Awakening [マスマーケット]

A taboo subject back in its day, The Awakening tells the story of one woman's emotional journey from a stifled, miserable marriage to a spirited and lusty freedom. Young Edna Pontellier feels trapped in a loveless, although pampered, life with husband, Leonce. Stirrings of independence begin one summer while resorting in Grand Isle, an island off the coast of Louisiana. These new feelings have begun a profound change in Edna, liberating her beyond belief. Thus ensues an infidelity that dreams are made of, although at the expense of her marriage and motherhood.

Hardly shocking in this day and age, The Awakening's subject of marital infidelity and physical lust for another is always a pageturner. The theme of the novel -- Edna's torment at the chains that bind her and the flutterings of an unbridled passion -- is brought to life with beautiful writing in simple, elegant words. I am surprised to find such a passionate and provocative story within its pages. Short but penetrating, The Awakening will move you.

Having much faith in Kate Chopin as a writer, I never felt 'the awakening' was about sex. This was too easy, even for a book set in Victorian Society. Further, it occurred to me that although women were limited beyond the domestic sphere in this era, suicide was not particular to the phenomenology of Victorian women (as it was, say, to Wall Street brokers at the onset of the Great Depression).

"The Awakening," in title and content, is irony. Edna Pontellier's awakening is about who she perceives herself to be, and who she actually is. She dreams of passion and romance and embarks on a summer affair, yet she married Leonce simply to spite her parents, who don't like him. She moves out of the family home to live on her own--with the permission, and resources, of Leonce--hardly independent. She claims to crave intimacy, yet she fails horribly at every intimate relationship in her life: she is detached with her children, indifferent to her husband, leery of her artist friend, and can hardly stand another minute at the bedside of her warm, maternal friend, Mrs. Ratignolle, to assist her in childbirth. (Ratignolle was my favorite character of all, read after read, simply because she was so content with herself.)

The Awakening? The surprise is on Edna, who is not the person she imagines herself to be. The irony? Edna Pontellier is never awakened to this, even at the bitter end. Feminists have adopted this book as their siren song...embarrassing at least! A feminist reading would, predictably, indict Victorian society as oppressive to women. Yawn...So that's new?!! Tell us something we don't know! I can tell you that concept wouldn't be enough to keep a book around for a hundred years.

But the concept that has sustained this novel over a century's time is its irony. And it is superbly subtle. I believe Chopin deliberately set up Victorian society as her backdrop to cleverly mask this irony...'the awakening' is not something good (a daring sexual awakening in a dark era for women): it is something horrible that evolves and is apparent to everyone except the person experiencing it. This reading makes Edna's character worth hating! Chopin herself hated Edna Pontellier and called her a liar through her imagined conversation with her artist friend at the end of the novel.

Chopin also cleverly tips the scales in Edna's favor in the first half of the novel, but a careful read reveals those scales weighed against her in the second half. I give the novel 5 stars because it took me three readings and help from a PhD lit professor to figure out this book. And I'm proud to say that I am, at last, awakened.