Analysis of Text

The story begins in Grand Isle, located in Lousiana and set in 1899. Our protagonist and character with whom the third person narrator most closely sympathizes is Edna Pontellier, a twenty-eight year old wife and mother of two sons. Edna spends most of her time with her closest friend Adele who is never hesitant to remind her of her maternal duties and role as a wife. Edna meets Robert, with whom she feels a connection different and deeper than she has ever felt with her husband. Slowly the two begin to fall in love, but Robert realizing nothing good can come from further contact, leaves for Mexico saying he must attend to business. This event and the combination of a relationship Edna later develops with a pianist named Mademoiselle Reisz, who encourages Edna to express herself artistically through playing, initiate an awakening within Edna. As the novel progresses she begins to feel more and more the tensions between her desire for independence and fulfillment and the expectations society has placed upon her as a wife and mother. As Edna continues to undergo dense self-realization she comes to understand that the societal constraints will never allow her the opportunity to develop the sense of individuality she needs to be at peace with herself. Her husband, Leonce, starts to realize the changes within Edna and has a doctor come to diagnose her. The doctor advises that Leonce to allow her spacce, and as a result Edna moves out into her own house. She has an insignificant affair, which is an instance of her attempting to defy her established role. Following this she sees Robert one last time, and he makes it clear it will be the last. She returns to Grand Isle where she first met him, and in an ambiguous ending swims into the sea letting it overcome her and assumedly commits suicide.

The Awakening was published in 1899, during the turn of the century, into a society where the Industrial Movement, and feminism were emerging, but still at odds with established ideas and ways of life. The novel depicts exactly that: a character struggling with the emergence of internal realization that contradicts the expectations and conventions of society at that time. Edna exists in a society that requires a married woman to selflessly, and basically inhumanely, place the needs of her children and husband above her own. During this time women do not have the right to self-discovery; they are told what they are and what they are to do. When Leonce calls the doctor to come diagnose Edna, it is for acting as a woman would in today’s society; the behavior is so foreign her husband can only account for it by blaming it on mental or physical illness.

The Awakening was Chopin’s second novel. It was first published in 1899. It was immediately criticized for its subject matter (mostly that it so openly addressed female sexuality, and that the protagonist defies, even if only for the most part internally, established gender roles). Many of the initial reviews lament the waste of Chopin’s talent and style, on what was categorized at the time as “sex fiction,” (comparable to a trashy paperback romance today). One of the harsher reviews reads: “We are well satisfied when Edna drowns herself in the end.”

I attempted to refrain from total submersion into the argument of what makes a feminist, or what truly constitutes equality between the genders, and still attempted to explore the question “Should Chopin’s The Awakening be regarded as a work of feminism, or is it less specifically a character study of a certain type of character (who just happens to be female) during a certain time period?” This is an attempt to canonize The Awakening, and assign it to the feminist canon. Not to discredit myself or this argument, but I want to acknowledge that in the end, however you choose to label the story, I think you basically take the same things from it. I believe The Awakening to be first and foremost a depiction: of a society, a woman, a character, a problem, a different period in time. The themes that accompany the story do not make it any less so a portrait.

At first I thought a good way to approach this question was by deciding whether the events that happen in The Awakening could have happened to a man. Then I came to realize that that’s not entirely relevant. Obviously no, the events in the novel, the dilemmas faced by Edna are unique to women during this time, but that does nothing in establishing whether the novel is a feminist work or not. This is the point in my research when I realized it’s an impossible question to address unless you do establish what exactly a feminist work is. And just for the sake of this project, I thought what I am really trying to ask or get to, is whether or not Chopin intended for The Awakening to have some effect on society, catalyze change, or whether her intention was to merely create a representation of a particular situation.
The biggest piece of evidence to be found in the story that backs it being a work of feminism is Edna’s suicide in the end. That the story presents a particular character’s situation, and that that situation ends in tragedy, inadvertently advocates for change. The Awakening is well written in that although I normally don’t see swimming into the sea and allowing it to overcome you as an appropriate response to a situation, Chopin effectively links a course of events that make Edna’s decision appear inevitable to the reader. This makes the story all the more tragic, and also speaks against the societal constraints which have lead Edna to this decision. Backing this are certain inherent moral ideals: like suicide is bad and no one should be placed in a situation where they feel inclined to commit suicide.

The fact alone that Chopin followed through with her decision to publish The Awakening is evidence that it is a feminist work. The Awakening is set during what was then present day; Chopin is not depicting a future society. She is an intelligent and educated women, to whom it must have been apparent that the things she was writing were at the time outlandish, and risqué. It is assumed that before publishing she at least once thought about the public reaction and criticism the novel would receive. She was considered a talented writer in her time and not incapable of writing on another subject. That she chose, despite the possibility (or guarantee) of the literary community’s disapproval, to go through with her publishing, is interpreted as Chopin having reason and motive to follow through. Even if she didn’t intend to initiate change, her intention could possible have been to bring to light the effects of the current way of life.
Jennifer B. Gray in her article for the Southern Literary Magazine asserts that The Awakening can be classified as a feminist work simply because the ideas in the story (specifically the thoughts of Edna) follow with nineteenth century feminism. Because Edna's personal accounts of her "awakening" echo the feminine concept of female identity (e.g. "Mrs. Pontellier 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" (The Awakening, Chopin 57) Gray believes the novel is automatically categorized as a feminist work. Gray insists that all it takes for a work to be considered a type, is to, whether intentionally or not, possess characteristics that fall under that type. 
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese noted women studies scholar who taught at Emory is quoted as saying, “Kate was neither a feminist nor a suffragist, she said so. She was nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously. She never doubted women's ability to be strong.” Here Fox-Genovese opposes Gray, in that she believes for someone to be a feminist (and accordingly there work to be feminist) they must have intention. Fox-Genovese asserts that because Chopin allegedly spoke against feminism and denied any personal feminist convictions, it is impossible for her or her work to be considered such.