Women’s Role in Society As Depicted in The Awakening
by Natasha Gibbs

In a whirlwind of a changing and developing young America, a woman by the name of Kate Chopin wrote a novel.  Like the world in which she lived, Chopin’s story represented a changing nation, especially on the grounds of society for women.  Where did women fit in this evolving world?  Chopin answers that question through the voices of Edna Pontellier and other characters in The Awakening.  As is common with authors, Chopin uses her personal life experiences and the society in which she lived to create her masterpiece.

Kate Chopin lived from 1850 to 1904, raised by an Irish father and a French-Creole mother (Wyatt).  Within her family she was surrounded by women, and more specifically, by widows.  Her father died when she was only five years old, which would serve as the beginning of many deaths and sorrows for Chopin to cope with during her life (Wyatt).  Her mother’s experience with losing her husband has been speculated as perhaps being inspiration for Chopin’s short story, “Story of an Hour.”  Chopin was surrounded by shocking women in her family; her great-great-grandmother experiencing the first divorce of St. Louis history and her grandmother giving birth to fifteen children (Wyatt).   Despite the consoling circle of female relationships she had been raised in, by the time Kate Chopin was twenty-four years old, she had lost all of her siblings and began a life of solitude and depression.

These two sentiments, solitude and depression, are shared with Chopin’s character Edna Pontellier as she declares to Doctor Mandelet that “periods of despondency and suffering” control her (Chopin 105).  What causes these emotions to consume Edna?  Perhaps it is the expectations she has to live up to.  She is expected to be a submissive, devoted wife, dedicated mother, and quiet woman in her community.  She is taught and disciplined to be a gentle, nurturing woman; a role brilliantly portrayed by Adèle Ratignolle.  These lessons begin from the time she marries Monsieur Pontellier, “closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams” (19).  Perhaps it is this loss of innocence and childlike faith in the world which causes Edna to suffocate, “to feel again the realities pressing into her soul” (31).  It is evident that Edna feels a very potent desire to resist the culture in which she lives.  Throughout The Awakening, there is a constant conflict between social structure and the unruly, and sometimes childlike impulses that Edna acts out. 

Surprisingly, it is Adèle Ratignolle who partially drives Edna to her rebellion against society.  Because Adèle is a Creole woman, and therefore recognized as chaste, she is allowed by their culture to speak openly about intimate and otherwise inappropriate topics.  When she and Edna begin to bond, Edna is often exposed to casual but risqué discussions, awakening her forbidden and suppressed desires. As shown through Adèle’s influence on Edna, the same form of social restraint that pressures Edna to submit also provokes her into rebellion.  Even at the beginning of the novel, Chopin explains Edna’s conflicting transition through a series of emotions and profound thoughts:

At that early period it served but to bewilder her.  It moved her to dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome her the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier is 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. (14)

Had society and Edna’s world lifted the burden of their expectations, Edna may not have committed suicide.  Although the novel begins when the protagonist is 28, her story actually starts when she denies herself true love and submits herself to an average, responsible marriage.  In doing so, she has ultimately surrendered her creativity, freedom, and sensitivity to the world around her.  When she finally does awaken to all of these once buried desires, she finds herself in a prison of propriety and social structure. 

This structure and the ideals of her family cause her to give herself up to a life with “no trace of passion,” eventually leaving her empty (19).  As the amount of pressure builds, Edna begins to turn to direct forms of rebellion, whether they are the beginning of an affair with Alcée Arobin, going out on Tuesdays, or moving into her own home, declaring complete and defiant independence.  In addition, as evidence of the importance of propriety in the Pontellier household, Monsieur Pontellier is almost more upset with Edna not staying home to receive visitors than with any of her other impulses.

In the end, Edna acts on her most self-destructive impulse of all when she decides to walk into the sea’s “soft, close embrace” and remove herself from any hold that society could have on her (109).  It is in the sea, not culture, that Edna Pontellier finds freedom and meaning.  Yet, Edna sees it as both, “delicious” and “terror” as she contemplates her choice to put an end to the relentless struggle within her (109).  Ultimately, her fear of being possessed outweighs her fear of failing as an artist and being a coward.  Perhaps society wins in destroying her, or perhaps it loses in that it fails to make her conform. 

Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994.

Wyatt, Neal. Biography of Kate Chopin.  1995. 30 Apr. 2007. <http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/katebio.htm>.

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