The Awakening

“An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul’s summer day.”

After Léonce accuses Edna of being a negligent mother, she escapes out onto the porch. As she sits there, crying, a strange new feeling overtakes her, although she cannot explain what it is, describing it only as a “shadow”. In this rare moment of solitude, Edna begins to listen to her feelings and emotions. It is this process of self-exploration that later catalyzes Edna’s transformation.

“They were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.” (Chapter 4, Page 19)

In this passage, the narrator openly contrasts Edna with many of the other women on the island. While Edna’s friend Adèle is an exemplification of an ideal “mother-woman,” Edna feels like she herself has never been quite fitted for the role.

“At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”

When Edna was still a child, she realized that her inner and her outer lives were drastically different. Yet as she grew older, she learned to suppress her curious inner world in order to meet the expectations that society placed on her. But Edna’s symbolic rebirth changes this dynamic. In the process of her awakening, Edna strives to shed her fictitious outer life and instead seeks emotional and artistic growth.

“In short, [Edna] was beginning 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. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.

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

These lines describe the beginning of Edna’s awakening. In this passage, apart from referencing the main themes of the novel, such as independence, solitude, and self-discovery, the narrator also foregrounds the fact that Edna is unique in her willingness to fight for her autonomy and self-realization. The narrator’s remark about souls perishing in the tumult of change foreshadows Edna’s death in the turmoil of her growing self-awareness.

“The acme of bliss, which would have been marriage with the tragedian, was not for her in this world. As the devoted wife of a man who worshipped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams.”

The narrator describes a series of infatuations that Edna had as a young girl, including one with a famous tragedian. She was still passionately in love with him when she met Léonce, who at once devoted himself to her. This was a point in Edna’s life when she decided that she should conceal her passions and emotions, and instead strive to become a perfect mother and wife.

“A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.”

During her summer on Grand Isle, Edna has been trying to learn to swim, and to overcome her fear of the open water. One night, she finally goes into the water by herself and swims far out. Her newfound ability to swim symbolizes her desire to leave behind social constraints, and to do something that no other women has done before.

“A thousand emotions have swept through me tonight. I don’t understand half of them…I wonder if I shall ever be stirred again as Mademoiselle Reisz’s playing moved me tonight. I wonder if any night on earth will again be like this one. It is like a night in a dream. The people about me are like some uncanny, half-human beings.”

After having been deeply moved first by Mademoiselle Reisz’s piano playing, and then by her ability to swim by herself for the first time, Edna attempts to express her emotions to Robert. Over the span of one evening, she feels the awakening of both her emotions and her sense of independence. Although it seems to Edna that people around her are now different, it is in fact her who has changed.

“She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she then did.”

Edna has just returned from the first swim that served as a catalyst of her awakening. She refuses to listen to her husband and go to bed, and instead is lying in the hammock on the porch. For the first time in her life, Edna shows her independence. As Edna’s reactions, as well as her thoughts and emotions, begin to change, she also begins to analyze her former behavior. Although she clearly remembers having bowed to her husband’s orders in other moments, she cannot remember the logic that led her to do so. This foregrounds the beginning of Edna’s distancing from her old self.

“She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her, as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul from responsibility.”

After tasting freedom for the first time, Edna does not want to stop feeling this sensation. She does not want to act in a responsible and rational manner, and instead decides to be impulsive and spontaneous. This outer change echoes Edna’s inner change: she no longer wants to obey social constraints, but instead strives to unleash her emotional self.

“How many years have I slept?’ she inquired. ‘The whole island seems changed. A new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving only you and me as past relics. How many ages ago did Madame Antoine and Tonie die? And when did our people from Grand Isle disappear from the earth?” 

This passage, spoken by Edna to Robert, shows Edna’s continued transformation. Her hope is that were she and Robert to be together, both of them might be free from societal conventions, figuratively creating their own, new realm of existence. 

“Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But the small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the little glittering circlet.”

After Edna and Léonce fight over dinner, Edna grows deeply upset. She feels that her marriage is suffocating her, yet she is unable to escape from it. Much like her small boot heel cannot make a mark on the ring, Edna’s lonely rebellion cannot change long-standing social convention.

“The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle,—a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life’s delirium.” 

After dinner with Adèle and her husband, Edna reflects on the contrast between their idyllic domestic tranquility and her unsettled life. However, Edna does not envy Adèle’s domestic bliss. On the contrary, she feels like a life centered only on matrimonial duties is merely a “colorless existence.” The visit seems to reassure Edna that by choosing to pursue her indolence, she has made the right choice.

“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.”

Léonce Pontellier notices the sudden change in his wife’s behavior and concludes that she is “not herself.” Yet Léonce is not insightful enough to understand that in fact Edna is becoming her true self. She is finally casting off her masks of obedient wife and caring mother, and revealing her independent spirit.

“He observed his hostess attentively from under his shaggy brows, and noted a subtle change which had transformed her from the listless woman he had known into a being who, for the moment, seemed palpitant with the forces of life. Her speech was warm and energetic. There was no repression in her glance or gesture. She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.”

Doctor Mandelet, whom Léonce consults about the sudden change in his wife, pays a visit to the Pontelliers. He is shocked by the transformation in Edna. Unlike Léonce, he realizes that she has ceased to suppress her feelings and now expresses herself freely and openly.

“One of these days,’ she said, ‘I’m going to pull myself together for a while and think—try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don’t know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can’t convince myself that I am.” 

Speaking to Alcée, Edna reflects aloud whether she is a good woman or a bad woman. She realizes that she does not obey the codes of society, which inevitably makes her “a bad woman” in the eyes of others. Yet she knows that her pursuit of independence is intrinsically right; therefore, she does feel like she is doing something wrong. Such ambiguity is present throughout the novel, and even Edna’s death can be interpreted as both her failure and her success.

“It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really responded. It was a flaming torch that kindled desire.”

After a long period of courting, Edna and Alcée finally kiss. Since Edna’s marriage with Léonce has been passionless, she can at last feel that her body is awakening to physical urges. Although Edna does not feel an emotional attachment to Alcée and is still in love with Robert, she begins an affair with him so that he can satisfy her newly-discovered sensual desires.

“But as she sat there amid her guests, she felt the old ennui overtake her; the hopelessness which so often assailed her, which came upon her like an obsession, like something extraneous, independent of volition. […] There came over her the acute longing which always summoned into her spiritual vision the presence of the beloved one.”

In order to celebrate moving into a new house, Edna throws an elaborate party. Although she plays a charming hostess, she is unhappy. Edna senses that her moving out of her husband’s house does not equal her liberation. Moreover, she realizes that for all the progress she has made in her self-discovery, she is still unhappy without Robert at her sight.

“The pigeon-house pleased her. It at once assumed the intimate character of a home, while she herself invested it with a charm which it reflected like a warm glow. There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to ‘feed upon opinion’ when her own soul had invited her.”

As Edna moves into a new house, she realizes that although it is much smaller than the house she shared with Léonce, there she will finally find the solitude she needs in order to grow artistically and spiritually. The size of the new house disallows Edna to regularly invite many quests, although such practice was a big part of her former life. When Edna rejects this social role, she feels like she gains more strength to pursue her independence.

“She answered her husband with friendly evasiveness,—not with any fixed design to mislead him, only because all sense of reality had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference.”

After seeing Robert, but without reconciling with him, Edna feels a strange apathy. She no longer tries to take everything in her own hands and assumes an air of indifference. Edna is only willing to show genuine love to her children, while she treats all three men in her life—Léonce, Robert, and Alcée—with equal indifference.

“You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, ‘Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,’ I should laugh at you both.”

After Robert finally kisses Edna, he explains that he went to Mexico to stay away from her because she was married, and belonged to another man. Edna promptly reassures him that she belongs to no one, and that she is her own master. While realizing how independent Edna has become in his absence, Robert also sees that in her independence she has become inconsiderate of other people’s feelings. Although Edna loves Robert, she does not want to be in a conventional relationship, where a husband has total authority over his wife.

“It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream.”

Edna tries to explain to Robert that it was he who fostered her sexual awakening, which later led to her artistic and emotional awakening as well. While Robert might have played an important role in her awakening sensuality and the accompanying sense of self-discovery, Edna has clearly grown beyond him.

“With an inward agony, with a flaming, outspoken revolt against the ways of Nature, she witnessed the scene of torture.”

Edna is summoned to Ratignolle’s house, where she watches Adèle give birth. Edna is deeply disturbed by the scene and hates nature for imposing the obligation of childbearing on women. Liberated from matrimonial duties while her children are away, Edna feels a deep contempt towards the process of child birth and the obligations that come afterwards.

“The years that are gone seem like dreams—if one might go on sleeping and dreaming—but to wake up and find—oh! well! Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”

Edna speaks these words to Doctor Mandelet in the very end of the novel, when she realizes the price that she will have to pay for her independence. Even though her awakening brings her suffering, the joy that accompanies this suffering is worth more than a lifetime in the state of unconscious existence. Living with self-awareness, no matter how shortly, is much more valuable to Edna than a whole life spent in lethargic submission.