feminaw Edna Pontellier’s Predicament in Kate Chopins The Awakening :: Chopin Awakening Essays

Ednas Predicament in The Awakening Dr. Mandelet, speaking more as a wise, older musical composition than as a medical authority, seems to understand Ednas predicament. When Mr. Pontellier asks for his advice concerning the strange behaviour of his wife, the doctor immediately wonders, Is there any man in the case? (950). While Edna thinks she is expressing her independent rights, Dr. Mandelet knows her breast is still tied to the need for a man in her life, and to an uncontrolled submission to sexual passion. After her self-proclaimed release from her husbands narrow world of prescribed sexual activity roles, Edna begins to act spontaneously, without considering, as Leonce would wish, what people would say (977). During a visit to Mademoiselle Reisz, she boldly displays her new attitude, refusing the more modest hot chocolate in respect of a mans drink I will take some brandy, said Edna, shivering as she removed her gloves and overshoes. She drank the liquor from the glass as a m an would have done. Then flinging herself upon the uncomfortable sofa she said, Mademoiselle, I am going to move away from my house on Esplanade Street. (962) However, she will be moving just cardinal steps away (962), she admits, betraying the fact that her feminist step forward will be hindered by at least two steps back. Her new self-assertiveness will not be enough to shield her from the difficulties of her changing life. Although she expresses herself to Robert in what she deems an unwomanly style (990), she is still a victim of societal conditioning, wanting to vacate her identity to another person. Cristina Giorcelli writes that Transitional states are inevitably states of inner and outer ambiguity. In her quest for her true self, Edna loses, or enhances with the addition of the opposite ones, her original grammatical gender connotations and social attributes (121). Such a reading, however, risks simplifying the story in its attempt to clarify exactly that which is ambigu ous. Although Giorcelli agrees that the storys message is blurred, she seems to contradict herself when she argues that, Through her androgyny Edna succeeds in achieving the wholeness of a composite unity, both integral and versatile, both necessary and free. Triumphing over sex and role differentiations ontologically implies sub- jugating that which substantiates but curtails, and ethically it entails mastering the grim unilaterality of responsibility. The bourgeois crisis that Edna endures--the discrepancy surrounded by duty toward others and right toward herself-- .