A Bird Must Have Strong Wings: The Awakening by Kate Chopin

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.” 

These are probably the most beautiful lines of Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening.

So I'm going to approach this novel very differently from the first two. I have fewer opinions and less analysis. This is because of a few things:

1. I found Edna's character entirely unengaging.

2. I ardently disagreed with Edna's actions in response to her awakening.

3. Regardless, this novel deserves thought and discussion because the message and experience cannot be ignored.

When The Awakening was first published in 1899 it was not received well. It avoided a direct ban but was heavily censored due to Edna's choices which aggravated the established gender roles in society as well as exposed the very real existence of female sexuality. In short, our little, listless, Laodicean Edna created quite a stir with her emotional, mental, and physical abandonment of her husband, her occasional indifference to her children, her scandalous sexual liaison with Arobin, and her emotional infidelity with Robert Lebrun. The last of which resulted in her suicide. 

So what was the message? That female nonconformity results in unrest, unhappiness, and drowning in the Gulf of Mexico? Well, I suppose that's one take away, but certainly not the one Kate Chopin intended. Instead, this novel is heralded as one of the first truly feminist novels. This means the message lies within Edna's secretively common experience, making her the victim of an existence smothered by societal expectations. 

Before I continue with the alternative format I want to create some quick parallels in the novel's characterizations. So Edna is obviously the main figure, originally an ideal woman, wife, and mother who then awakens with life, passion, longing, and dissatisfaction. Mademoiselle Reisz is a recitalist who deeply touches Edna. Though isolated and often unpleasant, Mademoiselle Reisz is independent, perhaps even a representation of Edna's desire to be so as well. Adele Ratignolle is a doting and devoted wife and mother who gives consistent warning to Edna as well as Robert. She may also represent what women were expected to be: the ideal mother and wife who found fulfillment in others fulfillment. Robert is obviously the catalyst to Edna's awakening, and he also serves as the face to the qualities she sees lacking in her marriage. Whereas Arobin seems to be Edna's form of expression and rebellion.

Okay. I have selected some of my favorite quotes from the novel. (If there is one thing about this book it would have to be its style. It is written beautifully.) I will also offer some questions which will hopefully allow us all to ponder the messages behind Edna's awakening.

“Even as a child, she had lived her own small life within herself. At a very early period, she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”

• What necessitated the dual life for Edna? Was it expectation, propriety, class, etc?
• Does our current society necessitate a dual life?

"He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world."

• The "he" is Edna's husband. (Just for your information and contextual understanding.)
• This seems to be the definition of an "awakening." Edna's awakening was definitively sexual and independence-seeking. This isn't necessarily always the case, so was Edna's awakening a result of that which she had been deprived of? Or was it a natural reflection of her personality? Both?
• If the awakening is a response to a deprivation of the passions of life and personal sense of fulfillment then must an awakening always react like the swing of a pendulum? 

“Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul.” 

• Could Edna have confronted her awakening, her desires, and her "dream," while still maintaining a functioning and respectable place in society? 
• Just as a side note, this quote could function well as Edna's unlabeled understanding of oppression.

"I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me."

• Do you agree with Edna's categorization of what is unessential?
• She leaves the only truly essential thing as herself, her being. Is this selfish? Assertive? Natural? Healthy?
• What do you think she means when she says, "but I wouldn't give myself"?
• It seems that she has drawn a difference between giving her life and giving herself. What do you think the difference is?
• Are the phrases "to give of yourself" and "to give yourself" intrinsically different in meaning?

“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult! 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.”

• This is right before Edna drowns herself in the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier in the summer, Edna had finally learned to swim and reveled in the self-assurance and power of it. Does Edna's method of suicide a representation of her last act of independence? Or was she simply being morbidly romantic in dying where she was awakened by Robert? Both, or maybe more?
• Much like the first quote of a bird needing strong wings, do you believe that Edna could have been successful in building a world she could abide in? Was she doomed to "perish in its tumult" from the beginning? 

"But whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself."

-Natalie Cherie