American Literature

Kate Chopins short novel The Awakening tells of the experiences of Edna Pontillier, who struggles within the roles of wife, mother, and woman in 19th century society. Edna is repression embodied her love affair with Robert frees her to confront the binding straits of her life as more than an acceptable norm. This freedom, and Ednas slow realization of self, are often viewed as concluding in her suicide in the comforting embrace of the ocean waves. However, as Robert Treu explains in his examination of critical readings on the closing chapter of  the novel,  Surviving Edna A Reading of the Ending of The Awakening,  the ambiguity of the final scene while possibly indicative of suicide is not to be the sole drawn conclusion. Drawing on his own examinations of the text, as well as the theories of Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, Treu illustrates how the narrow definition of Ednas moments in the sea as a preclude to suicide can hinder the reading of the text through the imposition of ideological restraint . Treus argument is a compelling one, bringing to light a major issue at the heart of critical theory whereby the imposition of self-realized conclusions can and do influence the readings of such stories where the endings are intentionally left open-ended by the author. More importantly, it raises the question of how such conclusions are used to represent the overall novel. Ednas  life becomes dimensioned within the context of her supposed death which prevents a practical and three-dimensional understanding of the world of 19th century women.

    Upon the publication of The Awakening, Chopin experienced a major backlash from moral America, who condemned Edna Pontillier as a deplorable example of womanhood. Adulterous and indifferent to her children, Edna presented the antithesis of proper femininity for American social critics. They, like modern critics, viewed the final passages of the novel as a pretext to suicide.,  it was too late the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone  (Chopin 153). Seizing on these words and the example of her relationship with her children and husband, 19th century critics employed Ednas desire for something more in her life and her eventual ending as proof of her status as a fallen and morally corrupt woman. Both deplorable and fitting, as Treu explains, critics viewed  Ednas romantic yearning as a character flaw which contributes to her death ... adulterous behavior was clearly reprehensible and her offstage suicide an emphatic piece of narrative punctuation, a moral period to the sentence which ends her life  (21).

    More recently, as an examination of Chopins work saw a resurgence with the womens movement in the 1970s,  Moral condemnation has been replace by a gentler sense of correcting the moody and the muddle-headed  (Treu 21). Approaching the novel from a feminist perspective has done much to draw a sympathetic and historically realistic understanding of the 19th centurys stifling effect on women. However, as with the previous critics view of suicide as a morally fitting ending to a morally bankrupt example of femininity, the more recent approaches of what Treu classifies as  feminist fatalism  (22) places Ednas life within a new set of restraints. Viewing her suicide as  triumph not a surrender  (Treu 22), Ednas life preceding the suicide becomes purely fatalistic and we lose some of the subtleties of Chopins experimentation with the novel and her characters. A relatively new genre in 19th century American literature, Mikhail Bakhtin explained that the novel of Chopins era  reflects more deeply, more essentially, more sensitively and rapidly, reality itself in the process of unfolding  (qtd. in Treu 23). In choosing this particular genre to tell the tale of Edna Pontellier, Chopin is attempting to develop her characters beyond mere representations of ideas to a fuller realization of humanity.

    In insisting on suicide as the ending for Edna Pontellier, critics have long sought to either condemn or empower the image of womanhood represented in her character. However, as Treu and Bakhtin both note, by concentrating the entire interpretation within the context of her suicide they fail to explore the deeper mechanics involved within the scope of the novels genre and Chopins personal understanding of 19th century womanhood. To see suicide as triumph is equally as fatalistic as viewing it as moral retribution, both reducing the 19th century woman to a single-dimension whereby death becomes the only choice for such a woman whether we view her as evil or free. Chopins Edna is not meant to be one-dimensional but instead a literary representation of reality, with many facets of character that cannot be defined by a single ideological approach.