Edna's Destruction In The Awakening

Edna Pontellier: A Shallow Excavation of the Soul

Chopin’s The Awakening exposes Edna’s internal and external conflict involving identity, individuality, and romance, which ultimately cause her tragic downfall. Most literary critics have primarily defined the novel’s ending as either a triumph or defeat, depending upon their relationship to Edna Pontellier. From one perspective, audiences who sympathize with Edna may believe her choice is one of triumphant, final rebellion against societies limiting constructs. From the other perspective, audiences who see Edna as a troubled, adulterous, immature young woman might argue her actions as weak, distressed, and an ultimate defeat. Throughout the story, Edna’s characterization becomes more and more evident through her thoughts and actions; however, Edna’s death is not “merely the inevitable consequence of her own actions” (Malzahl 37). To thoroughly assess the ending of The Awakening,

one must interpret both Edna’s public and private relations. Her ending ultimately depends upon both her interactions with the outer world, reality, and her musing and daydreaming in her mind, romance and dreams.
By acknowledging both Edna’s internal and external conflicts, the true question of her demise becomes less dichotomous and more united; However, no matter how triumphant or defeated her death is, it is impossible for Edna to be given an alternate ending due to the external forces Edna faces throughout the novel such as the restricting society and culture she lives in. Chopin’s novel mirrors “the socio-economic and cultural realities women like Edna faced” (Ramos 151), which exhibited many restrictions and discrimination against women. Although the Creole culture Edna is a part of seems liberal and free, it is carefully constrained and conservative. Edna thinks of Creole culture as possibility and openness, but its patriarchal structure stifles her search for self-identity. Instead of self-expression, she is restricted to the demands of social customs. As a woman living in a male-led society, Edna’s identity is only in relationship to another such as mother, daughter, or wife.
Edna marries Leoncé to escape her childish feelings of infatuation, “closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams” (Chopin 40). She seems to take pride in the fact that “no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection” for Leoncé (Chopin 40). However, Chopin reveals Edna’s marriage was “purely an accident” (Chopin 39). Leoncé sees his wife as “a valuable piece of personal property” (Chopin 24), not as an equal human being. After Edna realizes how traditional and materialistic he is, she begins to have fits of rage and sadness. Her emotions become so intense she tries to crush her wedding ring, but “[her small boot] did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the little glittering circlet” (Chopin 75). Just as Edna cannot break her ring, she cannot sever her ties to her marriage. Even though she tries to distance herself from Leoncé by withholding sexual relations and even moving into a “pigeon house” (Chopin 115), she fails to completely detach herself from the responsibilities of her previous life. After ridding herself of her husband’s dominance and power, she tries to search for a new identity; one she can relate to. However, the responsibilities of being a wife are easier to neglect than those of being a mother.
As Edna slowly begins to notice the difference between societal duties and personal pleasure, she begins to find solace in her children’s’ absence: “A radiant peace settled upon her when she at least found herself alone. Even the children were gone” (Chopin 94). Motherly obligations become a hassle for her, and she views her children as burdens that hinder her self-identity and freedom: “The children appeared before her 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” (Chopin 138). Edna even states, “I would give my money; I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn’t give myself” (Chopin 69). In essence, Edna believes associating with the identity of mother shows her giving in to society and thwarts her search for her true self. Therefore, she can never find happiness in the fixed social identities of her outer world.
Desperate to shake her patriarchal reality, Edna sets out to find a new identity she can cling to and become. Edna encounters “a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who has quarreled with almost everyone” (Chopin 46). Mademoiselle Reisz lives a life devoid of motherly tendencies. She also seems to have no romantic past, present or future. However, she is gifted with the art of musical talent, which she learns for only herself. Even though she is not nor will ever be married, her artistic lifestyle “is not only tolerated but universally respected” (Ramos 149). As the “artist-woman,” Mademoiselle Reisz “inhabits or occupies a social identity, but she does so with “real” social consequences” (Ramos 148). Only through a life of solitude and disregard for society can she define herself and create real art. Unfortunately, while Edna is captivated by Mademoiselle Reisz’s hauntingly beautiful prelude and impressed by her respected autonomy, she finds the lonely artistic lifestyle to be imperfect due to lack of sexuality, which a woman Adelé Ratignolle awakens in her.
Edna “was flushed and felt intoxicated” around Adelé Ratignolle (Chopin 40). She was first attracted to Adelé’s “excessive physical charm” (Chopin 35). Chopin reveals Edna’s confusing awakening to sexuality by stating, “There may have been… influences, both subtle and apparent” (Chopin 35) that caused Edna to become more aware of arousal, especially involving Adelé. Edna cultivated a close relationship with the gorgeous Creole but failed to notice how Adelé worked among the predetermined social identities. Adelé is able “to wield a significant amount of social power and agency within and beyond her immediate domestic sphere” (Ramos 149). She is sensual, charming, and influential, and also maternal, and domestic. In essence, Adelé embodies the characteristics of mother-woman, an identity Edna shuns readily. However, what Edna does not understand, is that “Adelé inhabits [social identities] in a practical way and modifies the overarching identity the novel assigns to her” (Ramos 156). “Adelé understands how fictitious the social roles available to her are” (Ramos 156). As a true mother-woman, Adelé’s first priority is to help others. Her duties remain steadfast to domestic roles such as wife, sister, and most importantly, mother. In reality, she has accepted nature and society’s rules and modified her own needs to meet their expectations.
Nature, unfortunately reminds Edna of her position as a mother quite frequently throughout the novel.

Chopin describes Edna’s motherhood as quite impulsive and manic: “She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them” (Chopin 40). Even though Edna is awakening to many different parts of reality, she still thinks of her children, often at the most random of times. At first she barely notices her thoughts drifting to ideas of domesticity and family, but during Adelé’s child birthing, Edna “was seized with a vague dread” (Chopin 133). During the birth of her own children, Edna had been put to sleep; thus “her own like experiences seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered” (Chopin 133). Edna felt as if “she witnessed the scene of torture” (Chopin 134) and left “stunned and speechless” (134). During her witness of Adelé, Edna solidifies the idea that she doesn’t want to give birth again. By coming to this irrefutable conclusion, Edna permanently rejects the identity of

mother-woman.
Because Edna does not identify with either the artist-woman or the mother-woman, she removes all pretenses of trying to be a woman identity. She transitions into a third lifestyle; the masculine. This time of her life shows a transition from the private atmosphere of her old life and house to the very male world of the public marketplace. She begins to gamble at the racetrack and sell paintings to make a living. During her time alone, she samples masculine freedom and physical passion with Alceé Arobin. “Chopin shrewdly designs Alceé to present Edna’s greatest challenge: to understand that romantic love is born of the erotic longing within oneself for transcendence that cannot be fulfilled by union with another human being” (Papke 83). Unfortunately, something in Edna’s nature makes it impossible for her to be fully satisfied with the masculine life. Chopin offers her own opinion of this romantic love: “I am inclined to think that love springs from animal instinct, and therefore is, in a measure, divine” (Chopin 219). With this meaning in mind, it makes sense that Edna feels “a dull pang of regret because it was not the kiss of love which had inflamed her” (Chopin 107). Edna is awakened to the sensuality of physical passion, but she does not completely transcend it because it lacked the aspect of romance or true love.
Edna turns inwardly to her own personal world of romance and dreams. However, she can barely understand her own She begins “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” (Chopin 34). As she continues to awaken to these many stages and harsh realities of the world she inhabits, reality itself becomes distorted: “The street, the children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become antagonistic” (Chopin 75-6).