American Literature

In Kate Chopin s The Awakening, the central character Edna Pontellier comes to represent the feminist struggle for self-actualization and individual freedom from the norms and rules of the governing 19th century Creole society in which she finds herself. However, in examining Edna s  awakening  to feminism and her death as a result of the incompatibility with her desires with the world around her, the majority of the women who create the sphere of Edna s life are too often forgotten or simply written them off as byproducts of the world from which Edna is seeking escape. In the characters of Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, Edna and the reader are provided with the alternatives of female existence as part of Victorian Creole society. Adele, the ultimate  mother-woman  is all which Edna fails to be and become in the eyes of her peers. Adele is at home with her domesticity and seems to take the joy and pride from raising her children that finds outlet for Edna in only artistic or romantic passions. Mademoiselle Reisz, an aged and embittered spinster, has sought to separate herself entirely from both the romantic and domestic passions of either woman. She lives for herself and her music alone and in doing so fails to attain a true life. Both women are in their personalities and passions the opposites of Edna, but they as much as she struggle too within the confines of their society. Fit within the molds of womanhood   motherwife and spinster   they are restrained by the same conventions which Edna bucks underneath. However, unlike Edna they are able to maintain themselves equally within worlds of their own choosing and the expectations of the outside world simply through their acceptance of these roles. In this manner, Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz represent as clearly as Edna the struggles of feminism under the strain of a society completely constructed of and for masculine ideals, and more subtly represent the modest rebellion and triumphs of the individual 19th woman over her circumstances.

Adele Ratignolle represents from her introduction into the narrative all that Edna Pontellier is expected to be but is not. Edna is not one of the  mother women   fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood   women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals  (Chopin 10). Adele on the other hand was  the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm  (Chopin 10). Happy in her marriage, contented and given purpose by her continual pregnancies and the needs of her family, Adele Ratignolle could well seem the very antitheses of what Edna slowly comes to seek in her journey toward individuality. Tamara Powell points out that this contrast between the two women is important to the underlying conflict of gender roles and inequality,  Edna is described as not a mother-woman (8), and this description is helpful in understanding why Edna eventually must end her life  (Powell 277). More important though, in many respects, is how in the personification of Adele s role, it would appear that she would be the least likely to sympathize with the lost Edna. However, Adele, above all others, seeks friendship with the disillusioned Edna and recognizes in her friend the struggle for something beyond the boundaries of the life of wife and mother. That Adele is able to fulfill perfectly and contentedly the two roles that elude Edna, wife and mother, should be an indication of their incompatibility as friends. However, it is in her roles as wife and mother that Adele s strength and individuality find their niche. As Kathleen Streater notes,  Chopin uses Adeles character to show readers another form of resistance Adele reveals her strength and feminist identity by working the patriarchal system to her advantage  (Streater 408). Her acceptance of these roles and the meaning that she takes from them, illustrate Adele s ability to transform the weakness of the 19th century ideal of femininity into a form of self-actualization that works from within the structures of society to reclaim and rewrite the very definition of womanhood that she represents.

Throughout the majority of the story, Adele Ratignolle is pregnant with her fourth child. For her, the production of children becomes a central tenet in her life and existence and acts in a way for her to measure her own life,  Madame Ratignolle had been married seven years. About every two years she had a baby  (Chopin 11). While her continual pregnancy may be to some a sign of her conforming to the roles laid out by society, Adele ability to not merely revel in the love she has for her offspring but in the experience of pregnancy shows not submission for realization. Adele is not shamed or apologetic about her womanhood, even  concerning her  condition  (11) and embarrasses her friend with her forwardness in making the nature of her bodies reproduction known to all,  Never would Edna Pontellier forget the shock with which she heard Madame Ratignolle relating to old Monsieur Farival the harrowing story of one of her accouchements, withholding no intimate detail  (Chopin 12). In her uncensored recollections of her past pregnancies and deliveries, Adele is embracing the very basic difference between men and women. Aside from social and cultural distinctions placed upon the sexes by history and politics, the fact of anatomical difference and a woman s sovereignty within the realm of the creation of new life is something which is largely lost to Edna. As she moves farther and farther away from convention, she also moves away from this most biological of distinctions. Adele on the other hand embracing wholly what makes her different from men she can be a mother because of her femaleness and in her procreation is embracing, in some respects, more fully the basic reproductive power of women.

Despite the description of the  mother-women  and Adele s connection to this type of femininity, at no point does Chopin seek to downplay the force of Adele s personality or the strength of her character. She is, no doubt, a product of her society but illustrates that such a society can and does produce subtle anomalies on an individual level. Such anomalies of spirit, operating within the system itself, represent a more lasting concept of rebellion that the brilliant flare and distinguishing of Edna s own flame. Streater explains that  Adeles position as a feminist is difficult for some readers to discern, and this difficulty betrays the double-bind women often find themselves in to become a wife and mother is, on some level, to capitulate ones self to patriarchal systems, but this should not render a womans feminism suspect  (Streater 406). Adeles obvious sexuality and the manner in which she embraces it, gives Adele a power that Edna, in the end lacks. Adele is, Streater rightly asserts,  confident, powerful, and sexual  (Streater 408) and in this combination she is able to live within her difference and embrace it, thereby persevering where Edna falls under the weight of trying to reconcile the world to her inner self. With Adele, Chopin reveals an identity that confuses, and thus belies, static stereotypes, and, importantly, she reveals Adeles ownership and authority of the mother-woman role beyond the male-prescribed definitions (Streater 409).

Mademoiselle Reisz is on the other end of the spectrum from Adele she has shunned marriage and motherhood, instead keeping her own company and turning within herself. However, Reisz carries the same strength of self-acceptance as Adele. Though Reisz  was a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who had quarreled with almost everyone,  she also exhibited in her quarrelsome nature  a temper which was self assertive  (Chopin 32). She knows herself and society. In her manner, there is little uncertainty. Like Adele, she knows her own mind, but unlike Adele has chosen to play outside of the role assigned to her by a male-dominated world. Never married, living alone, and keeping company with only those of her own choosing, Reisz is not a typical woman. Adele illustrates the  mother-woman  role while  Mlle Reisz - odd, ungainly, and loveless - is an animated object lesson for all women who scorn marital and maternal roles (Bradley 52). Living in a society which views her as a a living lesson against individuality, in their adoration of a feminine ideal, Reisz is both victim and participant. She has remained in New Orleans of her own will and lives among the very people who alternately pity, dislike, and admire her. Whereas Adele is the image of femininity, Reisz downplays her womanhood almost denying its existence adopting  stereotypical traits most commonly associated with masculinity  (Streater 412).

Unable to find her individual self and purpose within the confines of normal society, Reisz largely keeps her own and in this has been able to strip away the sexuality of her gender. In her androgyny, Reisz attempts to free herself. On the one hand, she is unable to escape the confines of the world around her. Zoila Clark remarks on the complex reactions of women to the force of the circumstances around them,  like colonized people, women internalize their oppression psychologically, and this forces them into subordinate roles. These types of oppression are subtle and work through fragmentation and mystification (Clark 339). In this respect, Reisz is no different. In denying her femininity, she feels the need to adapt to a more masculine image as the only alternative to the  mother-women  image of people such as Adele Ratignolle. But, much like Adele, in living in an extreme and preformed role, she comes to know herself and the world around her more fully than Edna Pontellier who struggles to find balance between the two extremes.

Equally like Adele, Reisz recognizes her fulfillment of this traditional role of outcast and sees the faltering rebellion of Edna. However, she appears to want to live both vicariously through Edna and to also save her from herself. Approaching Edna at a party, Reisz felt the should blades of the young woman, remarking,  The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a said spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth  (Chopin 110). Reisz predicts the difficulty faced by Edna in attempting to redefine herself, as she herself had done the same. In their examination of the recurring image of the  lady in black  throughout the story, Joseph Church and Christa Havener points out the parallels between the lady and the lovers relationship to one another and the relationship of Mademoiselle Reisz and Edna,  the lady in black, however, unconsciously, works to avoid subsumption in otherness and seeks to maintain her bodily being by trying vicariously to appropriate the embodied sensuality of the lovers, just as Mademoiselle Reisz attempts to do principally with Edna (Church  Havener 197). Ednas suicide at the end of the story underlines the primary differences between the women Reisz continues to live her life contrary to social expectations, while Edna drowns in the embrace of the open water.

Like Adele, Reisz is able to find herself in the extremity of her role and is anchored by it. Edna is anchored by nothing, having tried to create an equilibrium between society and her own self that cannot yet openly exist. Neither Adele Ratignolle or Mademoiselle Reisz could ever be portrayed as the martyr of feminism which Edna Pontellier was and has increasingly become. Both women are conventional in their roles, spinster and motherwife, keeping with the expectations and rules of society but from within these roles they have emerged as individuals who have in their acceptance of themselves found a center from which to grow.