False Roles and Fictitious Selves in “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin

0:12 Erin: In the late 19th century, the new Woman was a term coined by Henry James for a particular kind of feminist who demanded freedom of behavior, dress, education and sexuality. Out of that paradigm came the Awakening, a novel that scandalized critics upon its publication with its tale of New Orleans society wife Edna Pontellier, who tries to throw off the shackles of society's expectations for women and follow her own passions. What might the novel have in common with a fairy tale? How do Edna's artistic ambitions frustrate her role as a wife and mother? And do Edna's efforts to cast off her so called fictitious self and live honestly constitute a triumph or a tragedy? Today we're discussing Kate Chopin's 1899 novel, The Awakening. This is Erin O'Luanaigh and this is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. Wes, when I suggested we do this novel, it was one that I had been familiar with for a while. I think I'd read it in high school and you mentioned that you had never read it before and in fact you hadn't even heard of it. And then I went to poll a bunch of friends and it turns out that people have either read this in high school or have never heard of it before. And there's no in between. There's no one who's heard of it but hasn't read it. At least that's my very inaccurate straw poll. So I'm just really curious to know, now that you have read it, what you think and if you think it's fitting in a high school or college curriculum. Do you think it's a classic?

1:39 Wes: Well, let me ask you a question first. Was there a generational divide? Because this may be the fact that I went to High School 20 years before you did.

1:49 Erin: I don't think so. The novel was rediscovered in the 60s and it entered the canon, I'd say, in the 60s, when there was this sort of feminist, one of the early waves of. Not of feminism itself, but of sort of feminist reappraisal of fiction. And so this, I think, became canonical then. So that would have been way before your time.

2:07 Wes: Yeah, in my time, by the way, there was a conscious effort to have an updated canon in high school. Like we read I Know why the Caged Bird Sings, which I'm sure you read in high school as well.

2:18 Erin: I did not. I read it on my own time.

2:20 Wes: But yeah, no, I had never heard of this, which I guess is kind of weird. You know, the writing is superb and I have a Meager sense of how to identify the kind of zeitgeist of what's going on stylistically at any given time. Right. But this seems a little bit ahead of its time. I don't know if I'm right about that or not. You can tell me. But it seems, you know, quite innovative. And it's very clear that she has influenced later, whether directly or indirectly, she's been an influence on writers who were working 20 years after this. So that was my first impression. I'm like, wow, this is. What was it the publication date? 1899. I enjoyed large parts of it. Parts of it were. For me, this is not the greatest criterion, but plot wise, I found parts of it slow. So towards the end. Right. Of course, predictably, when things are getting down to brass tacks and more dramatic, then I had trouble putting it down. Right. But in the beginning, it was not that way. It was more of an obligation, let's say, in the beginning, despite the, you know, the writing is great.

3:33 Erin: Yeah, No, I totally agree. And I think you would really enjoy her short stories, which actually she was best known for in her own day. Maybe those are something we can cover on the podcast, too. One of them, like the story of an hour, is a page long and it's just a masterpiece of this super condensed format. She was a really big fan of Guy de Maupassant and all of her stories have that, like, twist to it that's really satisfying. And then there's another famous one called Desiree's Baby, and there are a few other just tremendously famous ones that I think were, you know, they were sort of included in the Norton Anthology even before the Awakening was rediscovered or properly rediscovered. I could be wrong about that. But she was most famous in her own day for being a short story writer. And just to give a little bit of background for those listeners who don't know as much about Chopin, she was born in 1850. She was originally born in St. Louis, but her mother was from New Orleans. Her mother was French Creole. Her father, I believe, was Irish. And she married and she moved to New Orleans after her marriage. She got married at, I think 20 years old, and she had six children in nine years. So we can already see the feminist ambitions.

4:46 Wes: She sounds more like a Ratignolle than a Pontellier, but.

4:50 Erin: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So she's sort of seen both sides of it, I guess. But she only started writing after her husband's death and. Yeah. And she was known in her day for these short stories and basically for the sort of regionalism, like these local color type stories, because she knew French Creole society so well. And that was considered quite interesting in its day, as I think it is now. And then, of course, in the 60s when this was rediscovered. I've never read Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, but apparently this had so much in common with it that people were kind of remarking, what did it come out in, like, 63 or something like that? And, you know, the themes in it are the sort of, like, housewife is leading this. It's desperate domesticity.

5:32 Wes: Desperate domesticity.

5:35 Erin: Oh, yeah, yeah. That's how I. How I sort of classify everything from that time. I'm sure that's someone else's phrase. But anyway, the reviews in Chopin's day were really terrible. They were not, like, universally terrible. And people usually said, oh, this is really well written. It's too bad it's smut. Or, you know, whatever. Someone called it poison. Someone in the Providence Sunday Journal wrote. The purport of the story can hardly be described in language fit for publication. We are fain to believe that Ms. Chopin did not herself realize what she was doing when she wrote it. She's a clever woman, but she's put her cleverness to very bad use in writing the Awakening.

6:09 Wes: It is corrupting to the values of women.

6:12 Erin: Exactly.

6:13 Wes: The lady.

6:15 Erin: Which is funny because it's pretty tame. And it's also, like, very much within a tradition, you know, So I don't necessarily appreciate works of literature, full stop, simply because they. Simply because they, you know, espouse certain, like, values or whatever.

6:32 Wes: Right.

6:32 Erin: I mean, that's. That's not why I appreciate literature. I think that this has been classified as a feminist novel, and for reasons that I understand. But it's also very much in the tradition of. I mean, this is on a continuum with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina and even Hedda Gabler. There's a lot of Hedda in this. So I don't think it's that far outside societal norms or expectations at the time for what their literature might contain.

6:57 Wes: And it wasn't ever censored or anything like that, right?

7:01 Erin: No, but I think it was the fact that a woman wrote it, which maybe is its own argument for it being called feminist, which I understand and I'm sympathetic to, to a certain degree.

7:11 Wes: What makes it feminist? Because when I was reading this. Let me put on my obtuse, insensitive.

7:18 Erin: Sure, we'll play at this. Leonce, you dog.

7:21 Wes: Is it Leonce?

7:23 Erin: Leonce.

7:24 Wes: So reading it, I'm thinking What makes this feminist as opposed to someone just feeling weighed down by, you know, this desperate domesticity, weighed down by the demands of domestic life and the way that anyone, male or female, would feel weighed down.

7:43 Erin: Yeah, I wonder about that. I think that's a really good question. I think that this is and isn't a feminist novel. I mean that in terms of like feminist in quotes as an ideology, clearly

7:53 Wes: it's not self consciously and it would probably suffer a lot if it were.

7:57 Erin: Sure. I mean, I think this is just a really good novel. I mean, it's unfortunate that classifying it as such would turn some people off. But, you know, I think that like Madame Ratignolle, Edna's friend, who's considered the

8:08 Wes: ultimate mother woman, the sensuous Madonna.

8:12 Erin: Right. I think that she's portrayed very sympathetically. I think that a lot of this clash between Edna and larger society is actually because of her artistic ambitions rather than her status as a woman. I mean, I think that those two things overlap on the Venn diagram. Right. But I think that Edna having these artistic ambitions and desiring this life of freedom are pretty twinned together and that the novel doesn't judge Madame Ratignolle for being a devoted wife and mother. Rather it admires her. She doesn't have the ambition. She has the artistry to a certain extent that Edna desires, but she doesn't have the ambition to try and do something with that. And so it seems as though it's the fact that Edna has these art ambitions and happens to be a woman rather than that she's so, I don't know, screwed up and she's rebelling against a larger society and she wants everybody to change or something like that. It's very personal, her ambition.

9:08 Wes: So, you know, I hadn't thought about it in those terms. I hadn't thought about her. Maybe this has something. Her ambitions as a. Is it paintings or drawings? Strictly drawings, but yeah. So her ambitions as an artist. Because at some point the narrator talks about the fact that she was divorced of ambitions as far as becoming well known or making money off it. It was purely absorbed in the work itself.

9:37 Erin: The idea that we have these two divergent models of womanhood. There's sort of a spectrum with Edna being pulled in either direction. Madame Ratignolle representing the ideal Creole womanhood, and Mademoiselle Reis representing a sort of bohemian artistic lifestyle and a lifestyle which is relatively free as far as what the novel thinks about these two women. I mean, interestingly, everyone dislikes Mademoiselle Reis. Including Edna. Edna's not a huge fan of her personally, but she represents something transcendent and.

10:05 Wes: But she is personally very disagreeable. Like, she doesn't really try to be nice, right.

10:10 Erin: And she's free to be disagreeable, which is another element of this. This idea of artistry is tied up in a kind of personal liberty, regardless of whether or not she can make any money off of it. I think it's this idea that you are in tune with certain forces, that you're not trying control certain elements of life or just sort of control yourself and keep yourself confined. You're free to do what you want to do. You're free to express yourself in ways that you wish to. And because Mademoiselle Reiss is unmarried and doesn't have any of these obligations, she has a lot more freedom and mobility in society. And so I think Edna's wondering, you know, why can't I have that kind of freedom?

10:48 Wes: I hadn't thought about the fact that this had something to do with her artistic ambitions. I was reading this entirely in terms of. Well, on the one hand, her interest in Robert and her dissatisfaction with marriage, which. Part of what's interesting about it is it's not like she has the worst husband in the world, right? At some point there's this line about how everyone thinks she has the best husband in the world. Actually, let me read that one. So all the ladies selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew of none better. There's lots of very dry humor in this, which I really like. But, yeah, even the best husband in the world, right, may just not be that great. Maybe oppressive, right. In a way. Or maybe the best spouse in general. So he's not the worst husband in the world. He's clearly not the best either. But there's lots to be desired about him. But she's suffering in a very ordinary way that I think people suffer in, not just in marriages, but in relationships with people in general. You know, this ambivalence about dealing with people's bs, right? Wanting to be close to them, but dealing with people's bs. And what's interesting about her is, you know, she's dealt with that kind of. I think she uses this word mechanically, or she's been living, kind of following along habitually early on. I guess it's after her awakening when she returns and Leonce wants her to come in and she won't. And he gets upset. And she's like, you know, I'm not coming in. Don't talk to me that way. And then he kind of relents and comes out and smokes and drinks on the porch. And then she goes in and asks him if he's coming in. He's like, yeah, in a minute. Let me finish my cigar. So it doesn't take a lot to resist him. And it's not out of obedience. So another time she would have gone in at his request. She would, through habit, have yielded to his desire. Not with any sense of. Of submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly, as we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill of the life which has been portioned out to us. So, yeah, she's been doing what a lot of us do with large portions of our lives. Which is sort of to subject ourselves to it unthinkingly. Because that's the structure we're in. And that's how we get things done, and that's how we get along. And the question of our own wishes in relation to that often gets blunted. Because there's a lot at stake, right? Are we gonna give up a marriage? Are we gonna give up a profession? How much dissatisfaction do we have to have before we're willing to make that jump? And for her, right, the trigger is this guy Robert, who flirts with all the ladies, right? And all the ladies take it as a joke, but she doesn't.

13:38 Erin: Yeah, I kind of want to talk about that. But maybe first we should talk a little bit more about Madame Ratignolle. And this idea of the mother woman, which I really like, because there's two nouns lashed together. There's sort of a suggestion.

13:52 Wes: Yeah, it's a very, like, New Orleans type of phrase. She was no mother woman.

13:58 Erin: But there's this idea, too, that if you have to sort of hyphenate them, that there's a suggestion perhaps, that being a woman and being a mother are two separate entities. That you have to combine them in this phrase in order to specify what you mean.

14:09 Wes: I think this is a paragraph worth reading, by the way.

14:12 Erin: Sure. The narrator says, in short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother woman. The mother women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as Individuals and grow wings as ministering angels. So I think of like a helicopter mother, you know?

14:39 Wes: Mm. Yeah, I thought of that as well.

14:41 Erin: This idea of self effacement, I think rubs up against what I'm seeing as like Edna's awakening as much as a sexual being or as someone who is in love with Robert and who has her own destiny as her artistic ambitions. I think, like that's part of this sort of self actualizing, whatever. I'm using that term wrongly, but, you know, it's part of this idea of trying to follow her own destiny and figure herself out. Whereas the mother woman, in as much as it's these two nouns lashed together, it's also about a woman tied up in all of these other relationships and having no personal identity of her own. And I think this is very much tied to the way that Creole society seems to operate.

15:24 Wes: Just as a point of contrast, there's that great scene later on where she's talking to Ratignolle and she says she would never sacrifice herself for her children. Right Then they have this heated argument and don't understand each other. And so Edna says, in an attempt to appease Adele, she says, I would give up the unessential. I would give up my money. I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear. It's only something which I am beginning to comprehend which is revealing itself to me. Adele responds, I don't know what you would call the essential or what you mean by the unessential, but a woman who would give her life for her children could do no more than that. Your Bible tells you so. I'm sure I couldn't do more than that. Edna says, oh, yes, you could. So there's being willing to give up all your money and your very existence for your children, which Edna is on board with. But it's this other domain, the one's inner life, I guess would be the best way to describe it, which he's unwilling to give up. And this, actually, this is an interesting conundrum which we should come back to because we can go on to what you're going to say about Creole society. But there's this sharp conflict between our own inner lives versus our relatedness to other people and our dependence on other people. And it's a really interesting question to me. Maybe you can think of a better phrase for this, but how much of one's inner life or authenticity. It's not just about desire, right? It's not just about I want to be an artist or I want to do this or I want to do that. And I'm getting. I'm weighed down by family. It's more than that. It's. I want to be myself, to be who I am, and I have obligations to others, and I also care about others. And how do I balance those two things? That's an enormously difficult question.

17:16 Erin: So I think this is tied up really intimately with Creole society and maybe something being broken in Creole society. I think, you know, a lot of Edna's discomfort with what goes on at the whole beginning part of the novel takes place at this holiday location on Grand Isle, where everyone is Creole and they're all friends with each other, and they're all living together in these cottages. And there's a sense of a lack of boundaries in this society. She's not. She's Presbyterian from Kentucky. Right. Presumably she's converted in order to marry her husband, because she does go to Mass or, you know, then quickly leave. But anyway, there is this sense that there are things being combined here. And that's why I think that this term of mother woman is so significant, because everyone is very free with each other, and everyone very openly discusses sexual topics with each other. Or there's a suggestion that they discuss childbirth openly, which would have been seen as taboo back then, that they discuss it and not just women discussing it with each other, which, of course, was not taboo, but with men openly. There are a couple of books going around that are considered really racy books, and Edna feels like she has to read them in secret. And then everyone's just discussing it openly at the table. And this is with husbands and wives, but also with other people's husbands and wives. And everybody sort of living as a family. But there's this sort of a strange incestual quality to all of this, and this idea that people can function as being in a big family, but also be separate families and also be sexual with each other. Part of that is actually the freedom of Catholicism, I think, relative freedom in terms of free with the body and stuff like that, compared to certain more strict types of Protestantism. And so I think there's a big cultural difference there, but it is confusing to Edna and a little bit disturbing to us.

18:55 Wes: There's also that line about how Creole men never get jealous. Right. But what Robert is doing, I think even now, most of us would find that, like, a little bit over the top with him running around flirting with everyone's wives. But it's not taken seriously. But it's Confusing to Edna.

19:10 Erin: Right. And there's this idea that Madame Ratignolle's husband would never be jealous of her because someone says the right hand jealous of the left. Like this idea that the husband and wife aren't even separate entities, but that they metaphorically share a body. So there's all of this weird boundary crossing. Or even if we call Madame Ratignolle a Madonna. Right. I mean, the Virgin Mary as an image is also these two things together that are a physical impossibility to go together. Right. She's both a virgin and a mother.

19:37 Wes: Not just a Madonna, but a sensuous Madonna, which is a great.

19:40 Erin: A sensuous Madonna, too. Right.

19:43 Wes: So the purity and virginal. Right. Creole women have this virginal reputation, a reputation for sexual purity, and yet they're willing to talk about it. And maybe there's beauty and there's seductiveness and there's all that still going on in conjoined to the pure part.

19:59 Erin: I think this is exposing a big point of ambiguity at the heart of this culture, which is how does one be a sensual, sexual wife and also like, you know, a perfect virginal mother at the same time, to be a virginal girl and then to be in a marriage and then suddenly become this perfect woman, I think that that's really difficult in any society. But I think also in terms of the. The values of this particular society, where you lose your identity in marriage to such an extent, to everybody else's concerns and expectations, and that it's all about how you have to behave and how you have to satisfy other people. So I think that Creole society really externalizes a lot of what's going on inside Madame Ratignolle, what's making her tick, which is this idea that you just give up your own personal identity for other people. Like it's nothing. And so I think this ties back really nicely to. I mean, I love that quote that you gave about, you know, I'd give my life, but not myself. Like, what is oneself? And I think if it's one's soul or one's personal identity, then actually, Edna's idea of this is more Christian, it's more Catholic, than Madame Ratignolle's idea. Right. Because we're not supposed to be totally subsuming ourselves and our own identities and other people. It's actually not. Right. I think there's something really broken about that.

21:20 Wes: Yeah. And we can't. To some extent, it was just associating to philosophical questions about or theological questions about God. And God is all powerful but could he do something immoral? Could he violate the laws of logic? Right. There's a similar conundrum here. There's ethical obligation to others, and not just obligation, but there's the ways in which we need those ties. But there's something towards oneself which is also important and maybe the most essential thing, as selfish as it sounds. And one might say, yeah, you can't truly be related to others without being yourself. There are all those paradoxes about the one and the many. And if you can't be yourself, if you can't be a unified single entity, you can't truly be related to others and vice versa. So one can't withdraw completely without losing oneself, but one can't go outside oneself completely without losing oneself. Oneself.

22:14 Erin: Well, I think this is why Edna, in a way, is a better mother than Madame Ratignolle. Her children actually know how to take care of themselves and aren't just whiny babies because she doesn't coddle them.

22:25 Wes: Exactly. Yeah.

22:26 Erin: I think if you have no sense of yourself and everything revolves around your children, at least that's what this novel is arguing. If everything revolves around your children to such an extent that you have to be this formless, shapeless, just like perfect motherly mass that gloms onto your children, then they're not going to grow up very well adjusted or with a sense of their own.

22:49 Wes: Yeah, her children will pick themselves up right after a fall on the ground and quickly get over it and not make a big scene and come to mother to cry excessively and get taken care of. They're more independent as the way they're portrayed this idea.

23:03 Erin: I think that if you don't have your own identity, then you're actually not creating great people with their own identity.

23:09 Wes: Yeah, I mean, this question of identity is really interesting because there's kind of a ambiguity of whether she gets more clarity or she becomes more confused by this focus on identity. Like early on we get the whole thing about Robert devoting himself to married women and then him saying, what am I, a comedian? You guys don't take me seriously. Because he's getting teased and made fun of for that by the women. And then he's doing this thing where he puts his head on Edna's arm and she rebuffs him and then gets Edna to go swimming down at the ocean with him. And there's a lot in here about the ocean and swimming. We can talk about that. This is the first hint we get of her awakening. So this might be worth reading in full. This Whole section. A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her. The light which, showing the way, forbids it. At the 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 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. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of 28. Perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman. But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such a beginning? How many souls perish in its tumult? The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wonder for a spell in abysses of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace, which makes it sound like one of these mother women. I was a little confused by that passage early on. But of course, in the end, she ends up at the critical moment when she actually has the awakening. She gets over her fear of swimming, and then in the end, she drowns herself in this oceanic thing I associate with ecstasy and merger, but also vagueness and chaos. So she's being awakened to the question of her own identity, which seems like this is something that ultimately should make things clearer and more precise. But the whole project of doing that puts you into a vaguer, more chaotic place, right? Because before that, she just has her roles. This is part of what roles help do for us. You know, I don't have to ask the question of what I'm going to do today or who I'm going to be. It's just I've got to do X, Y and Z. And this is who I am. This is the job that I've chosen. This is the spouse and family that I have. All the external constraints weigh upon us and define us. And then if I say I'm going to pay more attention to my inner life, the goal, in a way, is a more precise definition of myself or identity that is more closely connected to who I am outside of those roles and maybe more connected to my own desires and to artistic ambition and all that stuff. But it opens up this enormous problem of vagueness because to what extent am I actually anyone outside of the external relations that have in large part been imposed on me? Right. That's one of the things I found really interesting about the book is the way in which the precision of identity, or the attempted precision implicates chaos and vagueness.

26:51 Erin: Yeah. And Robert, as much as anyone, is kind of like a perfect representative of Creole society. It's really interesting that in her efforts to free herself, she just wants to be with a different man. You know, like, she's not really doing a Mademoiselle Reis and just saying, okay, forget all of you. I'm gonna go off and I'm gonna do my own thing. I mean, she does that to a certain degree, but she really wants to be with Robert. And I think Robert represents that kind of merger as much as anyone. And ultimately, I mean, we can argue about why she decides to drown herself at the end of the novel, but, I mean, I think there's a reading there in which her rejection by Robert, who's ultimately, I think, a very ambivalent person, causes her despair and causes her to kill herself. So the extent to which this identity seeking is also sort of like seeking a lover, like a truer companion with which to merge and to share herself. I know that she defines the terms a little bit differently so that it's not a pure merger, but still, I think there's something confused about that, which is, I'm sure, intentional.

27:50 Wes: Yeah, it's interesting. So this could have just been a romance novel. Right. Or she's met someone that she is falling in love with, falls in love with. And typically, yeah, we think about that, as you said, merger or losing oneself in someone. But here it's actually the impetus for someone wanting to find themselves because it has something to do with inhabiting her own desire. But there's quite a bit of confusion over to what extent does her developing anguish have to do with Robert specifically? And then you brought up the artistic ambition, or just the suffocating atmosphere of domesticity, or the failings of Leonce in particular, or just the general sense of not knowing who one is. So these things all get wrapped up in each other in a confusing and interesting way.

28:43 Erin: Let's pause here for a minute to talk about our sponsor. It's New Year's resolution time, and if you're still looking for a goal to set, how about finally writing that screenplay or learning how to bring your own true story to the screen this spring? NYU Tisch School of the Arts is offering two exciting online courses, Writing for the Screen, in which you'll complete a film treatment and a step outline of your own feature film or TV episode and documentary workshop, which features participation from the New York Times OpDocs. Tisch School's online courses use a specially designed remote learning platform. These are not your basic video meetings, nor are the courses just in person classes transposed to an online format. NYU Tisch Pro designed them specifically to be digital, and the interactive, intuitive and collaborative interface reflects that. You can watch video lectures delivered by Tisch faculty at your own pace, but then you can also join live video meetings and schedule one on one sessions with professors. You can work with other students around the world as a virtual crew. And there are built in collaboration features like a live chat to discuss your creative work. You can seamlessly share, download, annotate, review and comment on video content, all without leaving the platform. 2022 is already here and the deadline for spring courses is January 7th, so sign up soon. You can learn more at tishpro.smashcut.com subtext that's TishPro T I S C H pro.smashcut.com Subtext and now back to the show. I even wonder if Leon's problem is that he's not as merging with Edna as he should be. And that's the problem at the heart of their marriage. I mean, Robert to go along this incestual thing that I think is happening here. And by this I mean obviously, you know, a sort of philosophical incestuousness rather than a literal one. Edna is without a mother, right? Her mother has died and Robert is without a father. And they're even said to look similarly to each other. So it's almost as if they're siblings, you know, sort of spiritual siblings. And the way that they have of speaking to each other is very intimate. They seem to know what's going on in each other's heads. Whereas Laon has a kind of fundamental disinterest in what's going on with Edna. We first see him trying to escape this noisy parrot and mockingbird that are having this discussion with each other and wanting to read the newspaper in silence, right? And not necessarily wanting to take part in the so called life of the island or in holiday making or whatever enjoyment that everyone else seems to be willing to do.

31:16 Wes: And it's funny, when I read this in the beginning and it takes me a while to piece together who's who and right. I find it very confusing. I have to like read the first section or two twice over before I'm like, okay, this is who everyone is. My very first impression of him was that he was a side character. He's just part of the scenery in a way. Right. To tell us about the atmosphere of this place.

31:39 Erin: You know, he doesn't understand what's going on inside Edna. He can imagine it because he's too distant from her interiority. So it complicates what she's looking for in terms of love or identity or partnership in that I think what she's looking for is actually undermining the kind of individuality that she's seeking.

32:00 Wes: Right. That's really interesting.

32:01 Erin: Yeah, it does get sidetracked. Her sensuality gets channeled in a different direction. While she's waiting for Robert to come back, she gets into this relationship or sort of non relationship with Alce Arabin, which is sort of interesting. And that maybe seems to be a little bit more of what we would ordinarily expect her to be looking for, which is take a lover and have a sexual relationship without any strings or whatever. Without any expectations of her freedom or independence, having to be sacrificed.

32:31 Wes: Creoles with benefits. Sorry. Yeah, you have me thinking more now just about the question of finding oneself and what that means. And is it getting away from the husband versus finding someone new? And it's not his overbearingness or trying to be two at one with her that's the problem. And he's not completely indifferent. Right. There's talk of how he's devoted to her in a way and discouraged by her lack of interest. But the question of finding oneself again is really confusing because to what extent is it about giving ourselves more individuality and to what extent is it about giving ourselves less individuality? It's difficult to say. Maybe we should look at the awakening itself because there's great passages there worth reading.

33:15 Erin: There are a couple of mini awakenings and then there's the big awakening, which has to do with going to sleep. When we were talking about this in a class I was taking, my professor was like, for a novel that's called the Awakening, this has often been known as the sleepiest book in all of American literature. She's always napping and always sleeping.

33:34 Wes: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. That's again, the paradox of the awakening. She's awakening to her dreams, so to speak.

33:42 Erin: We wake to sleep and take our waking slow.

33:44 Wes: Ah, yes, yes. There's the first real hint of it I see as the kind of fight her and Leonce get into in section three, where she ends up crying and rocking on the Porch. And we've already discussed that a bit. She's filled with this vague anguish. So an indescribable oppression which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul. Summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar. It was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at fate which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself. The mosquitoes made merry over her, biting her firm, round arms and nipping at her bare insteps. That, to me, is this sort of first hint of an awakening. And then that's different from the scene where she. Just. Because I think I had them confused before, where she says, no, I'm not gonna come in. And then he comes out on the. The porch, which I've already quoted from. And in between those two scenes, this is what I, in my reading of this, I had seen, okay? This is the awakening. So maybe it's not really. Maybe it doesn't really make sense to try and identify one point in the story, but it's where they go down to the beach. This is after they've kind of had a party in the hall with music and rights has played and really, really aroused Edna's passions. And then Robert suggests everybody and go down to the beach. And they go down in this procession. And Edna has always been afraid of swimming. Everyone else, for everyone else, Water is their native element, right? But for her, she's always had a dread of it. So she'd attempted all summer to learn how to swim. But a certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in the water. Unless there was a hand near that might reach out and reassure her. But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child who all of a sudden realizes its powers and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with overconfidence. She could have shouted for joy. She did shout for joy. As with a sweeping stroke of two, she lifted her body to the surface of the water. A feeling of exultation overtook her. And then she grows more daring and reckless. And she thinks how easy it is. And then she gets afraid, right? So she looks at some point back and she gets a little afraid that she's gone farther than she should and gets a vision of death. It's not long after that that she has that fight with her husband and stands up for herself and refuses to go in. So there's something about this whole swimming thing that's very important.

36:20 Erin: There's a lot of childhood imagery associated with Edna in a lot of ways. She has these moments where she acts like a child or feels like a child. And this idea of swimming out alone and having this newly conquered power, I think, as the novel says, where she's able to learn to swim, it's like an element of adulthood that had been closed off to her that's now accessible. This idea for the Creoles, the water is their sort of natural element. And I think that this also ties in with this idea that going into the water and being able to swim represents a certain independence for her. At the same time, water and the ocean is about merging and all of these other lack of independent qualities or joining yourself with somebody else or something else. So there's a weird ambiguity about this too, but. Yeah, but I think that symbolically, like, it's really important that she swim on her own. And then in the end, when she'll drown herself in the exact same water, what that means about how she's been able to make her own decision, conquer things again. It's like waking up to sleeping or something. Like she finally has this realization that she's going to end it all. She's putting herself to sleep forever. The significance of this happening at night, too, is really interesting, but.

37:26 Wes: Yeah. Well, I was just thinking about the passage from earlier on that we quoted. She's realizing her position in the universe as a human being, on the one hand, but in the beginning of things, it's necessarily tangled and chaotic and souls perish. And then there's the talk of the voice of the sea being seductive. So she's got to swim out into the ocean in order to find herself, so to speak. Right. The danger is that one might drown and. Right. Of course, her learning to swim and no longer being afraid is of course, a metaphor for her being willing to take that chance with herself as a person and try to find herself, even if it means doing something dangerous, but also facing all of this vagueness and uncertainty and chaos. So, in other words, if you're going to find yourself, you have to lose yourself first. And that's why we tend to shy away from that project, because who wants to take that risk? And to be in that place of uncertainty about oneself, to be in the ocean, so to speak. Not just in the Robert way. Right. Not just in the I'm going to play around way. This is just bathing. We're just going to go for a swim. But in the more serious way. Which part of what's confusing is any act can be interpreted in either way and people engage in a kind of play acting and pantomime all the time. Right. Robert is playing the lover with the flirtations with married women. And he's doing it not because it's his ambition to have affairs with married women, but safe for him, obviously. Right.

38:53 Erin: I see him as someone who essentially has mommy issues. He's not the favorite of his own mother. Right. He's one of two boys. Just like Edna has two boys.

39:02 Wes: Victor. Right. Victor is the Victor. You remind me of that incredible scene, right, when Victor is kind of fetid or I don't know how you would put it.

39:12 Erin: He poses like a Caravaggio painting, almost the favorite boy of everyone with leaves in his hair.

39:19 Wes: Yeah, that was another moment that reminded me of Hedda Gabler, actually.

39:23 Erin: Oh, of course. Yeah. Vine leaves.

39:25 Wes: How did she put that? Yeah, the vine leaves in the hair. Yeah.

39:28 Erin: Mm. Well, it's funny that you say that because I'm looking at what I see as the awakening scene, which is after Edna's great nap, where there's the country odor of Laurel lingering in the air.

39:40 Wes: Yeah, that's also. That's a must see, a must read. I don't know.

39:45 Erin: This is chapter 13. Edna, left alone in the little side room, loosened her clothes, removing the greater part of them. She bathed her face, her neck and arms in the basin that stood between the windows. She took off her shoes and stockings and stretched herself in the very center of the high white bed. How luxurious it felt to rest thus in a strange, quaint bed with its sweet country odor of laurel lingering about the sheets and mattress. She stretched her long limbs that ached a little. She ran her fingers through her loosened hair. For a while she looked at her round arms as she held them straight up and rubbed them one after the other, observing closely, as if it were something she saw for the first time, the fine, firm quality and texture of her flesh. She clasped her hands easily above her head, and it was thus she fell asleep. She slept lightly at first, half awake and drowsily attentive to the things about her. She could hear Madame Antoine's heavy scraping tread as she walked back and forth on the sanded floor. And some chickens were clucking outside the windows, scratching for bits of gravel in the grass. Later, she half heard the voices of Robert and Tony talking under the shed. She did not stir. Even her eyelids rested numb and heavy over her sleepy eyes. The voices went on Tony's slow Acadian drawl Robert's quick, soft, smooth French. She understood French imperfectly unless directly addressed, and the voices were only part of the other drowsy, muffled sounds lulling her senses. When Edna awoke, it was with the conviction that she had slept long and soundly. The voices were hushed under the shed, skipping down a bit. Madame Antoine had laid some coarse, clean towels upon a chair and had placed a box of Poudre de Ries within easy reach. Edna dabbed the powder upon her nose and cheeks as she looked at herself closely in the little distorted mirror which hung on the wall above the basin. Her eyes were bright and wide awake and her face glowed. Then she goes into the other room and she sees some bread and wine. And she eats the bread, kind of like a hungry kid, drinks the wine down and then goes out to see Robert. So there's so much going on here,

41:38 Wes: and there's that great illumination breaks out of her face when he sees her. And then she asks, how many years have I slept? And says, and a new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving only you and me as past relics. When did our people from Grand Isle disappear from the earth? And he tells her, you know, you have slept precisely 100 years. I was left here to guard your slumbers. And for 100 years I have been out under the shed reading a book. It's really great.

42:04 Erin: Yeah. There's obviously a connection here to Sleeping Beauty, and there's a Rip Van Winkle element to this, that she has undergone a big change in waking up. So the change seems to be not, you know, Robert's teasing her and says that it's been a hundred years, but rather than Rip Van Winkle, sort of waking up into the new world of the American, Edna sort of waking up, and the change has been within herself rather than the outside world. And the Sleeping Beauty myth, too, is really interesting because it's turned on its head. Right. She wakes herself up and goes down to Robert, who hasn't kissed her awake or anything, and is just waiting to

42:40 Wes: attend on her and feed her with broiled fowl and be childishly gratified to discover her appetite.

42:46 Erin: Mm. She does a lot of looking at her arms in the very first scene, when she comes back from being out with Robert and her husband sitting on the porch getting annoyed and trying to read his paper. He asks her where her rings are,

42:59 Wes: or he gives them back to her, he's been holding them, which is a nice piece of symbolism.

43:04 Erin: Yeah. He tells her she's burnt beyond recognition. Looking at his wife as one Looks at a valuable piece of property which has suffered some damage. She held up her hands, strong, shapely hands, and surveyed them critically, drawing up her lawn sleeves above her wrists. Looking at them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband before leaving the beast. She silently reached out to him and he, understanding, took the rings from his vest pocket and dropped them into her open palm. She slipped them on her fingers. So they do have a little method of silent communication between them. But anyway, there's this idea of looking at one's hands and surveying the damage, I guess because she's been sunburnt versus seemingly, I guess, taking pleasure in her body and in looking at herself, as the narrator says, as if for the first time.

43:45 Wes: Yeah, there's the question of. Yeah, is her body her own? The scene from which I read earlier ends with the mosquitoes biting her firm, round arms, right? There's another reference to her looking at her round arms. I think this is right before she goes to sleep, before the whole, you know, the scene that we've been describing, right? She looked at her round arms as she held them straight up and rubbed them one after the other, observing closely. There's the question of self possession. And the rings, right, are kind of like shackles. They don't have to be put on you, right, you know, to ask for them. You don't even have to ask for them. You can just reach out for them silently and someone will hand them back to you. Of course, if Leonce had been paying more attention. Well, first of all, it's pretty glaring what Robert is doing. But also, you know, if he were more attuned to subtext like us, he would pay attention to the symbolism of being left holding his wife's wedding ring while she was off with another man.

44:45 Erin: You're telling me that this podcast is supposed to give us real world experience and understanding?

44:50 Wes: Exactly, exactly. The other thing with the arms, the looking at the arms and the mentioning of the arms repeatedly throughout this novel. You know, I can't help but think of the ancient Greek epics, right, Homer, Iliad and the Odyssey, and the reference to arms as wide as ivory, or the way in which a woman's arms can become a kind of symbol of her. But I don't know, is there more to be made of this?

45:16 Erin: There's a lot of bird imagery, almost too much bird imagery, because that can always get a little symbolic. And so I think that elements of wings and arms, I think, are closely tied together. So we have the mother woman who has to grow wings and Be like a ministering angel. Right. And then later, we're sort of told this after the fact by Edna, who I believe is telling Erebin, but she says this is at the end of chapter 27. She's talking about a conversation she's had with Mademoiselle Reiss, and she says, well, for instance, when I left her today, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades to see if my wings were strong. She said the bird that would soar above the level plane of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. So I think there's something about. I mean, obviously, wings are not arms, and if you're an angel, you have wings and arms in most depictions. I think there's something about being able to soar above convention, about the fact that she ultimately drowns herself.

46:11 Wes: I think she sees an injured bird fall right before that, right?

46:15 Erin: She does, yeah. It's a little on the nose, but yeah. We begin with the two birds quarreling and Laonce wanting to get away from that sound of the two birds talking. Are they talking or quarreling? I can't remember. But anyway, he wants to sequester himself from birds and from nature, which is maybe a little significant, even though one of them is a parrot who's in a cage. So anyway, caged bird, it's all a little significant.

46:38 Wes: And later on in the music scene, the parrot is the only one who's willing to complain. Right. Because it's heard all those songs so many times before. And of course, Wrights is the only true artist and Edna gets her to play.

46:51 Erin: Yeah. I found the part at the very end where the bird with a broken wing was beating in the air above. And there's similar imagery to the awakening scene that you pointed out. The scene sort of happens over again on the very last pages of the novel. How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky. How delicious she felt like some newborn creature opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known. And even the language is repeated with that. The sea is sensuous.

47:16 Wes: The voice of the sea is seductive. Yeah.

47:20 Erin: So it's like it's happening over again, but this time she's going in, I guess, knowing what she's doing and going out too far. Deliberately, or is it deliberate? I guess there's some dissension about this.

47:30 Wes: Critically, she went on and on. She remembered the night she swam far out and recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on. Thinking of the blue grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end, and her arms and legs get tired. She thought of Gliance and the children. They were part of her life, but they need not have thought that they could possess her body and soul. How Mademoiselle Reitz would have laughed, perhaps sneered, if she knew. And you call yourself an artist. What pretensions, madame. The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies. So a lot of threads from earlier in the novel are being gathered here. But exhaustion was pressing upon her and overpowering her. Goodbye, because I love you. He did not know. He did not understand. He would never understand. Perhaps Dr. Mandalay would have understood if she had seen him. But it was too late. The shore was far behind her and her strength was gone. She looked into the distance and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. I hadn't planned to read all of that, but it's hard to stop. Just like, you know, just like it's hard to stop. For Edna, it's the question of whether she's. Does she go there with a plan? It evolves, right? She's being seduced by the ocean. So I think we could safely say she may not know what she's gonna do when she goes there, how far she's gonna swim, if she's gonna come back. She's doing her own thing. But this, again, you know, this is joined, as you mentioned, to. And some of it, you know, the repetition of language, word for word, to one of her scenes of awakening earlier on, to that learning to swim scene. And it's interesting, what do we make of that? Because earlier on, it's supposed to be that she has to traverse the void, speak, to go through the stage of chaos and vagueness, which is associated with beginnings, right? Which is associated with an awakening. But she was supposed to get somewhere. She was supposed to get to herself. And instead that's not where she gets. Or does she? In the Hedda Gabler episode, we talked about whether being alive, in a way, is a kind of cloying thing. It's kind of a violation of one's identity because one wants to be in the pure realm of possibility. It's not exactly the same here, but you get what I'm saying. So the act of suicide can be seen as an act of self affirmation in the sense of putting oneself back in that pure realm of possibilities. And maybe that's the only sense of identity that actually works. So not to undermine the feminist aspect of this, but to what extent is the aspiration to identity and to being oneself, to what extent is that a workable being an artist, you know, you mentioned early on is part of that. Right. The attempt to be oneself through being an artist is important, which is why she brings up rites here.

50:35 Erin: Totally. Yeah. And I don't know how feminist this is if it means that you have to kill yourself in order to be a woman in this world. But I wonder at the entrance of Mademoiselle Reis, because I think that's one of the most curious things about this passage. So she thought of Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life, but they need not have thought that they could possess her body and soul. How Mademoiselle Reisz would have laughed, perhaps sneered, if she knew, if she knew what, knew what Edna is doing right now, knew of her intention to kill herself or knew of Laonce and her children and how they can't possess her. That can't be right.

51:08 Wes: I took this to be. And I think I'm wrong now that you're talking about this, but the way I read this was I was thinking of rites, her imagining rites, laughing at her because she thought of this act itself as something befitting a tortured artist, or maybe even as an artistic act itself. But the artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies.

51:31 Erin: And you call yourself an artist. What pretensions. The artist must possess the courageous soul

51:34 Wes: that dares and defies, which is a repetition from something Wright's actually said earlier on.

51:39 Erin: Right. So I'm seeing this as she's killing herself and therefore it's kind of a cop out. This isn't daring and defying.

51:46 Wes: Yeah.

51:47 Erin: One of the things that makes this so fairy tale like to me in a way is that I think that Ratignolle and Rice, they're models for Edna, but it's almost like they're two witches, sort of like the good witch and the bad witch that are trying to exert an influence on Edna. And one wonders which is the good and which is the bad. The idea that Rice is exerting a positive influence would be a reading that has some credence. Right. She wants Edna to be herself and to be almost. To be set free. The bad witch would be the one that wants you to be in a cage and maybe fatten you up for the slaughter or something. So Ratignolle represents that to a certain degree, except that everyone likes Madame Ratignolle. She's in a happy marriage and she's happy with herself. We get this really incredible moment right before Edna decides to kill herself, which is basically that she finally discovers what childbirth is like, which is funny because she has two children.

52:40 Wes: Interesting.

52:41 Erin: But she was, I guess, knocked out for the birth. And so when she attends the birth of Adele's child, 13th child, she's disgusted by this and really disturbed by what she sees and put off something terrible. And so there is like this element of this unholy birth. And what is Madame Ratignolle giving birth to? But I mean, of course, a child literally, but to Edna's own. Again, disturbing awakening to the realities of the body. The ugliness of childbirth. She doesn't see it as something beautiful. She sees it as something violating and maybe boundary crossing or maybe something unholy in this witchy way that I'm. I'm sort of trying to get at.

53:22 Wes: Well, there's that idea of the possession of her body by her children, by others. Right?

53:27 Erin: Exactly. Yes. Thank you. So who is the good or the bad witch here? Ultimately, we would say that identification with Rice is what makes her kill herself, but yet that's undermined, I think, in this last. That she realizes she can't be like Rice and therefore she kills herself. Or that true freedom would be being like Mademoiselle Reiss, and therefore she kills herself. So that Rice would be the bad witch in that estimation, because it just. It's associated with suicide. And yet here that's undermined. So I think neither is the good or the bad witch, but I think they do represent two sides of an equation, neither of which Edna is capable of accessing. She has to go her own third way. I don't think that the answer to that is ultimately suicide, but I don't know what it would be in an ideal situation. I mean, how could she resolve all of these issues that she's had? I know a lot of people pathologize her in the criticism and say that she's obviously depressed. I don't know that I want to say that either.

54:16 Wes: It's hard to pathologize her because first of all, is she in a state of despair? I mean, she is in a sense. Right. A lot is Made of her being heartbroken by Robert earlier on. And she says, you know, today it is a robin, tomorrow it will be someone else. It makes no difference to me. It doesn't matter about Leonce. So she is having despairing thoughts. I guess I was gonna say that she doesn't seem to be in that much despair, but maybe that's cause it's a little unclear. And maybe she's not so clear on what she's happy about. Right. Because these two things have become tangled up. Her feelings about Robert and her feelings about being and becoming herself. And those are two different things. And one might think those conflict, as we've discussed. So what is she doing in the end? Is it because she couldn't be herself? Is this the only way to become herself? Is it about Robert? Is it a bit unclear? Is it a despairing act? Is it actually a kind of. At least in her own mind, is there something. Yeah, I guess it is probably a despairing act. Goodbye. Because I love you. He did not know. I mean, for some reason it feels more positive to me than I typically imagine a suicide. I guess because I'm associating it with freedom and with her learning to swim and all the rest of that. But as far as pathologizing her, I mean, you could describe her as someone who's got a quite a psychotic baseline and who lives in a dream world and is. Who's disconnected. Or you could say she's actually suffering from quite ordinary ailments that we all suffer from. It's just that something made those conflicts, which we all feel very especially acute for her. Right. And then as the novel goes on, you talk about it as a fairy tale, which the more it becomes a fairy tale, the less it matters how we read her psychologically. Right. Because all of this stuff just becomes representative of something within the psyche or of something else.

56:08 Erin: Sure. One more note about your connection to the Greek here. There's this character, Philomel, that pops up right at the end. And of course, I can't help but associate that with, of course, the bird of Greek myth, or the woman turned into a bird as a result of suffering. I know I've mentioned the myth of Philomela several times, but someone who can't express themselves, right. Who's had their tongue cut out and who's pained into poetry and into artistry through a kind of hurt and a violation. And so I think the mention of this name, just obviously it automatically evokes this association. And so perhaps this suicide, as I think you're getting at is. This is her artistry. Killing herself in the end is her independence. This is her self assertion that's happening. And this is her way of being courageous in the mode of Mademoiselle Reiss and of being creative too, in the way that we were talking about in the Hedda Gabler episode, returning to the world of possibility, which is obviously unfortunate. And we're not advocating suicide, but symbolically, it works that way.

57:09 Wes: Right? Suicide is a terrible thing. Let's do our public service message note. Don't do it.

57:18 Erin: Especially not in the Gulf of Mexico. Just don't do it.

57:21 Wes: It occurs to me now. So we did an episode on suicide for the Partially Examined Life, thinking about both philosophical and psychoanalytic perspectives. And one of the things that I got from a literature review of the psychoanalytic thinking on the subject of suicide was that it's really interesting because it's actually an attempt at self preservation, oddly enough. And even though it's a crazy attempt at self preservation because you literally kill yourself, but on a figurative level, it's meant to preserve. There are various ways of thinking about this, but one way is that it vindicates a imaginary sense of self or an aspirational sense of self over and against the real self. So you might psychotically or delusionally think that by getting rid of your, you know, or even your embodied self. Right. That you become immortal, you become who you are, you are fulfilled in the afterlife, Something like that. It's a last ditch. And I think this is right. I can't explain it very well right now, but it's a last ditch effort at preservation of a certain self image or a certain identity when everything is crushing in on that and threatening that. So that kind of aligns again with the whole Hedda Gabler possibility thing. But again, public service announcement. It doesn't work. It's not actually. It's not effective. Go spend money on therapy.

58:44 Erin: There you go.

58:45 Wes: That's a good place to end it. Edna ended it there after all. Sorry.

58:53 Erin: Yikes.

58:53 Wes: But unlike her, we will go on for a little bit. Sorry, is that terrible?

58:58 Erin: This is great. No, I love it.

59:00 Wes: We'll talk a little bit more about. Well, I think Miss. Rice. Rice, Rice, Rice, Rice. And what else do we need to touch on in our postscript?

59:12 Erin: Maybe we'll talk a little bit about Edna's Last Supper and some other Catholic Y things that go on.

59:17 Wes: The Last Supper. That is fabulous. Okay. With the diamonds and the hair.

59:21 Erin: So nice.

59:22 Wes: Okay. All right. Well, thank you, thank you. And thank you to everyone. subscribe@patreon.com subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com AirwaveMedia.com.