July 3rd, 2006
Kate Chopin - The Awakening
1904 was a pivotal year for Irish literature. Joyce’s Ulysses is set in 1904; Patrick Kavanagh and Molly Keane were born; and the death occurred of Kate Chopin, an American writer born of Irish stock, who in her relatively short life wrote one of the most enduring and controversial works of feminist fiction.
The book, The Awakening, didn’t set out to be a feminist text - how could it, when the f-word didn’t exist in 1899? Chopin was only propelled towards writing after her husband died suddenly, leaving her to raise six children alone. Born Catherine O’Flaherty, of Irish and Cajun stock, she was paid $150 for The Awakening, which was published as a novella along with several short stories. The book’s subject matter caused uproar at the time and such was the level of opposition to it that Chopin never wrote substantially again.
It tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a middle class Cajun woman, married to a New Orleans speculator. The couple have two children and Edna is seen as a model wife and mother. The family spends a summer on Grand Isle where Edna meets Robert Lubrum, a mercurial young man whom she fixates on. Their mutual attraction is physically (but not emotionally) unconsummated and it awakens in Edna a desire to find out who she really is.
Who she is, is a woman bored with her life and has little in common with her husband. While she loves her children, she sees the role of wife and mother incompatible with her true self - the artist in her she has always suppressed. “Mrs Pontellier was beginning to realise her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognise her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.” She speaks of how “even at an early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”
This is precisely what Edna does in the book and this unexpected awakening is a source of torture, because she has lived the life of a conformist right up until that summer by the sea. There, she overcomes her fear of water - a metaphor for her life - and learns to swim, gaining her first sense of independence. When she returns to the city, she begins to paint, sends her children to stay with relatives and eventually moves in to a small house by herself. It dawns on her that her husband “seemed now to her like a person she had married without love as an excuse.” He, in turn is frequently away and it only gradually dawns on him that his wife has had enough of the domestic routine imposed upon her. Panicked, he visits the family doctor for advice wondering, “if his wife were not growing a little unbalanced mentally”, by asserting her independence. The doctor asks if she has been “associating of late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women - super spiritual superior beings” - an obvious reference to feminists. Robert, the catalyst for her awakening, returns later in the book, but by that stage, it no longer matters if they get together or not, she has already metamorphisized into the person she always wanted to be.
The book is marginally let down by its ambiguous ending. It seems that Edna has overcome so much in these pages that the book’s denouement is irreconcilable with everything that has gone before it. The Awakening marked the high point of a promising career for a gifted writer, but sadly Chopin’s body of work is small because of the reaction to her ne plus ultra novella. Often dubbed ‘The American Madam Bovary’, this is a far superior book, and most of us would rather Edna Pontellier than Emma Bovary any day.
Review: Good Behaviour - Molly Keane
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:55 pm
Unexpected but very much appreciated post Sinead: for purely personal reasons I think I’ll bore you with. This is one of those books that I just forgot about but I’m now reminded of floppy-fringed indie kid schooldays when I stumbled across it and found it wonderfully strange and moving: despite there being very little in it that should have attracted me. It was one of ten novellas in an american textbook called ‘Forms of the Novella’ that I found in that secondhand/ remnants bookshop that used to be on Henry St: other featured treats were Pynchon, Joyce, Kafka and Henry James and a great one called (I think) Pale Horse Pale Rider by the author of (i think) Ship of Fools. I loaned it to someone who gave it to someone else and when I tried to track it down finally found out it had made it’s way to Shelton Abbey via Mountjoy- still haven’t worked out how. If anyone knows the name of the author I’d appreciate it.
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Colin, that sounds like a great collection. I think you might be talking about Katherine Anne Porter, who I know wrote Ship of Fools. I’ve only read the odd short story of hers in American anthologies, but she’s a fine writer.
One of my favourite American women writer novellas, and one that again taps in to the fate of women and domesticity, is The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Have you read it?
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Sinead,
Let me add my thanks for introducing me to Kate Chopin. A good name. Superior to Madame Bovary is high recommendation.
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Katharine Anne Porter- yep, got the ring of truth about it so thanks for that. Never read the other but if it comes recommended I’ll keep an eye out. The collection The Awakening in actually was one of the greatest books I’ve ever owned- came complete with critical essays on all ten authors. Since this post I’ve become aware of nagging impressions of waking up in the dead of night and thinking that I may never find the book again so in order to get it back I have to get myself locked up.
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:47 pm
If you can imagine an excited yelp running through this it might help: the various typo’s and saggy punctuation of the previous mail were due to my looking on Ebay for the book as I was writing it- and I just found it. Thanks again for the original post.
July 4th, 2006 at 7:51 am
I read The Awakening ten years ago for a course in English lit I was attending in Marion College and really enjoyed it. Since then I’ve always meant to pick it up again. Might do so again now. Yes the ending is ambiguous but otherwise it’s an excellent read.
July 10th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Goodness me, if I didn’t know any better I’d say you were studying the same course as I am!
Charlotte Gilman’s story The Yellow Wallpaper I remember from last year’s Approaching Literature and was a fine introduction to someone whose writing I hadn’t come across before.
Ambiguous endings are a big thing with fin de siecle novels of the nineteenth century - supposedly they represent the whole breakdown of moral certainty of the Victorian era, although it is easy to categorise these things retrospectively. Virginia Woolf certainly moved things a lot further with Orlando and her pastiche/critique of nineteenth century writing.
I had no idea that Kate Chopin had Irish blood though, thanks for that. Great piece by the way. Sorry for blabbing, but its great to be made do a double take like this - well done!