by Michael Robinson
Citing this article for a class? Ask your instructor before citing it. The citations were MLA format as of 2007, but things can change. You can find a current MLA guide (or a smaller summary guide) in your school's bookstore and online.
Kate Chopin wrote other stories, which you can find here
here.
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Kate Chopin's
The Awakening follows Edna Pontellier―the disenfranchised wife of a wealthy investor―in Victorian-era New Orleans as she tries to understand her place in the universe. The themes of sex and suicide in
The Awakening offended the rigid moral sensibilities that were prevalent in the late 1800s. However, the reviews and studies of the novel have changed along with society. In a short 118 years, the book went from being harshly criticized for its moral implications, to being analyzed for its symbolism. We can gain a better understanding of history by looking at these criticisms.
The moral sensibilities of early reviewers were at odds with the book's themes, and this conflict is reflected in their reviews (Culley 159). Though harsh, even the most critical of early reviewers retained an air of polite indignation. For example, Cather suggests that next time Chopin “devote that flexible iridescent style of hers to a better cause” (172). Cather argues that
The Awakening is no more than a new edition of
Madame Bovary, and that such a revision was unnecessary (170).
Not all early reviewers were so hard on Chopin's novel. Pollard refrains from commenting on Chopin or her motives. Instead, he offers somewhat energetic comments on various events in the novel. For example, when discussing Edna's final swim, Pollard writes: “Ah, what a hiss, what a fiery splash, there must have been in those warm waters of the South!” (181), and:
But―what a pity that poor Pontellier, Edna's husband, never knew that his wife was in a trance all their wedded days, and that he was away at the moment of her awakening! (181)
The Awakening went almost completely unnoticed through the early 1900s. One exception comes from Daniel S. Rankin, who in a 1932 biography of Chopin wrote of the influences on Chopin's writing. In his research, Rankin learns that Chopin's imagination had been “saturated with a keen interest in woman's nature” by her great-grandmother's propensity for story-telling (182). Rankin calls Chopin an “original genius” (182). Rankin concludes that Chopin's “extraordinary tact” allowed her to produce a book that “tells the truth without offense, with detachment, and with just that gleam of humor” which “makes even the nasty digestible”, “illuminates the agreeable”, and “gives a grace of movement to the whole” (184). Though his review was positive, Pollard asks whether or not the book's theme was deserving of such “exquisite care”(184). The change in tone from that of Cather's contemporaries seems to indicate a change to a more open-minded society, where the contents of a book become more important than the social standing of its author.
The novel would reappear in 1953 when Cyrille Arnavon published
Edna, the French translation of
The Awakening (Culley 159). In the introduction to Arnavon's translation, Arnavon asks us to analyze Edna's personality so we can appreciate the novel, and insists that if we are to form an opinion, we must “go back to an age in which a flourishing romanticism, literary in origin, was deliberately carried over into real life” (184). Arnavon criticizes the way in which Chopin ended the book, and suggests that “there seems to be insufficient justification for Edna's 'romantic' suicide”, and that the ending is the “main weakness of this fine novel” (185).
In a 1970 review, Spangler brings up the inconsistency between Edna's attitude at the end and the way in which Chopin characterized her throughout the novel. Spangler points out that the Edna we see at the end is “different, and diminished” when compared to the Edna seen throughout the book (209). Spangler points out that the Edna we knew seemed to care little for her children, while at the end Chopin asks us to believe in an Edna who can't bear the loss of Robert (with whom she had a brief affair), and is suddenly concerned with her children (209). Spangler speculates that Chopin attempted to please both sentimentalists and moralists with the ending, and only succeeded in reducing the novel from an “extraordinary masterpiece” to a “painful failure of vision” (210-211).
Critics in the mid-1900s tried to find meaning behind major plot points. This is quite a change from the harsh condemnations seen in early reviews. Where Cather's contemporaries saw a book that was a waste of paper at best, and scandalous at worst, modern readers seek meaning in the novel's significant plot points, and appreciate Chopin's willingness to deviate from the standards of her time to tell a story that she wasn't supposed to write.
The ambiguity of the book's ending has led to a great deal of speculation. Did Edna intend to kill herself, or was death a side effect of her self-liberation? Wolkenfeld points out Chopin's refusal to offer a storybook ending, and her refusal to paint Edna as a victim of an oppressive society (246). Ringe concurs, adding that Chopin “makes no explicit comment on Edna Pontellier's actions”, and that Chopin “neither approves nor condemns, but maintains an aesthetic distance throughout” (227).
Modern reviews maintain the open-minded perspective of those written in the mid-1900s, but tend to focus on gender and racial issues. Yaeger looks at the way language is used in the novel, and questions whether Edna truly woke up, or if she simply moved to another “permutation of the subject-object relations her society has ordained for her” (285). Yaeger asks that if this is so, can we still consider
The Awakening one of the “grand subversive novels” (286)? Yaeger notes that throughout Edna's awakening, she spoke through the people that supposedly allowed her to wake up (286). For example, when Robert describes a fantasy for Edna where she and Robert are to look for buried treasure, Edna has little control over the fantasy (Yaeger 286). Yaeger suggests that Robert's fantasy is “not at all emancipatory”, and that it offers only a “flip side”, the “half-fulfilled wishes of an everyday ideology” (286). The novel's final images depict Edna's need for another mode of speech to express her “unspoken, but not unspeakable needs” (Yaeger 291).
Though gender was the dominant topic in the book, mentions of race were common. Ammons notes that while Chopin gives names to all of the black characters, the manner in which they are presented is “stereotypic and demeaning” (310). Ammons reminds the reader that Edna is able to “dream of total personal freedom” because the price of that freedom has already been paid for her through the oppression of her servants (310). While Edna is looking for a way out of her oppression, servants are at Edna's home doing the jobs her society would normally require her to do (310).
Looking at criticism is an excellent way to gain a better understanding of our own era, because it gives insight in to those that preceded it. We may never know how much thought Chopin gave to the meaning of the themes in her novel. It's possible that she didn't intend to insert any symbolism, or to offer a commentary on her society. Whether intentional or not,
The Awakening has stirred the imaginations of reviewers and researchers over the last 118 years, and their writings provide a glimpse into their eras.
Works Cited
Ammons, Elizabeth. “Women of Color in
The Awakening.”
Essays in Criticism (1991): p. 309-311 Rpt. in
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).
Arnavon, Cyrille. “An American
Madame Bovary.”
Essays in Criticism (1953): p. 184-188 Rpt. in
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).
Cather, Willa. “From the Pittsburgh Leader.”
Contemporary Reviews (July 8, 1899): p. 170-172. Rpt. in
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).
Culley, Margo. “Editor's Note: History of the Criticism of
The Awakening.”
Criticism (1993): p. 159-160. In
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).
Pollard, Percival. “The Unlikely Awakening of a Married Woman.”
Essays in Criticism (1909): p. 179-181. Rpt. in
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).
Rankin, Daniel S. “Influences Upon the Novel.”
Essays in Criticism (1932): p. 181-184. Rpt. in
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).
Ringe, Donald A. “Romantic Imagery.”
Essays in Criticism (1972): p. 222-227. Rpt. in
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).
Spangler, George M. “The Ending of the Novel.”
Essays in Criticism (1970): p. 208-211 Rpt. in
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).
Wolkenfeld, Suzanne. “Edna's Suicide: The Problem of the One and the Many.”
Contemporary Reviews (1993): p. 241-247. Rpt. in
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).
Yaeger, Patricia S. “Language and Female Emancipation.”
Essays in Criticism (1987): p. 285-291. Rpt. in
The Awakening. Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition).