I loved her line about how she didn't belong to her husband or to Robert, that it would be ludicrous for her husband to "let have her." So there were definitely ways that I could understand and identify with Edna - I didn't hate her right from page one.īut the myriad little irksome things about Edna were conjoined and amplified when Edna rented her little house around the corner. And I related to her desire for independence, and to pursue what she found interesting instead of what society/Mr. I have totally experienced that feeling of believing you would be completely satisfied and "complete" if only X loved you. I don't learn a lesson until I get beaten into submission by it!) This may be over-sharing, but I've been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and so I can relate to her obsession with Robert, her intense fantasy life regarding him, and her single-minded focus on what she expected of him on his return from Mexico. I saw Edna's decision to sleep with Alcee as a way to make her break with her old adherence to expectations and "duty," and I get that, too! (Unfortunately, my "Alcee" turned into a 4-year relationship that wasn't much better than my marriage. I understood her desire to be desired, to have some romance in her life, and to connect with someone on a deeper level than was available to her with her stolid, conventional, and somewhat controlling husband. Having been in an unhappy marriage myself, I strongly identified with Edna as she was falling in love with Robert. Sort of an epic, OG trolling, maybe.īefore I continue, let me add the caveats that a) I haven't read any of Chopin's other work, so have nothing to compare to The Awakening and no way to actually know what Chopin's actual opinions may have been b) I am aware of her contemporary era and that things were very different and c) I don't take my trolling theory very seriously, I just found it interesting to ponder. I was so disgusted by/with Edna by the end that I gave serious consideration to the notion that The Awakening might be a comment on the folly of feminism, as Chopin may have considered it.
But what I wanted to post about was my thought by the last page that perhaps this isn't a pro-feminist book at all.
I found Chopin's writing to be fine - it was good enough that it didn't distract me, but not so remarkable that I noticed it, either.
As I've been on a feminist kick lately (I had just finished Wide Sargasso Sea by Rhys) I decided to revisit Kate Chopin. *huge eyeroll* The Awakening by Chopin was another such book. Crime in Punishment by Dostoevsky, for example, I read far too early, at 14, and all I got out of it was that I liked the story, and I identified with Raskolnikov's brooding moodiness/depression. I was a very precocious reader as a kid, for which I'm grateful, but the downside is that I read a lot of books way before I had the life experience or knowledge to truly appreciate or comprehend them.