The Awakening by Kate Chopin made me really sad.

[virginiawang]

I just read The Awakening, written by Kate Chopin, and I felt extremely sad when the young woman walked on and on into the sea at the end of the novel and ended up her life. Then I glanced through some reviews online in the hope of understanding more about the story from other people's perspectives. I was shocked to find that most people put a great deal of emphasis on some sort of animal desire on the part of a woman when they analyzed the book, and I thought after I read some of those reviews that I shouldn't have tried reading them in the first place if I had known it. I feel in a sense that they've spoilt the book as a masterfully created piece of art. The book presents the awakening of a woman with her keenest feelings vividly portrayed, though most of which had been denounced by society at her time. She followed her heart and became oblivious to social restrictions and her obligations in her marriage, which was an accident in her own words, and drowned herself when she failed to gain her wish at last. I felt sad and wondered why she couldn't have married a man she was enamored of, if she always put so much emphasis on her heart.

[Hank Stamper]

We read this in one of our Uni modules last year.. the class was split on this really .. half sympathised with Edna and thought the act of committing suicide was courageous - in that it was the only way she could truly be free and take control of her own life (even if it meant ending it).. the other half felt she was unsympathetic and selfish (she had children after all).. I have to be honest and say I was more inclined towards the latter group..

In reply to your last question, why couldn't she have married a man she was more enamored of? my take on it is that she wouldn't be happy anyway, she suffers from the grass is always greener syndrome ... but I didn't like her husband either, although not enough for me to feel sympathetic towards Edna..

Maybe that's a bloke thing


Great story though

[papayahed]

The book club read this earlier in the year, you can find the discussion here:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43144

[virginiawang]

In reply to your last question, why couldn't she have married a man she was more enamored of? my take on it is that she wouldn't be happy anyway, she suffers from the grass is always greener syndrome ... but I didn't like her husband either, although not enough for me to feel sympathetic towards Edna..
Great story though
It is only one of my guesses. If she had not rushed into marriage at a young age before she really got an opportunity to meet a man whom she would be enamored of, she wouldn't have suffered the stuffiness in marriage. I think she would have enjoyed her marriage if she could have married Robert Lebrun. However I do not know why she could have accepted Alece Arobin when she had been thinking of Robert all the time.

[Jozanny]

It has been some time since I've reread Chopin, but unlike my reaction to Young Werther's pistol pop, I saw Edna's arc in the novel as a metaphor, and the ending in the sea did not sadden me, and again, unlike Emma Bovary, Edna really wasn't after tangible things, like sex and materialism. She wanted the freedom to rediscover her own being, and Chopin shows this isn't possible, at least in the world Chopin knew. James heroines, whatever the shock to their system, never questioned what their role was, except in The Bostonians, where James disapproves of sufferage. Chopin not only questions a woman's place in the Victorian age, for her it is mind numbingly sterile.

[mono]

We read this in one of our Uni modules last year.. the class was split on this really .. half sympathised with Edna and thought the act of committing suicide was courageous - in that it was the only way she could truly be free and take control of her own life (even if it meant ending it).. the other half felt she was unsympathetic and selfish (she had children after all).. I have to be honest and say I was more inclined towards the latter group..
Yes, suicide, whether committed in 1899 or in contemporary times seems a very ethical dilemma, and one must question whether Edna drowned herself as an act of bravery or cowardice; some would say she had many more options, others none, but Edna's friend, Adèle, did too well at incessantly reminding her of a "woman's duties," husbands' "expectations," and familial responsibilities that it seems, even if she had more options, her periphery convinced her too strongly that she had no escape of removing herself towards freedom.

It has been some time since I've reread Chopin, but unlike my reaction to Young Werther's pistol pop, I saw Edna's arc in the novel as a metaphor, and the ending in the sea did not sadden me, and again, unlike Emma Bovary, Edna really wasn't after tangible things, like sex and materialism. She wanted the freedom to rediscover her own being, and Chopin shows this isn't possible, at least in the world Chopin knew. James heroines, whatever the shock to their system, never questioned what their role was, except in The Bostonians, where James disapproves of sufferage. Chopin not only questions a woman's place in the Victorian age, for her it is mind numbingly sterile.
Well said, and I agree. I have always connected The Awakening and Madame Bovary in my brain, too, as well as Anna Karenina (maybe Lady Chatterly's Lover also); at least with Edna Pontellier and Anna Karenina, they sought something beyond the flesh, so to speak, something bordering closer to self-identity, and, not surprisingly, Chopin wrote this novel right into the catapult of feminism (not surprisingly, a term invented in the late 1800's) and the Women's Rights Movement (in the U.K. and U.S.), while Emma Bovary seemed to seek "self-identity" more through external objects and Hedonism.
Edna Pontellier, Anna Karenina, and Emma Bovary had the similarity in feeling, to put it bluntly, bored with the structural functionalism in patriarchy, the housewife-complex, and all three felt exhausted of feeling portrayed as women as unthinking, unfeeling, child-engendering beings in, no coincidence, roughly the same time period of the latter half of the 19th century. [***SPOILERS***] Unfortunately, all three women found their only escape of this suppression of feministic thought and freedom through suicide, and all rather painful suicides, something not a coincidence, the suffrage ending in more suffrage.

She followed her heart and became oblivious to social restrictions and her obligations in her marriage, which was an accident in her own words, and drowned herself when she failed to gain her wish at last. I felt sad and wondered why she couldn't have married a man she was enamored of, if she always put so much emphasis on her heart.
I feel that a more "enamored" marriage, one that would have placed more "emphasis on her heart," sounds like the last thing Chopin would have advocated for Edna Pontellier, which would have turned The Awakening into something more like a typical Jane Austen or Brontë novel, where a woman's happiness revolves around satisfying the apparent "need" for fulfilled love, unsurpisingly contingent upon a fit suitor. Instead, Pontellier wanted to break this monotonous cycle as a wife and child-producing thing (not even a woman or person, but a thing), and sought a happiness through freedom, rather than a happiness dependent upon marriage, children, finances, pompousness, etc.

[virginiawang]

I feel that a more "enamored" marriage, one that would have placed more "emphasis on her heart," sounds like the last thing Chopin would have advocated for Edna Pontellier, which would have turned The Awakening into something more like a typical Jane Austen or Brontë novel, where a woman's happiness revolves around satisfying the apparent "need" for fulfilled love, unsurpisingly contingent upon a fit suitor. Instead, Pontellier wanted to break this monotonous cycle as a wife and child-producing thing (not even a woman or person, but a thing), and sought a happiness through freedom, rather than a happiness dependent upon marriage, children, finances, pompousness, etc.

We often see some strong women dedicate their life to the promotion of women rights, the emancipation of women from social restrictions or the propaganda of all the harmful effects of marriage on women. Oftentimes they have never felt infatuation for men, so they urge more freedom for women and strive to equate men. They are always described as head-strong, ambitious and intellectual people, who follow their head rather than their heart all the time.
However Kate Chopin presented a story of a passionate woman, who developed a strong attachment with a younger man. He awakened her new sense of self since the moment they met. Her heart was engaged by him until she died in the sea. She was awakened to a new realm of passions, which led her to listen close to her inner voices and to enhance her soul, sometimes by means of art. This love is different from the love portrayed by those authors like Jane Austen in that it is not a product of social conventions. This inflamed love transformed Edna’s mind to that of a child, whose inward and outward senses remained identical, so she walked on and on into the sea, the place where she first kindled her love for Robert, after he left her.
I believe this fatal love would have led Edna to assume all the responsibilities of a wife if she could have married Robert Lebrun.
Edna’s awakening and love were in keeping with the transcendental philosophy held by many romantic writers, who quested for the beauty of their souls by means of love, nature or art. Therefore she died when she failed.

[virginiawang]

Yes, suicide, whether committed in 1899 or in contemporary times seems a very ethical dilemma, and one must question whether Edna drowned herself as an act of bravery or cowardice; some would say she had many more options, others none, but Edna's friend, Adèle, did too well at incessantly reminding her of a "woman's duties," husbands' "expectations," and familial responsibilities that it seems, even if she had more options, her periphery convinced her too strongly that she had no escape of removing herself towards freedom.

I don't think a desire to gain freedom from obligations was the true cause of her death. She once told Robert that she was not a possession of anyone and that she had the right to decide for herself what she wanted, so she could have left and discarded whoever and whatever she did not like without difficulty. She betrayed her defiance of social restrictions more than once, and they couldn't have posed a threat to her in any case. The true cause of her death was Robert.

[virginiawang]

However I would like the story better if Edna had not accepted Alecee Arobin when Robert left for Mexico. I wondered how she could have had an affair with a man when she had been thinking of another man all the time. It ruined her love for Robert. Perhaps she was a promiscuous woman who did not deserve a true love. She did not have a beautiful heart.