In Kate Chopin’s novella, The Awakening, Chopin explores feminism, free-will, independence, freedom, and societal roles all through the complex lens of Edna Pontellier, who is capricious, sensitive, and has a rich interior life, as well as exists as an outlier who doesn’t fit in to the mainstream ideas and ideals of the time. All throughout, Chopin paints a vivid picture of the type of repressed society women are living in in wealthy Louisiana and uses symbols as a way of expressing different ideas about this repression. Using symbols comes to be a clever way of communicating the underlying nuance, complexity, and struggle of a woman’s life during this time, except Chopin doesn’t outrightly reject all aspects of convention as she depicts a woman other than Edna who is happy in her marriage and as a mother in the novella, which means that Chopin doesn’t think entirely in black and white.

The main symbols Chopin uses are birds and the sea. Chopin uses a parrot trapped in a cage who frantically cries out repeatedly to represent Edna, which points to Edna being constrained in the society and societal role as a wife and mother she lives in. She parrots what she hears around her and has to pretend, for the sake of the role she is playing at times, that she doesn’t have any original thoughts of her own that go against what is expected of her. The sea, conversely, is where some of Edna’s most profound awakening takes place. It is where she finds her freedom and vibrant cleansing and hangs on to her inner power as a woman. The sea is a wonderful illustration of freedom from repression because it is open, seemingly infinite, and gloriously expansive. The most complicated part of Edna’s awakening, though, is that her awakening affects other people, especially her children, who she can’t completely neglect caring for just because she resents the structure and expectations society has placed on her. She can’t just throw away her responsibilities as a mother entirely and completely because she herself is unhappy and unfulfilled personally. However, she does quite a lot, and is also prone to having lustful, intense crushes on unattainable men and this gets the better of during her marriage, which lacks passion and excitement. Ultimately, Chopin creates a complex moral character study through these examinations of a woman who doesn’t fit the status quo and whether that woman is a good mother or not? The book at its heart questions thematically what do outliers, like Edna, do in a society that is at odds with them and their beliefs?

Edna finds an especially powerful, impassioned awakening of her sexuality and desire when she’s around a man named Robert that reminds her of being younger and this is an example of how she sometimes too quickly gives in to all her whims and desires. She longs for him in ways she hasn’t longed for her husband. And when her husband questions to himself if Edna is becoming increasingly mentally unstable it is really just because Edna is brushing aside the woman she used to be because in fact that was never truly who she authentically was. It’s only another role she played. I also found it interesting that a man in that time, similar to even some men in this time, automatically jump to the idea that a woman is crazy if she starts revolting against their control or acting in a way that upstages their power. That is why there is a great deal about who controls Edna and how and why. Her mobility or lack of mobility is interwoven in, which makes for an important achievement on Chopin’s part in being progressive for her time for recognizing and dissenting against a woman’s lack of freedom. I genuinely enjoy the fact that Edna is complicated and goes against the norms through incremental rebellions and embraces who she is as I believe there’s a lot to be said for that. I find her actions not morally reprehensible but morally ambiguous because she is all the more human for feeling stifled, stuck, and overall being conflicted about how she feels as a wife and a mother. Overall, this book was a special read and also as intoxicating to read as it felt for Edna to explore what freedom she did have and then lost, whether it be self-imposed through her mind or imposed by the overwhelming power of society.

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Category	Ancient & Medieval Literature