Feminism and themes in Chopin's The Awakening

Awakening Feminism

Defining Feminism in Chopin's the Awakening

Though by now quite well established as a general "-ism," the literary, philosophical, and critical school of feminism is not particularly well defined. Feminism is obviously concerned with issues of gender, and specifically with the issue of female subjugation in the historic and traditional patriarchy, but the ways in which feminism looks at this issue and attempts to resolve it -- if indeed an individual feminist text or work attempts to resolve it at all -- are quite disparate and in some views even incompatible. A blanket definition of feminism or of a feminist work, then, might not be a very realistic or even desirable construct. In fact, the rigidity of such a definition could be seen as somewhat antithetical to the central ideas of feminism in its refusal to allow for divergent views. The feminist struggle has been fought largely in an attempt to establish an individual sense of identity that is not dependent on gender, which was the primary defining (and hence limiting) factor of identity for women throughout most of Western history. Developing a complete definition of feminism would necessarily impose certain attitudes and beliefs upon feminist writers, and would usurp this struggle.

This line of thinking, ironically, provides a good general (though not at all absolute) definition of feminism -- it is literature, art criticism, etc. that is concerned with the role of women in society and in their personal lives, and with their ability to create and maintain a sense of self without or in spite of external constraints. This is certainly the case in many of Kate Chopin's works, including her novel The Awakening. This book is primarily concerned with Edna Pontellier's attempts to find and define herself, and her "awakening" to the realities of her identity as a woman in the early years of the twentieth century. Feminism in this novel is an issue almost indistinguishable from identity, and it is the exploration rather than the resolution that makes the work feminist.

Nothing makes this more apparent than the famous (or infamous, at the time of the book's publication) ending of the novel, in which Edna Pontellier divests herself of her clothing and her life as she wades out into the ocean and succumbs to drowning. The way in which the water is described reflects the importance of identity and one's ability to carve it out in this novel: "The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude" (Chopin, Chapter 39). The "abysses of solitude" that are so inviting to Edna at this point can be seen as a sort of freedom -- she has spent almost her entire life (and the bulk of the novel) as a fixture in other people's lives, defined by her external roles rather than by any sort of developed sense of interiority. She awakens to this interiority during the course of the novel, but realizes that her desires and her sense of self are incompatible with societies construct, and she seeks the freedom of solitude in the sea, and in death.

The figures that, during the novel, have the greatest role in shaping Edna Pontellier's character, and therefore the figures from whom she must escape, are her husband and children. It is her role as wife and mother that is supposed to define her, as it did for much of recorded history. Women were thought to have very little value outside of the home, especially in the higher classes (when it was unnecessary for women to earn an income or engage in labor for any other reason). Thus, it was her interactions with and devotion to certain specified others that was supposed to define her. As she awakens to the reality of this construct, she reflects, "I would give up the unessential [for my children]; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself (Chopin, Chapter 16). Once she realizes that she truly as an identity of her own, she is unwilling to have it subsumed by anyone else.