Thanatos and Eros: Kate Chopin's the Awakening

Author(s): Cynthia Griffin Wolff

Source: American Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Oct., 1973), pp. 449-471
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711633
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CYNTHIA GRIFFIN WOLFF
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Thanatos and Eros:

Kate Chopin's The Awakening

AFTER ITS INITIALLY DRAMATIC RECEPTION, THE AWAKENING SLIPPED INTO AN

undeserved state of neglect; now, partly as a result of the new feminist

criticism, the pendulum has swung in quite the other direction, and Chopin
has been hailed as an early advocate of women's rights. Edmund Wilson
sees The Awakening as an anticipation of D. H. Lawrence in its treatment
of infidelity.' Kenneth Eble maintains that "the novel is an American
Madame Bovary, though such a designation is not precisely accurate. Its
central character is similar: the married woman who seeks love outside a
stuffy, middle-class marriage,"2 Jules Chametzky is even more explicit:
"What does surprise one is the modernity . .. of Mrs. Chopin's insights into
'the woman question.' It is not so much that she advocates woman's li-
bidinal freedom or celebrates the force of the body's prerogatives.. . . What
Kate Chopin shows so beautifully are the pressures working against
woman's true awakening to her condition, and what that condition iS."3
There are differences, of course, among these evaluations, but the un-
derlying similarity is unmistakable: all see the power of the novel as growing
out of an existential confrontation between the heroine and some external,
repressive force. Thus, one might say that it is the woman against stifling
sexual standards or that it is the woman against the tedium of a provincial
marriage. Chametzky offers, perhaps, the most detailed explanation: "The
struggle is for the woman to free herself from being an object or possession
defined in her functions, or owned, by others."4 Certainly elements of the

' Patriotic Gore (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), p. 590.
2The Awakening, with introduction by Kenneth Eble (New York: Capricorn, 1964), pp. vii-
viii.
3"Our Decentralized Literature: A Consideration of Regional, Ethnic, Racial, and Sexual
Factors," from a paper delivered before the German American Studies Association in
Heidelberg, June 5, 1971.
4 Ibid.

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 450 American Quarterly

novel serve to confirm these interpretations, especially if one takes

seriously some of the accusations leveled by the heroine in moments of
anger or distress. Edna is disillusioned by marriage; to her "a wedding is
one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth" (p. 172).5 Even so, the
contemporary readings of the novel which stress Edna's position as a victim
of society's standards do not capture its power; for although it is not a great
novel-perhaps it is even a greatly flawed novel because of the elusiveness
of its focus-reading it can be a devastating and unforgettable experience.
And such an experience can simply not grow out of a work whose im-
portance lies in the fact that it anticipates Lawrence or that it is a sort of
American Madame Bovary. Such evaluations are diminishing. The im-
portance of Chopin's work does not lie in its anticipation of "the woman
question" or of any other question; it derives from its ruthless fidelity to the
disintegration of Edna's character. Edna, in turn, interests us not because
she is "a woman," the implication being that her experience is principally
important because it might stand for that of any other woman. Quite the
contrary; she interests us because she is human because she fails in ways
which beckon seductively to all of us. Conrad might say that, woman or
man, she is "one of us."
It is difficult to define Edna's character as it might have existed before we
meet her in the novel, for even at its opening such stability as she may have
had has already been disrupted. We do learn something of her background.
She is the middle child of an ambiguously religious family. "She comes of
sound old Presbyterian Kentucky stock. The old gentleman, her father, I
have heard, used to atone for his week-day sins with his Sunday devotions. I
know for a fact, that his race horses literally ran away with the prettiest bit
of Kentucky farming land I ever laid eyes upon" (pp. 171-72). The family
has two faces, then: it "sins" (during the week) with its racing and land-
grabbing; and it "atones" (on Sundays) with pious condemnations. The
character of each of the daughters reflects this contradiction. So Margaret,
the oldest "has all the Presbyterian undiluted" (p. 172); she is "matronly
and dignified, probably from having assumed matronly and house-wifely
responsibilities too early in life, their mother having died when they were
quite young. Margaret was not effusive; she was practical" (pp. 43-44). She
was also, quite possibly, in her remote and disapproving way, the principal
mother-figure for Edna. Janet, on the other hand, "the youngest is some-
thing of a vixen" (p. 172). Edna, caught between the two extremes, can live

5This quotation and all other quotations from The A wakening have been taken from the
Capricorn edition (cited above) and will be identified in the text by page number. The hardcover
edition-Kate Chopin, The A wakening, Vol. 2 in The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, edited
and with an introduction by Per Seyersted, foreword by Edmund Wilson (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State Univ. Press, [1969]), may be found in libraries but is not readily available to the
general public.

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 The Awakening 451

comfortably with neither portion of the family's double standard; instead

she tries to evolve a habit or manner which will accommodate both.
The attempt to internalize this contradiction combines with other of
Edna's psychic needs to produce an "identity" which is predicated on the
conscious process of concealment. In some sense there are two Ednas: "At
a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life that
outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions" (p. 35).
Therefore she is very little open to sustained emotional relationships be-
cause those elements of character which she might want to call her "real"
self must remain hidden, revealed only to herself. "Edna had had an occa-
sional girl friend, but whether accidentally or not, they seemed to have been
all of one type the self-contained. She never realized that the reserve of
her own character had much, perhaps everything, to do with this" (p. 44).
Not that Edna wants to be so entirely alone. On the contrary, the cool dis-
tancing tone of her "visible" character conceals an ardent yearning for
intensity, for passion. So Edna provides the passion she needs in the only
manner which seems safely available to her through daydreaming.

Edna often wondered at one propensity which sometimes had inwardly

disturbed her without causing any outward show or manifestation on her part. At
a very early age perhaps it was when she traversed the ocean of waving grass-
she remembered that she had been passionately enamored of a dignified and sad-
eyed cavalry officer who visited her father in Kentucky. She could not leave his
presence when he was there, nor remove her eyes from his face, which was some-
thing like Napoleon's, with a lock of black hair falling across the forehead. But
the cavalry officer melted imperceptibly out of her existence.
At another time her affections were deeply engaged by a young gentleman who
visited a lady on a neighborhood plantation. It was after they went to Mississippi
to live. The young man was engaged to be married to the young lady, and they
sometimes called upon Margaret, driving over of afternoons in a buggy. Edna was
a little miss, just merging into her teens; and the realization that she herself was
nothing, nothing, nothing to the engaged young man was a bitter affliction to her.
But he too, went the way of dreams.
She was a grown young woman when she was overtaken by what she supposed
to be the climax of her fate. It was when the face and figure of a great tragedian
began to haunt her imagination and stir her senses. The persistence of the infatua-
tion lent it an aspect of genuineness. The hopelessness of it colored it with the
lofty tones of a great passion.
The picture of the tragedian stood enframed upon her desk. Any one may
possess the portrait of a tragedian without exciting suspicion or comment. (pp.
45-46, italics added)

The emotional change here must be described as the development of an

increasingly resistant barrier between the "real" external world and that
world which was most authentic in Edna's experience the inner world of
her fantasies. Thus her libidinal energies are focused first on a real man who

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 452 American Quarterly

is in some ways genuinely available to her; he is apparently unmarried,

unattached and a frequent visitor to the family home. Still, he is a good deal
older than she, and his chief attraction seems to be his resemblance to Na-
poleon (and perhaps the romantic aura attached to his having been a
cavalry officer one calls to mind the clanging spurs which echo in Edna's
memory as she is drowning). The next object of Edna's affections is
manifestly unavailable since he is engaged to her sister's friend, and al-
though the realization that she was "nothing, nothing, nothing to the en-
gaged man" may have made Edna consciously miserable, there is a form of
safety, too, in nothingness. The passion is never expressed, always con-
trolled, with only the substantial threat of "dreams" which melt away.
Characteristically, she reserves her greatest passion for a figure of pure
fantasy, the tragedian whose picture one can possess "without exciting sus-
picion or comment."
Given the apparent terror which genuine emotional involvement inspires
in Edna, her marriage to a man like LUonce Pontellier is no accident. No
one would call him remarkable; most readers might think him dull,
insensitive, unperceptive, even callous. Certainly he is an essentially prosaic
man. If one assumed that marriage was to be an intimate affair of deep
understanding, all of these qualities would condemn Ldonce. Yet for Edna
they are the very qualities which recommend him. "The acme of bliss,
which would have been a marriage with the tragedian, was not for her in this
world" (p. 47); such bliss, indeed, is not for anyone in this world. It is a
romantic illusion, a dream defined by its very inability to be consum-
mated. What is more, the intensity of dreams such as these may have be-
come disturbing to Edna. So she chooses to marry Ldonce; after all "as the
devoted wife of a man who worshiped her, she felt she would take her place
with a certain dignity in the world of reality, closing the portals forever be-
hind her upon the realm of romance and dreams" (p. 47). The marriage to
such a man as Leonce was, then, a defensive maneuver designed to maintain
the integrity of the two "selves" that formed her character and to reinforce
the distance between them. Her outer self was confirmed by the entirely
conventional marriage while her inner self was safe-known only to Edna.
An intuitive man, a sensitive husband, might threaten it; a husband who
evoked passion from her might lure the hidden self into the open, tempting
Edna to attach her emotions to flesh and blood rather than phantoms.
Ldonce is neither, and their union ensures the secret safety of Edna's "real"
self. "It was not long before the tragedian had gone to join the cavalry
officer and the engaged young man and a few others; and Edna found herself
face to face with the realities. She grew fond of her husband, realizing with
some unaccountable satisfaction that no trace of passion or excessive and
fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby threatening its dissolution"
(p. 47, italics added).

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 The Awakening 453

If we try to assess the configuration of Edna's personality when she

comes to Grand Isle at the novel's beginning, we might best do so by using
R. D. Laing's description of the "schizoid" personality. As Laing would
describe it, the schizoid personality consists of a set of defenses which have
been established as an attempt to preserve some semblance of coherent
identity. "The self, in order to develop and sustain its identity and au-
tonomy, and in order to be safe from the persistent threat and danger from
the world, has cut itself off from direct relatedness with others, and has
endeavoured to become its own object: to become, in fact, related directly
only to itself. Its cardinal functions become phantasy and observation.
Now, in so far as this is successful, one necessary consequence is that the
self has difficulty sustaining any sentiment du reel for the very reason that it
is not 'in touch' with reality, it never actually 'meets' reality."6
Laing's insights provide at least a partial explanation for elements of the
novel which might otherwise be unclear. For example, Edna's fragility or
susceptibility to the atmosphere at Grand Isle (as compared, for example,
with her robust friend Madame Ratignolle, or the grand aloofness of Ma-
dame Reisz) can be traced to the circular ineffectiveness of the schizoid
mechanism for maintaining identity. To be specific, such a person must be
simultaneously alert to and protected from any invitation to interact with
the real world since all genuine interactions leave the hidden "real" self ex-
posed to potential danger. Vigilance begets threat which in turn precipitates
withdrawal and renewed vigilance.7
More important, interpersonal relationships can be conceived of only in
cataclysmic terms; "there is a constant dread and resentment at being
turned into someone else's thing, of being penetrated by him, and a sense of
being in someone else's power and control. Freedom then consists in being
inaccessible."8 Such habits of mind comport with Edna's outbursts con-
cerning her own relationships. Certainly her rather dull husband seems not
to notice her except as a part of the general inventory of his worldly goods:
thus early in the novel he is described as "looking at his wife as one looks at
a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage"
(p. 4). Yet his attentions, such as they are, are rather more indicative of
indifference than otherwise. Indeed, at every point within the narrative
when he might, were he so inclined, assert his "rights," he declines to do so.
After the evening swimming party, for example, when he clearly desires
sexual intercourse and his wife does not wish to comply, he utters but a few
sharp words and then, surprising for a man so supposedly interested in the
proprietary relationship, slips on a robe and comes out to keep her company
during her fitful vigil (see pp. 78-81). After their return to New Orleans, he

6Ronald D. Laing, The Divided Self (London: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 137.
7See Laing, pp. 138-39.
8Ibid., p. 113.

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 454 American Quarterly

reacts to Edna's disruption of her "wifely functions" with but momentary

impatience; he does not attempt coercion, and he goes to the lengths of
consulting a physician out of concern for her well-being. Even when Edna
has taken up residence in her diminutive "pigeon house" LUonce decides to
leave her to her own ways. His only concern a small-minded one, to be
sure is to save appearances.
It is hard to cast such an ultimately insignificant man in the role of
villain compared with a man like Soames Forsyte or with some of the
more brutal husbands in Chopin's short stories, Ldonce is a slender vehicle
to carry the weight of society's repression of women. Yet Edna sees herself
as his possession, even as she sees herself the prisoner of her children's de-
mands. Her dying thoughts confirm this fixation: "She thought of Ldonce
and the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have
thought that they could possess her, body and soul" (p. 302). Now if Ldonce
is not able to rise to the occasion of possessing her body and soul, the
children as they are portrayed in the novel, seem to exercise even less
continuous claim upon her. They are always accompanied by a nurse whose
presence frees Edna to pursue whatever interests she can sustain; what is
more, they spend much of their time with their paternal grandmother, who
seems to welcome them whenever Edna wishes to send them. Her emo-
tional relationship with them is tenuous at best, certainly not demanding
and by no stretch of the imagination stifling. "She was fond of her children
in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them
passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them" (p. 47). Given
the extraordinary latitude that Edna did in fact have, we might better in-
terpret her feelings of imprisonment as projections of her own attitudes and
fears. The end of the novel offers an ironic affirmation of such a view, for
when she returns home from Madame Ratignolle's accouchement, even her
apparently positive expectations with regard to Robert follow the same fa-
miliar definition: "She could picture at that moment no greater bliss on
earth than possession of the beloved one" (p. 291). The wording is
somewhat ambiguous-she might possess him, he might possess her, the
"possession" might be understood as a synonym for sexual union still the
key word here is possession, and it is Edna's word.
Possession, as descriptive of any intense emotional involvement, is both
tempting and terrifying. To yield to possession is to become engulfed, to be
nothing. The antiphonal emblematic figures that appear like phantoms
while Edna is staying at Grand Isle reflect the dilemma. On the one hand
there are the lovers, intimate, always together, seemingly happy, a
beckoning vision of replenishment which carries always with it the fear of
annihilation. And then there is the woman in black, the emblem of the self-

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 The Awakening 455

destroyed in a bizarre act of self-p

interaction-"safe" and "free."
One solution for the problem Edna faces would be to formulate a way to
have her relationship with Robert without ever really having it. Temporarily
she does effect such a solution, and she does so in two ways. First, while she
is at Grand Isle, she systematically denies the possibility of an adult rela-
tionship with him; this denial takes the form of her engulfing him
("possessing" him, perhaps) by a kind of incorporation of his personality
into her own. She accepts his attentions, his services, his affection; and in so
far as these are important to her, she comes to regard them as extensions of
her own will or desire. Robert is not conceived of as a separate, individuated
being, and thus she repeatedly is surprised and dismayed when his actions
unaccountably (to her) deviate from her wishes. We can see this aspect of
their relationship very early in a trivial incident when Robert leaves her one
evening and fails to return. "She wondered why Robert had gone away and
left her. It did not occur to her to think he might have grown tired of being
with her the livelong day. She was not tired, and she felt that he was not.
She regretted that he had gone. It was so much more natural to have him
stay, when he was not absolutely required to leave her" (p. 103). This scene
and Edna's reaction is a foreshadowing of the much more distressing
separation when Robert leaves for Mexico. "But can't you understand? I've
grown used to seeing you, to having you with me all the time, and your
action seems unfriendly, even unkind. You don't even offer an excuse for it.
Why, I was planning to be together, thinking of how pleasant it would be to
see you in the city next winter" (p. 114). She finds it difficult, if not im-
possible, to separate his will or his wishes from her own, to acknowledge his
existence independent of hers. Only after he has left can she safely feel the
intensity of passion that later comes to be associated with him; and she can
do so because once physically absent, he can be made magically present as
a phantom, an object in her own imagination, a figure which is now truly a
part of herself. She has reawakened the cavalry officer, the young engaged
man, the tragedian; "for the first time she recognized anew the symptoms
of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her
earliest teens, and later as a young woman" (p. 116). As a woman, however,
Edna wants more.
Thus she evolves a second solution by which she can have a relationship
with Robert without being forced to fuse the outer and the inner "selves"
that comprise her identity. This stratagem is the affair with Arobin. She can
respond sensually to the kiss which initiates their relationship precisely be-
cause she has no feeling for him. Her feelings are fixed safely on the image
of Robert; "there was Robert's reproach making itself felt by a quicker,

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 456 A merican Quarterly

fiercer, more overpowering love, which had awakened within her toward
him" (p. 219). And this arrangement frees her from anxiety, leaving only a
"dull pang of regret."9 When Robert does, in fact, return, the problem of
fusing the outer world with the "real" world within returns with him; and,
as before, the fantasy is easier to deal with. "A hundred times Edna had pic-
tured Robert's return, and imagined their first meeting. It was usually at
her home, whither he had sought her out at once. She always fancied him
expressing or betraying in some way his love for her. And here, the reality
was that they sat ten feet apart, she at the window, crushing geranium
leaves in her hand and smelling them, he twirling around on the piano stool"
(pp. 256-57).
Robert's return and his sensuous awakening to her kiss (pp. 282-84)
precipitates the final crisis from which she must flee. She cannot, in the end,
yield her "self" to the insistence of his passionate plea to stay; and his own
subsequent flight destroys the fantasy lover as well. Both of Edna's selves
are truly betrayed and barren, and she retrenches in the only manner fa-
miliar to her, that of a final and ultimate withdrawal. As Laing says: "If the
whole of the individual's being cannot be defended, the individual retracts
his lines of defence until he withdraws within a central citadel. He is pre-
pared to write off everything he is, except his 'self '. But the tragic paradox is
that the more the self is defended in this way, the more it is destroyed. The
apparent eventual destruction and dissolution of these in schizophrenic con-
ditions is accomplished not by external attacks from the enemy (actual or
supposed), from without, but by the devastation caused by the inner de-
fensive manoeuvres themselves." 10
This description of Edna's defensive patterns is an invaluable aid in
understanding the novel; however, taken alone it does not lead to a com-
plete explanation. We can understand, perhaps, why Edna's act of self-
destruction seems the logical culmination of other apparently nondestruc-
tive behavior, but we cannot yet comprehend the manner of her dissolution,
nor the significance to Edna (which must have been central) of Madame
Ratignolle's accouchement or of Edna's own children, who seem to haunt
her even though their physical presence scarcely enters the novel. More im-

9Laing cites a maneuver which is remarkably similar. "A patient, for instance, who
conducted his life along relatively 'normal' lines outwardly but operated this inner split,
presented as his original complaint the fact that he could never have intercourse with his wife
but only with his own image of her. That is, his body had physical relations with her body, but
his mental self, while this was going on, could only look on at what his body was doing and/or
imagine himself having intercourse with his wife as an object of his imagination.... This is an
example of what I mean by saying that phantasy and reality are kept apart. The self avoids
being related directly to real persons but relates itself to itself and to the objects which it itself
posits. The self can relate itself with immediacy to an object which is an object of its own
imagination or memory but not to a real person" (p. 86).
IO Ibid., p. 77.

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 The Awakening 457

portant, the tone of the novel perhaps its most artistically compelling
element cannot yet be described or explained in any but the most general
terms as a reflection of Edna's schizoid affinity for fantasy. Even the title of
the work, The A wakening, suggests a positive quality with which Edna's
systematic annihilation of self (albeit from the most "self-preserving" mo-
tives) seems oddly at variance. Thus though we might accept the psychic
anatomy defined by Laing as schizoid, we must go beyond simple catego-
rizing to understand the novel as a whole.
We might begin with the title itself. Surely one unavoidable meaning of
the title has to do with Edna's secret "real" self. She had married a Creole
and yet she "was not thoroughly at home in the society of Creoles. . . . A
characteristic which distinguished them and which impressed Mrs.
Pontellier most forcibly was their entire absence of prudery. Their freedom
of expression was at first incomprehensible to her, though she had no
difficulty in reconciling it with a lofty chastity which in the Creole woman
seems to be inborn and unmistakable" (pp. 22-23). The unfamiliar mode of
conduct which seems most puzzling to Edna is the ability to have affect to
show feeling, even passion without going beyond certain socially approved
limits; that is, it is not just the "freedom" of the Creole society but the cou-
pling of that freedom with a confident sense of decorum, "lofty chastity,"
which confounds her. "A book had gone the rounds of the pension. When it
came her turn to read it, she did so with profound astonishment. She felt
moved to read the book in secret and solitude, though none of the others
had done so to hide it from view at the sound of approaching footsteps. It
was openly criticised and freely discussed at table. Mrs. Pontellier gave
over being astonished, and concluded that wonders would never cease" (pp.
23-24). As we have seen, "freedom" for Edna has always meant isolation
and concealment, an increasingly sterile and barren existence; now sud-
denly she finds herself among people who have a different kind of freedom,
the freedom to express feelings openly and without fear. What a temptation
to that insistent inner being whose authenticity Edna so feverishly guards
from attack! For this is a self which is starving-and Grand Isle offers
nourishment in bounteous abundance.
However, danger lies in the possibility that this hidden self will emerge as
voracious, omnivorous and insatiable. Such a fear is probably always
present in the schizoid personality; for these defense mechanisms "can be
understood as an attempt to preserve a being that is precariously struc-
tured. . The initial structuralization of being into its basic elements oc-
curs in early infancy. In normal circumstances, this occurs in such a way as
to be so conclusively stable in its basic elements (for instance, the continuity
of time, the distinction between the self and not-self, phantasy and reality),
that it can henceforth be taken for granted: on this stable base, a

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 458 American Quarterly

considerable amount of plasticity can exist in what we call a person's

'character'."' (It is precisely this plasticity which Edna observes among
the Creoles and which she finds not shocking but deeply puzzling because it
is absent in her own personality.) It is at this most elementary level that
Edna's hidden self subsists. "The orientation of the schizoid personality is a
primitive oral one, concerned with the dilemma of sustaining its aliveness,
while being terrified to 'take in' anything. It becomes parched with thirst,
and desolate."'12 And out of this desolation Edna's "self" ventures forward
to seek resuscitation and confirmation.
The awakening is a sensuous one. It is important, however, not to accept
this term as an exclusively or even primarily sexual one. To be sure, Edna's
awakening involves a liaison with Arobin, and the novel leaves little doubt
that this attachment includes sexual activity. Yet it would be naive and
limiting to suppose that Edna's principal complaint ought to be described in
terms of sexual repression (though she might find it reassuring to do so).
Gratifying sexual experience cannot be isolated from sensuous experience
in general, and entering into a sexual relationship is an act which necessarily
"awakens" memories-echoes, if you will of earlier sensuous needs and
experiences. As Freud has observed, the mind is unique in its development,
for "only in the mind is such a preservation of all the earlier stages
alongside of the final form possible."' 3 Now a reader of Chopin's novel
might find himself more absorbed by the apparently genital aspects of
Edna's sensuous life, the love affair with Robert and the attachment to
Arobin; after all, this is in some sense the "appropriate" level for the
expression of passion in an adult woman. The narrator, however, directs our
attention in a different direction. "That summer at Grand Isle she began to
loosen a little the mantle of reserve that had always enveloped her. There
may have been there must have been-influences, both subtle and ap-
parent, working in their several ways to induce her to do this; but the most
obvious was the influence of Adele Ratignolle. The excessive physical
charm of the Creole had first attracted her, for Edna had a sensuous sus-
ceptibility to beauty" (p. 35).
Why is Adele and not Robert singled out as the primary force that rouses
Edna from her slumber? Our introduction to Adele gives some hints.
"There are no words to describe her save the old ones that have served so
often to picture the by-gone heroine of romance and the fair lady of our
dreams" (p. 19). If some portion of Edna's self has been arrested in dreams,
perhaps Adele is the embodiment of those dreams. And yet, despite the

" Ibid.
12 Ibid., p. 16 1.
13Sigmund Freud, "Civilization and its Discontents," in The Standard Edition of the Com-
plete Psychological Works, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1971), 21:71.

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 The Awakening 459

"spun-gold hair" and blue eyes, she is scarcely a conventional heroine. Her
beauty derives its power from a sense of fullness, ripeness and abundance.
Her very essence might be described as a kind of plump succulence, and the
narrator reverts to terms of nourishment as the only appropriate means of
rendering her nature. She had "two lips that pouted, that were so red one
could only think of cherries or some other delicious crimson fruit in looking
at them. She was growing a little stout, but it did not seem to detract an iota
from the grace of every step, pose, gesture" (p. 20). Her hours are spent de-
lightfully (to her) in mending and sorting children's clothes, and she is
pregnant a fact which pleases her and becomes her principal topic of con-
versation when Edna meets her. She might have been painted by Renoir.
She is, in Edna's terms, the quintessential "mother-woman."
Though Edna's own instincts for mothering are fitful, she is clearly at-
tracted to the bounty of Adele's nature, allowing herself to slip into ca-
ressing intimacy like a grateful child. "Madame Ratignolle laid her hand
over that of Mrs. Pontellier, which was near her. Seeing that the hand was
not withdrawn, she clasped it firmly and warmly. She even stroked it a lit-
tle, fondly, with the other hand, murmuring in an undertone, 'Pauvre
cherie.' The action was at first a little confusing to Edna, but she soon lent
herself readily to the Creole's gentle caress" (p. 43). So far as one can tell,
this is the first sensuous contact that Edna has had with anyone perhaps in
her conscious memory, certainly since adolescence. "During one period of
my life," she confides to Adele, "religion took a firm hold upon me; after I
was twelve and until-until why, I suppose until now, though I never
thought much about it-just driven along by habit" (pp. 42-43). This
sensuous awakening loosens Edna's memory, and her mind drifts back
through childhood, recalling the enveloping sea of grass, the succession of
phantom lovers. "Edna did not reveal so much as all this to Madame Rati-
gnolle that summer day when they sat with faces turned to the sea. But a
good part of it escaped her. She had put her head down on Madame Rati-
gnolle's shoulder. She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her
own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine,
or like a first breath of freedom" (p. 48).
The almost blinding intensity of this episode between Edna and Adele
contrasts vividly with the emotional paleness of Edna's real-world interac-
tions with Robert (which must not be confused with her fantasies about him,
especially after he leaves, nor with her increasingly narcissistic appreciation
of her own body). Thus Edna's coming to rest upon Adele's shoulder with
trusting openness is preceded by an episode between Edna and Robert
which is similar in action and yet altogether different in tone. "During his
oblivious attention he once quietly rested his head against Mrs. Pontellier's
arm. As gently she repulsed him. Once again he repeated the offense. She

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 460 American Quarterly

could not but believe it to be thoughtlessness on his part; yet that was no
reason she should submit to it. She did not remonstrate, except again to
repulse him quietly but firmly" (p. 29). Several things must be noted here:
Edna views Robert's action not as sensuously stimulating but as an im-
position, even an affront; her resistance betrays no conflict (that is, the nar-
rator does not suggest that she was tempted by the possible sexual content
of his gesture or that she felt threatened or guilty), quite the contrary; her
attitude is coolly distant. But then Robert is a man whose quasi-sexual flir-
tations are not to be taken seriously.
In many ways his patterns of behavior are similar to Edna's, and to some
extent, this similarity makes him non-threatening. He does not seek
genuine emotional or sexual involvements, preferring to attach his affec-
tions to those women who are "safely" unattainable. "Since the age of
fifteen, which was eleven years before, Robert each summer at Grand Isle
had constituted himself the devoted attendant of some fair dame or damsel.
Sometimes it was a young girl, again a widow; but as often as not it was
some interesting married woman" (p. 25). His psychic life is more firmly
rooted in the world than Edna's; he does not pursue figures of pure fantasy.
Still, his propensity for playing the role of hopeless, love-sick youth is so
well known as to be able to be anticipated by those who know him. Thus
"many had predicted that Robert would devote himself to Mrs. Pontellier
when he arrived" (p. 25). His attentions, gratefully received by a number of
the ladies, more often than not take the form of ministering to their
creature comforts: he fetches bouillon for Adele, blankets and shawls for
Edna.
Indeed, an astonishing proportion of that part of the novel which deals
with Edna's sojourn at Grand Isle is paced by the rhythm of her basic needs,
especially the most primitive ones of eating and sleeping. If one were to plot
the course of Edna's life during this period, the most reliable indices to the
passage of time would be her meals and her periods of sleep. The im-
portance of these in Edna's more general "awakening" can be suggested if
we examine the day-long boat trip which she makes with Robert.
There is an almost fairy-tale quality to the whole experience; the rules of
time seem suspended, and the melange of brilliant sensory experiences-
the sun, the water, the soft breeze, the old church with its lizards and whis-
pered tales of pirate gold melts into a dreamlike pattern. It is almost as if
Edna's fantasy world had come into being. Indeed, there is even some sug-
gestion that after the event, she incorporates the memory of it into her fan-
tasy world in such a way that the reality and the illusion do, in fact, become
confused. Later on in the novel when Edna is invited to tell a true anecdote
at a dinner party, she speaks "of a woman who paddled away with her lover
one night in a pirogue and never came back. They were lost amid the

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 The Awakening 461

Baratarian Islands, and no one ever heard of them or found trace of them
from that day to this. It was pure invention. She said that Madame Antoine
had related it to her. That, also, was an invention. Perhaps it was a dream
she had had. But every glowing word seemed real to those who listened"
(pp. 182-83).
Yet even this jewel-like adventure with Robert is dominated by the
insistence of the infantile life-pattern sleep and eat, sleep and eat. Edna's
rest had been feverish the night prior to the expedition; "She slept but a few
hours" (p. 82), and their expedition begins with a hurried breakfast (p. 84).
Her taste for sight-seeing, even her willingness to remain with Robert, is so
overwhelmed by her lassitude that she must find a place to rest and to be
alone. Strikingly, however, once she is by herself, left to seek restful sleep,
Edna seems somewhat to revive, and the tone shifts from one of exhaustion
to one of sensuous, leisurely enjoyment of her own body. "Left alone in the
little side room, [she] loosened her clothes, removing the greater part of
them.... 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 strong 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" (p. 93). Powerfully sensuous as this scene is, we would
be hard put to find genital significance here. Reduced to its simplest form,
the description is of a being discovering the limits and qualities of its own
body discovering, and taking joy in the process of discovery. And having
engaged in this exploratory "play" for a while, Edna falls asleep.
The manner of her waking makes explicit reference to the myth of the
sleeping beauty. " 'How many years have I slept?' she inquired. 'The whole
island seems changed. A new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving
only you and me as past relics' " (p. 96). Robert jokingly falls in with the
fantasy: " 'You have slept precisely one hundred years. I was left here to
guard your slumbers; and for one hundred years I have been out under the
shed reading a book' " (p. 96). In the fairy tale, of course, the princess
awakens with a kiss, conscious of love; but Edna's libidinal energies have
been arrested at a pre-genital level so she awakens "very hungry" (p. 95)
and her lover prepares her a meal! "He was childishly gratified to dis-
cover her appetite, and to see the relish with which she ate the food which
he had procured for her" (p. 97). Indeed, though the title of the novel sug-
gests a re-enactment of the traditional romantic myth, it never does offer a
complete representation of it. The next invocation is Arobin's kiss, "the
first kiss of her life to which her nature had really responded" (p. 218); but
as we have seen earlier, this response is facilitated, perhaps even made

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 462 American Quarterly

possible, by the fact that her emotional attachment is not to Arobin but to
the Robert of her fantasy world. The final allusion to an awakening kiss is
Edna's rousing of Robert (p. 280); and yet this is a potentially genital
awakening from which both flee.
Edna's central problem, once the hidden "self' begins to exert its in-
exorable power, is that her libidinal appetite has been fixated at the oral
level. Edna herself has an insistent preoccupation with nourishment; on the
simplest level, she is concerned with food. Her favorite adjective is "deli-
cious": she sees many mother-women as "delicious" in their role (p. 19); she
carries echoes of her children's voices "like the memory of a delicious song"
(p. 248); when she imagines Robert she thinks "how delicious it would be to
have him there with her" (p. 270). And the notion of something's being good
because it might be good to "eat" (or internalize in some way) is echoed in
all of her relationships with other people. Those who care about her typi-
cally feed her; and the sleep-and-eat pattern which is most strikingly es-
tablished at the beginning of the novel continues even to the very end. Not
surprisingly, in the "grown-up world" she is a poor housekeeper, and
though Ldonce's responses are clearly petty and self-centered, Edna's be-
havior does betray incompetence, especially when we compare it (as the
novel so often invites us to) with the nurturing capacities of Adele. It is not
surprising that the most dramatic gesture toward freedom that Edna makes
is to move out of her husband's house; yet even this gesture toward "inde-
pendence" can be comprehended as part of an equally powerful wish to
regress. It is, after all, a "tiny house" that she moves to; she calls it her "pi-
geon house," and if she were still a little girl, we might call it a playhouse.
The decision to move from Ldonce's house is virtually coincidental with
the beginning of her affair with Arobin; yet even the initial stages of that
affair are described in oral terms-Edna feels regret because "it was not
love which had held this cup of life to her lips" (p. 219). And though the rela-
tionship develops as she makes preparations for the move, it absorbs as-
tonishingly little of Edna's libido. She is deliberately distant, treating
Arobin with "affected carelessness" (p. 221). As the narrator observes, "If
he had expected to find her languishing, reproachful, or indulging in senti-
mental tears, he must have been greatly surprised" (p. 221). She is "true"
to the fantasy image of Robert. And in the real world her emotional energy
has been committed in another direction. She is busy with elaborate plans-
for a dinner party! And it is on this extravagant sumptuous oral repast that
she lavishes her time and care (see pp. 225-37). Here Edna as purveyor of
food becomes not primarily a nourisher (as Adele is) but a sensualist in the
only terms that she can truly comprehend. One might argue that in this
elaborate feast Edna's sensuous self comes closest to some form of
expression which might be compatible with the real world. The dinner par

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 The Awakening 463

itself is one of the longest sustained episodes in the novel; we are told in
loving detail about the appearance of the table, the commodious chairs, the
flowers, the candles, the food and wines, Edna's attire no sensory pleasure
is left unattended. Yet even this indulgence fails to satisfy. "As she sat
there amid her guests, she felt the old ennui overtaking her; the hope-
lessness which so often assailed her, which came upon her like an obsession,
like something extraneous, independent of volition. It was something which
announced itself; a chill breath that seemed to issue from some vast cavern
wherein discords wailed" (p. 232). Edna, perhaps, connects this despair to
the absence of Robert. "There came over her the acute longing which al-
ways summoned into her spiritual vision the presence of the beloved one,
overpowering her at once with a sense of the unattainable" (p. 232).
However, the narrator's language here is interestingly ambiguous. It is not
specifically Robert that Edna longs for; it is "the presence of the beloved
one" an indefinite perpetual image, existing "always" in "her spiritual
vision." The longing, so described, is an immortal one and, as she ac-
knowledges, "unattainable"; the vision might be of Robert, but it might
equally be of the cavalry officer, the engaged young man, the tragedian-
even of Adele, whose mothering attentions first elicited a sensuous response
from Edna and whose own imminent motherhood has kept her from the
grand party. The indefinite quality of Edna's longing thus described has an
ominous tone, a tone made even more ominous by the rising specter of those
'vast caverns" waiting vainly to be filled.
Perhaps Edna's preoccupation with the incorporation of food is but one
aspect of a more general concern with incorporating that which is external
to her. Freud's hypotheses about the persistence in some people of
essentially oral concerns makes Edna's particular problem even clearer.

Originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world
from itself. Our present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a
much more inclusive-indeed, an all-embracing feeling which corresponded to a
more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it. If we may assume
that there are many people in whose mental life this primary ego-feeling has
persisted to a greater or less degree, it would exist in them side by side with the
narrower and more sharply demarcated ego-feeling of maturity, like a kind of
counterpart to it. In that case, the ideational contents appropriate to it would be
precisely those of limitlessness and of a bond with the universe . . . the 'oceanic'
feeling. 14

A psychologically mature individual has to some extent satisfied these oral

desires for limitless fusion with the external world; presumably his sense of
oneness with a nurturing figure has given him sustenance sufficient to move

14Ibid., p. 68.

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464 American Quarterly

onward to more complex satisfactions. Yet growth inevitably involves some

loss. "The feeling of happiness derived from the satisfaction of a wild in-
stinctual impulse untamed by the ego is incomparably more intense than
that derived from sating an instinct that has been tamed." 15 To some extent
all of us share Edna's fantasy of complete fulfillment through a bond with
the infinite; that is what gives the novel its power. However for those few
people in whom this primary ego-feeling has persisted with uncompromising
force the temptation to seek total fulfillment may be both irresistible and
annihilating.
Everywhere and always in the novel, Edna's fundamental longing is pos-
tulated in precisely these terms. And strangely enough, the narrator seems
intuitively to understand the connection between this longing for suffusion,
fulfillment, incorporation, and the very earliest attempts to define identity.

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 be-
ginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, mur-
muring, inviting the soul to wander 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. (p. 34)

Ultimately, the problem facing Edna has a nightmarish circularity. She has
achieved some measure of personal identity only by hiding her "true self"
within repressing all desire for instinctual gratification. Yet she can see
others in her environment the Creoles generally and Adele in particular-
who seem comfortably able to indulge their various sensory appetites and to
do so with easy moderation. Edna's hidden self longs for resuscitation and
nourishment; and in the supportive presence of Grand Isle Edna begins to
acknowledge and express the needs of that "self."
Yet once released, the inner being cannot be satisfied. It is an orally
destructive self, a limitless void whose needs can be filled, finally, only by
total fusion with the outside world, a totality of sensuous enfolding. And this
totality means annihilation of the ego.
Thus all aspects of Edna's relationship with the outside world are
unevenly defined. She is remarkably vulnerable to feelings of being invaded
and overwhelmed; we have already seen that she views emotional intimacy
as potentially shattering. She is equally unable to handle the phenomenal
world with any degree of consistency or efficiency. She is very much at the
mercy of her environment: the atmosphere of Mademoiselle Reisz' room is
said to "invade" her with repose (p. 252); Mademoiselle Reisz' music has
the consistent effect of penetrating Edna's outer self and playing upon the

15 Ibid., p. 79.

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 The Awakening 465

responsive chords of her inner yearning; even her way of looking at objects
in the world about her becomes an act of incorporation; "she had a way of
turning [her eyes] swiftly upon an object and holding them there as if lost in
some inward maze of contemplation or thought" (p. 7). Once she has given
up the pattern of repression that served to control dangerous impulses, she
becomes engaged in trying to maintain a precarious balance in each of her
relationships. On the one hand she must resist invasion, for with invasion
comes possession and total destruction. On the other hand she must resist
the equally powerful impulse to destroy whatever separates her from the
external world so that she can seek union, fusion and (so her fantasies sug-
gest) ecstatic fulfillment.
In seeking to deal with this apparently hopeless problem, Edna en-
counters several people whose behavior might serve as a pattern for her.
Mademoiselle Reisz is one. Mademoiselle Reisz is an artist, and as such she
has created that direct avenue between inner and outer worlds which Edna
seeks in her own life. Surely Edna's own attempts at artistic enterprise
grow out of her more general desire for sustained ecstasy. "While Edna
worked she sometimes sang low the little air, 'Ah, si tu savais!' " (p. 149).
Her work is insensibly linked with her memories of Robert, and these in
turn melt into more generalized memories and desires. The little song she is
humming "moved her with recollections. She could hear again the ripple of
the water, the flapping sail. She could see the glint of the moon upon the
bay, and could feel the soft, gusty beating of the hot south wind. A subtle
current of desire passed through her body, weakening her hold upon the
brushes and making her eyes burn" (p. 149). In some ways, Edna's painting
might offer her an excellent and viable mode for coming to terms with the
insistent demands of cosmic yearning. For one thing, it utilizes in an
effective way her habit of transforming the act of observing the external
world into an act of incorporation: to some extent the artist must use the
world in this way, incorporating it and transforming it in the act of artistic
creation. Thus the period during which Edna is experimenting with her art
offers her some of the most satisfying experiences she is capable of having.
"There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was
happy to be alive and breathing when her whole being seemed to be one with
the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect
Southern day.... And she found it good to dream and to be alone and un-
molested" (p. 149).
Yet when Edna tells Mademoiselle Reisz about her efforts, she is greeted
with skepticism: " 'You have pretensions,' " Mademoiselle Reisz responds.
" 'To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts-absolute
gifts which have not been acquired by one's own effort. And moreover, to
succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul. . . . The brave soul.

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 466 American Quarterly

The soul that dares and defies' " (p. 165). One implication of Mademoiselle
Reisz' half-contemptuous comment may well be the traditional view that
the artist must dare to be unconventional; and it is this interpretation which
Edna reports later to Arobin, saying as she does, however, " 'I only half
comprehend her' " (p. 217). The part of Mademoiselle Reisz' injunction
that eludes Edna's understanding concerns the sense of purposiveness
which is implied by the image of a courageous soul. Mademoiselle Reisz has
her art, but she has sacrificed for it perhaps too much. In any case,
however, she has acknowledged limitations, accepted some and grappled
with others; she is an active agent who has defined her relationship to the
world. Edna, by contrast, is passive.
The words which recur most frequently to describe her are words like
melting, drifting, misty, dreaming, shadowy. She is not willing (perhaps not
able) to define her position in the world because to do so would involve relin-
quishing the dream of total fulfillment. Thus while Mademoiselle Reisz can
control and create, Edna is most comfortable as the receptive vessel-both
for Mademoiselle Reisz' music and for the sense impressions which form
the basis of her own artistic endeavor. Mademoiselle Reisz commands her
work; Edna is at the mercy of hers. Thus just as there are moments of ex-
hilaration, so "there were days when she was unhappy, she did not know
why,-when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or
dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and hu-
manity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She
could not work on such a day, nor weave fantasies to stir her pulses and
warm her blood" (pp. 149-50). Art, for Edna, ultimately becomes not a
defense against inner turmoil, merely a reflection of it.
Another possible defense for Edna might be the establishment and
sustaining of a genuine genital relationship. Her adolescent fantasies, her
mechanical marriage, her liaison with Arobin and her passionate at-
tachment to the fantasy image of Robert all suggest imperfect efforts to d
just that. A genital relationship, like all ego-relationships, necessarily in-
volves limitation; to put the matter in Edna's terms, a significant at-
tachment with a real m.an would involve relinquishing the fantasy of total
fulfillment with some fantasy lover. In turn, it would offer genuine emo-
tional nourishment-though perhaps never enough to satisfy the voracious
clamoring of Edna's hidden self.
Ironically, Adele, who seems such a fount of sustenance, gives indications
of having some of the same oral needs that Edna does. Like Edna she is
preoccupied with eating, she pays extravagant care to the arrangement of
her own physical comforts, and she uses her pregnancy as an excuse to de-
mand a kind of mothering attention for herself. The difference between
Edna and Adele is that Adele can deal with hei nurturing needs by

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 The Awakening 467

displacing them onto her children and becoming a "mother-woman."

Having thus segregated and limited these desires, Adele can find diverse
ways of satisfying them; and having satisfied her own infantile oral needs,
she can go on to have a rewarding adult relationship with her husband.
Between Adele and M. Ratignolle there is mutual joining together: "The
Ratignolles understood each other perfectly. If ever the fusion of two
human beings into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely in
their union" (p. 144). The clearest outward sign of this happy union is that
the Ratignolles converse eagerly and clearly with each other. M. Ratignolle
reports his experiences and thoughts to his wife, and she in turn "was
keenly interested in everything he said, laying down her fork the better to
listen, chiming in, taking the words out of his mouth" (p. 145). Yet this pic-
ture of social and domestic accord is indescribably dismaying to Edna. She
"felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of
domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no
longing" (p. 145).
Again, what has capitulated is the fantasy of complete and total
suffusion; the Ratignolles have only a union which is as perfect as one can
expect "on this sphere" (italics added). Yet the acme of bliss which Edna
has always sought "was not for her in this world" (p. 47). Edna wishes a
kind of pre-verbal union, an understanding which consistently surpasses
words. Ldonce is scarcely a sensitive man (that is, as we have seen, why she
chose to marry him). Yet Edna never exerts herself to even such efforts at
communication with him as might encourage a supportive emotional
response. She responds to his unperceptive clumsiness by turning inward,
falling into silence. Over and over again their disagreements follow the pat-
tern of a misunderstanding which Edna refuses to clarify. At the very begin-
ning of the novel when Ldonce selfishly strolls off for an evening of
gambling, Edna's rage and sense of loneliness are resolutely hidden, even
when he seeks to discover the cause of her unhappiness. "She said nothing,
and refused to answer her husband when he questioned her" (p. 13).
Perhaps Ldonce could not have understood the needs which Edna feels so
achingly unfulfilled. And he is very clumsy. But he does make attempts at
communication while she does not, and his interview with the family doctor
(pp. 168-74) shows greater concern about Edna's problems than she
manages to feel for his.
The attachment to Robert, which takes on significance only after he has
left Grand Isle, monopolizes Edna's emotions because it does temporarily
offer an illusion of fusion, of complete union. However, this love affair, such
as it is, is a genuinely narcissistic one; the sense of fusion exists because
Edna's lover is really a part of herself-a figment of her imagination, an
image of Robert which she has incorporated into her consciousness. Not

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 468 American Quarterly

only is her meeting with Robert after his return a disappointment (as we
have seen earlier); it moves the static, imaginary "love affair" into a new
and crucial stage; it tests, once and for all, Edna's capacity to transform her
world of dreams into viable reality. Not surprisingly, "some way he had
seemed nearer to her off there in Mexico" (p. 268).
Still she does try. She awakens him with a kiss even as Arobin had
awakened her. Robert, too, is resistant to genuine involvement, and his
initial reaction is to speak of the hopelessness of their relationship. Edna,
however, is insistent (despite the interruption telling her of Adele's ac-
couchement). " 'We shall be everything to each other. Nothing else in the
world is of any consequence. I must go to my friend; but you will wait for
me? No matter how late; you will wait for me, Robert?' " (p. 283). And at
this point, Edna seems finally to have won her victory. " 'Don't go; don't go!
Oh! Edna, stay with me,' he pleaded. . . . Her seductive voice, together with
his great love for her, had enthralled his senses, had deprived him of every
impulse but the longing to hold her and keep her" (p. 284). And at this
moment, so long and eagerly anticipated, Edna leaves Robert!
Robert's own resolve weakens during the interval, and it would be all too
easy to blame Edna's failure on him. Certainly he is implicated. Yet his act
does not explain Edna's behavior. "Nothing else in the world is of any con-
sequence," she has said. If that is so, why then does she leave? No real duty
calls her. Her presence at Adele's delivery is of virtually no help. The
doctor, sorry for the pain that the scene has caused Edna even re-
monstrates with her mildly for having come. " 'You shouldn't have been
there, Mrs. Pontellier.... There were a dozen women she might have had
with her, unimpressionable women' " (pp. 290-91). To have stayed with
Robert would have meant consummation, finally, the joining of her dream-
like passion to a flesh and blood lover; to leave was to risk losing that op-
portunity. Edna must realize the terms of this dilemma, and still she
chooses to leave. We can only conclude that she is unconsciously am-
bivalent about achieving the goal which has sustained her fantasies for so
long. The flesh and blood Robert may prove an imperfect, unsatisfactory
substitute for the "beloved" of her dreams; what is more, a relationship
with the real Robert would necessarily disenfranchise the more desirable
phantom lover, whose presence is linked with her more general yearning for
suffusion and indefinable ecstasy.
The totality of loss which follows Edna's decision forces a grim
recognition upon her, the recognition that all her lovers have really been of
but fleeting significance. "To-day it is Arobin; to-morrow it will be some one
else.... It makes no difference to me.... There was no one thing in the
world that she desired. There was no human being whom she wanted near

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 The Awakening 469

her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he,
too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her
alone" (pp. 299-300). Her devastation, thus described, is removed from the
realm of romantic disappointment; and we must see Edna's final suicide as
originating in a sense of inner emptiness, not in some finite failure of love.
Her decision to go to Adele is in part a reflection of Edna's unwillingness to
compromise her dream of Robert (and in this sense it might be interpreted
as a flight from reality). On the other hand, it might also be seen as a last
desperate attempt to come to terms with the anguish created by her
unfulfilled "Oceanic" longing. And for this last effort she must turn to
Adele, the human who first caused her to loosen the bonds of repression.
The pre-eminence of Adele over Robert in Edna's emotional life, affirmed
by Edna's crucial choice, is undeniably linked to her image as a nurturing
figure and, especially here, as a mother-to-be. In this capacity she is also
linked to Edna's own children insistent specters in Edna's consciousness;
and this link is made explicit by Adele's repetition of the cryptic injunction
to "think of the children" (p. 289).
Now in every human's life there is a period of rhapsodic union or fusion
with another, and this is the period of early infancy, before the time when a
baby begins to differentiate himself from his mother. It is the haunting
memory of this evanescent state which Freud defines as "Oceanic feeling,"
the longing to recapture that sense of oneness and suffused sensuous
pleasure even, perhaps, the desire to be reincorporated into the safety of
pre-existence. Men can never recreate this state of total union. Adult
women can when they are pregnant. Most pregnant women identify
intensely with their unborn children, and through that identification in some
measure re-experience a state of complete and harmonious union. "The bio-
logic process has created a unity of mother and child, in which the bodily
substance of one flows into the other, and thus one larger unit is formed out
of two units. The same thing takes place on the psychic level. By tender
identification, by perceiving the fruit of her body as part of herself, the
pregnant woman is able to transform the 'parasite' into a beloved being.
Thus, mankind's eternal yearning for identity between the ego and the
nonego, that deeply buried original desire to reachieve the condition once
experienced, to repeat the human dream that was once realized in the
mother's womb, is fulfilled."'16 Adele is a dear friend, yes; she is a nurtur
figure. But above all, she is the living embodiment of that state which
Edna's deepest being longs to recapture. Trapped in the conflict between

'6Helene Deutsch, The Psychology of Women (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1971),
2:139.

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 470 American Quarterly

her desire for "freedom," as seen in her compulsive need to protect her
precarious sense of self, and her equally insistent yearning for complete
fulfillment through total suffusion, Edna is intensely involved with Adele's
pregnancy.
Edna's compulsion to be with Adele at the moment of delivery is, in the
sense which would have most significance for her, a need to view individua-
tion at its origin. For if pregnancy offers a state of total union, then birth is
the initial separation: for the child it is the archetypal separation trauma;
for the mother, too, it is a significant psychic trauma. It is the ritual re-
enactment of her own birth and a brutal reawakening to the world of
isolated ego. "To make it the being that is outside her, the pregnant mother
must deliver the child from the depths of herself. . . . She loses not only it,
but herself with it. This, I think, is at the bottom of that fear and foreboding
of death that every pregnant woman has, and this turns the giving of life into
the losing of life."'97 Edna cannot refuse to partake of this ceremony, for
here, if anywhere, she will find the solution to her problem.
Yet the experience is horrendous; it gives no comfort, no reassuring
answer to Edna's predicament. It offers only stark, uncompromising truth.
Adele's ordeal reminds Edna of her own accouchements. "Edna began to
feel uneasy. She was seized with a vague dread. Her own like experiences
seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered. She recalled faintly an
ecstasy of pain, the heavy odor of chloroform, a stupor which had deadened
sensation, and an awakening to find a little new life to which she had given
being" (p. 288). This is Nature's cruel message. The fundamental
significance to Edna of an awakening is an awakening to separation, to indi-
vidual existence, to the hopelessness of ever satisfying the dream of total
fusion. The rousing of her sensuous being had led Edna on a quest for ec-
stasy; but the ecstasy which beckoned has become in the end merely an "ec-
stasy of pain," first in her protracted struggle to retain identity and finally
here in that relentless recognition of inevitable separation which has been
affirmed in the delivery, "an awakening to find a little new life." Edna is
urged to leave, but she refuses. "With an inward agony, with a flaming, out-
spoken revolt against the ways of Nature, she witnessed the scene torture"
(p. 288).
In this world, in life, there can be no perfect union, and the children
whom Adele urges Edna to remember stand as living proof of the inevi-
tability of separation. Edna's longing can never be satisfied. This is her final
discovery, the inescapable disillusionment; and the narrator calls it to our
attention again, lest its significance escape us. " 'The years that are gone
seem like dreams,' " Edna muses, " 'if one might go on sleeping and

I7I bid., p. 160.

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 The Awakening 471

dreaming but to wake up and find_' " (p. 292). Here she pauses, but the
reader can complete her thought-"a little new life." " 'Oh! well! perhaps it
is better to wake up after all, even to suffer rather than to remain a dupe to
illusions all one's life' " (p. 292).
One wonders to what extent Edna's fate might have been different if
Robert had remained. Momentarily, at least, he might have roused her
from her despondency by offering not ecstasy but at least partial satis-
faction. The fundamental problem would have remained, however. Life
offers only partial pleasures, and individuated experience.
Thus Edna's final act of destruction has a quality of uncompromising
sensuous fulfillment as well. It is her answer to the inadequacies of life, a
literal denial and reversal of the birth trauma she has just witnessed, a
stripping away of adulthood, of limitation, of consciousness itself. If life can-
not offer fulfillment of her dream of fusion, then the ecstasy of death is
preferable to the relinquishing of that dream. So Edna goes to the sea "and
for the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of
the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her" (p.
301). She is a child, an infant again. "How strange and awful it seemed to
stand naked under the sky! how delicious! She felt like some new-born
creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known" (p.
301). And with her final act Edna completes the regression, back beyond
childhood, back into time eternal. "The touch of the sea is sensuous,
enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace" (p. 301).

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