The Awakening

Are you finding it hard to like Edna? If so, remind yourself that this is literature. Chopin could have given you a story that would have made Edna look far more sympathetic, focusing on Leonce's abusive tendencies, fixating on the plight of the Victorian woman. Instead, Chopin gives us a flawed figure to say the least. Edna is not the woman Hawthorne envisioned to lead the charge for female equality. She is beautiful, but not pure. Edna has desires, wishes, dreams. She is, by the end of the novel, a fully emancipated being--in other words a man. Remember that Edna doesn't do anything Leonce hasn't done, with the exception of the long swim. Still, The Awakening was met with shock and disapproval for its frank consideration of the simple possibility that women might, occasionally, have selfish thoughts. I don't think Chopin was arguing that all women should have wild affairs and then end it all; do you? So what then was the point of her tale? At the end of the day, hyperbole is the sharpest arrow in the literary quiver. Drama of any kind helps us put our own mundane lives into perspective. Perhaps Chopin hoped to raise awareness, or awaken a new sensitivity to the plight of women in patriarchal culture. Perhaps she wanted to exercise some of her own demons. In either, or both cases, what we are left with is a compelling story of one woman's struggle to be free, at any cost.