corporate CEOs who jump out of airplanes for fun.This book is often called a feminist Madame Bovary, a woman breaking society's rules and becoming her own person. Not
—Jennifer
I did not enjoy this story, and I did not see why Edna's life was so bad. I can understand feeling restricted, but I think Edna was a very selfish woman. If anything, she should have thought of her children. I am not here to say that women don't have existences outside of their marriages, their children. I disagree strongly with that. But a woman has a choice to make. When she brings children into the world, it changes the decisions that she can make. She can be happy and she can have joy, but she has to make sure that her children are loved and cared for.Edna was a pampered woman with an indulgent husband, and got to go on a nice vacation every year. She had servants, and friends. A lot of women don't even have those things, but manage to get up out of bed everyday and live their lives. Yes, she felt that she was denying her inner self, and had to marry, although maybe she didn't want to. I cannot deny that must have caused some emotional angst, but there is no either/or. There is, okay this is what I have, let's see what I can do with it. Make the best of what you have. Edna continually made bad choices. She made a mistake and had an extramarital affair. Not the end of the world. I believe her husband would have forgiven her. Or she could have even lived apart from him and hopefully still be a mother to her children. (Maybe I'm being naive about this for the time period, maybe not). She could have stayed with her husband and had a friendship marriage with no physical involvement and painted. Even carried on her affairs as long as she was discreet. She had some choices. A lot of women, a lot of people don't. I just didn't buy the option that she took. I think she was a drama queen.Sorry, I just didn't have much sympathy for this woman. I'd love to read Kate Chopin's other stories because she sounds like a phenomenal women. I hope that her other female characters have a maturity that Edna lacked.
— Danielle The Book Huntress (Self-Proclaimed Book Ninja)
