Comment on the themes discussed in The Awakening.

  The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a bildungsroman, or a novel of moral or intellectual revolution. Set in 1899, it follows Edna Pontellier as she vacations with her family on Grand Isle in Louisiana, a popular destination for wealthy Creole and French-descent families. It is about her awakening to sexual consciousness, her discovery and assertion of this new ‘self’ through rebellion against the conventional role of being a wife and a mother and the consequences thereof. The novel is about self-expression and a woman’s right to be herself, and to be an individual.

Edna is locked in a typical marriage to Leonce Pontellier, a marriage of convenience made when she was very young, not made with love or romance though he is a good man and a caring husband. Her romantic urgings and physical longings have at this stage hardly been articulated and certainly not satisfied. The family goes to Grand Isle for the summer where she meets and spends a lot of time with Robert Lebrun, an unattached young bachelor, talking, swimming, being together (and of course the Creole husband is never jealous, but you will find out more about this in the section on Creole background). Before they know it, both Edna and Robert begin to feel an attraction towards each other and an intensity of emotion they perceive as unusual, unmanageable and somewhat threatening in the context of their lives and conventional reality. This emotion is passionate and all consuming, leaving no room for thought or sensible action. Robert realises the impossibility of the situation, and not knowing how to deal with it, flees to Mexico to ‘make money’ (we will discuss if he is an escapist, a coward or an honourable man, or all of the above). Once he’s gone, the truth confronts Edna with further starkness and clarity. The summer just like the flirtation, has come to an end and Edna and her family return to their posh home on Esplanade Street, in the city. But things can never be the same for Edna as she is a changed person, as a result of her encounter with Robert and her new self. 

This new Edna is a painter. She does not care about her wifely responsibilities or about keeping up appearances by observing the customs. This new Edna refuses to stay home on Tuesdays to receive her callers, as her husband accepts her to, but goes out just because she prefers to do so. Her husband complains about her lack of supervision of the servants, and he leaves in the middle of a badly cooked dinner to go out to the club to eat. She becomes careless, and disinterested with regard to domestic affairs, letting everything on the home front slide as it is no longer of any significance to her. Her family by now is meaningless and distant for her, her desire to fiercely possess her identity and be her own person being now her primary focus. She wants to feel a sense of being financially independent, not answerable to anybody for her actions, in other words, completely autonomous. She refuses to go for her sister’s wedding and has no thoughts about propriety or ‘what the world will say’ with regard to any of her actions. Mr Pontellier worries about his wife’s health and her strange behaviour, consulting the doctor about both. Although she appears to be in robust health, a disconnect has happened which gives the appearance that she’s not quite all there. 

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