Read and summarize the article in 200-300 words (about a page double spaced).

Overview: The Awakening

Novel, 1899

American Writer ( 1850 - 1904 )

Other Names Used: Chopin, Katherine; O'Flaherty, Katherine; Chopin, Katherine O'Flaherty; Chopin, Kate O'Flaherty; O'Flaherty, Catherine;

Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them.Joyce Moss and George Wilson. Vol. 3: Growth of Empires to the Great Depression (1890-1930s). Detroit: Gale,1997. From Literature Resource Center.

Listen

Full Text:

Kate Chopin was born as Katherine O'Flaherty on February 8, 1851, in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1870 she married into the Creole family of Oscar Chopin and afterward lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. Kate Chopin came to know intimately the social eccentricities of this tight-knit ethnic group. The Awakening explores the cultural realm of the Creole community, focusing also on the changing position of women at the turn of the century. Although Chopin professed no political connections with feminism, her story presents, through the person of Edna Pontellier, an independent and feminist character.

Events in History at the Time of the Novella

The Creoles

The term creole applies to the Louisiana-born descendants of the original French or Spanish settlers. Concentrated predominantly in New Orleans, the Creoles originally inhabited the “downtown” or northern half of the city above Canal Street known as the Vieux Carré. Although Spanish in its physical appearance, the spirit of the Vieux Carré was decidedly French. Fond of entertainment and in possession of a pronounced joie de vivre (“joy of life”), Creole culture pursued its leisure-time activities with enthusiasm. In the 1800s such endeavors might find a Creole gentleman at a cockfighting pit, gambling house, cabaret, or one of the area's many cafés. Chopin's society in The Awakening consists of well-to-do Creoles who feel themselves separate from Anglo-Americans. Members of a close-knit community, these Creoles generally maintained strict social boundaries that would bend little for outsiders. Writes Chopin, “Mrs. Pontellier, though she had married a Creole, was not thoroughly at home in the society of Creoles.... They all knew each other, and felt like one large family, among whom existed the most amicable relations” (Chopin, The Awakening, p. 11).

Creole gentlemen ruled their households and expected from their wives the utmost devotion. In return, the husbands provided a generous environment. Although society deemed it acceptable for Creole men to engage in extramarital affairs, they always took meals and attended social engagements with their wives. A contemporary of Chopin's states that “Creole women, as a rule, are good housekeepers, are economical and industrious. When one pauses to think that these women were reared as princesses, with slaves at their command, one realizes that noble blood has made noble women” (Shaffter in Chopin, p. 120). The Creole wife usually presided over a large family, and households of ten children were not uncommon during the 1800s. These children provided a focal point for their mothers' lives. Edna, however, does not accept this role. Mr. Pontellier frequently rebukes his wife for a perceived neglect of the family. He asks Edna, “If it [is] not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth [is] it?” (The Awakening, p. 7). As was the case with other refined women of this era, the female Creole strove to perfect her accomplishments and talents. She excelled at singing, painting, music, and conversation. As one writer explains, “Women's rights, for them [Creole women], are the right to love and be loved, and to name the babies rather than the next president or city officials” (Shaffter in Chopin, p. 121). In such a social climate it is little wonder that Mr. Pontellier consults a physician about his wife's “odd” behavior. He remarks that “she's got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women” (The Awakening, p. 67), and he cannot fathom her dissatisfaction. Ultimately, Edna Pontellier realizes that she cannot fit into the mold that her husband and his society fashioned for her.

Women's Political and Social Movements

Most biographers of Kate Chopin note that the author shied away from political and ideological associations. Nonetheless, she does create, through the person of Edna Pontellier, an uncommonly independent female voice. While Mrs. Pontellier may not be intended to champion women's rights, the novella in which she appears was set and written at a time of transition in the women's rights movement.

In 1848 the world witnessed its first women's political convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Headed by Lucretia Coffin Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the two-day gathering addressed women's issues before sixty-eight women and thirty-two men. Organizers drafted a Declaration of Sentiments that included, among other issues, a call for women being granted the right to vote. For the first time in history, women publicly challenged the notion of “separate spheres” (the division of labor and interests between the male “public sphere” and the female “private sphere”). The Seneca Falls Convention is considered the first attempt to establish women's rights as an organized movement.

Over the next forty years, the suffrage movement (to allow women the right to vote) gained momentum and became the premier cause of women's rights advocates. Its supporters divided into two factions, the National American Woman's Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. While both struggled to gain the vote for women, they differed on tactics. The second group avoided other controversial issues, such as divorce rights, believing they would hurt the struggle for the vote by upsetting male decision makers. There was disagreement too over whether to campaign for the vote on the federal level or on a state-by-state basis. In 1890 the two factions finally united to form the National American Suffrage Association, which for the time being abandoned the federal route and the issue of divorce rights. Instead the focus narrowed to gaining the vote for women in various states.

Women cited their domestic experience as well as their supposed moral superiority as reasons why they should be entitled to vote. The female had long been regarded as the moral arbiter within the home. Women now used this status to argue that they should be allowed to do for their states what they did for their families. But progress was slow; not until 1920 would all women in the United States be able to vote, thanks to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Meanwhile, many women were denied basic rights, especially in the South. In Louisiana, where The Awakening takes place, a married woman did not even legally own the clothes she wore.

There was, despite such obstacles, a widespread movement to found women's clubs for self-improvement. In her novella, Chopin makes mention of the women's clubs that sprang up during the mid- to late 1800s. These clubs were formed not only as forums within which women could informally educate themselves but also as venues for the discussion of political issues. Disregarded by many males, the clubs nonetheless provided an important grassroots effort in furthering women's rights. When Mr. Pontellier consults the doctor about Edna's sudden independent streak, Doctor Mandelet asks, “Has she been associating of late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women—superior spiritual beings?” (The Awakening, p. 66). His scorn clearly implies that he does not believe in the intellectual capacities of these clubwomen. Yet some of their clubs grew to wield great influence in solving social ills. By 1890 the grassroots women's groups were widespread enough to organize themselves into the General Federation of Women's Clubs. Clearly the clubs were helping to shape women into a potent political force.

Louisiana Women

New Orleans, where Chopin lived for a time and where The Awakening is set, was actually the home of the first women's club in the American South. In 1884, the “Woman's Club” of New Orleans was founded as a support group for the city's working women. Within a year, the club opened its ranks to all women, and membership soared. The club had a mixed political and social agenda; its members set out to obtain equal pay for equal work, to promote the intellectual growth of women, and to improve the community.

The New Orleans Woman's Club quickly attached itself to the national women's rights movement, after which it drew into its fold even more of the city's women. With their membership dues, the women rented and then bought a succession of clubhouses in ever more prosperous neighborhoods. The club became socially acceptable, even desirable. Not only did it sponsor community outreach programs—distributing food and clothing to disaster victims, for example—but it also hosted lectures, concerts, classes, and plays.

The Woman's Club spawned other women's societies in the city, the state, and throughout the South. Devoted to the study of geography, literature, politics, or sociological questions, these societies helped educate Southern women in various ways. Louisiana's first suffrage association—the Portia Club—was founded in 1892 as an offshoot of the original New Orleans Woman's Club.

Dorothy Dix and Women's Issues

Beginning in 1895, Dorothy Dix, whose real name was Elizabeth Gilmer, published an advice column for women in the New Orleans paper The Daily Picayune. As the first column of its kind, “Dorothy Dix Speaks” gave voice to the growing female involvement in public issues. Dix's column could not have been launched at a more opportune time.

In her January 23, 1898, article entitled “The American Wife,” Dix discusses the role of women in the household. She states that the American wife is forced to “be a paragon of domesticity, an ornament in society, a wonder in finance and a light in the literary circle to which she belongs” (Dix in Chopin, p. 129). In managing the household affairs, a woman must take complete responsibility, because most men do not wish to be bothered about domestic particulars. Chopin echoes these sentiments in her novella. Rebuking his wife for neglect of the children, Mr. Pontellier says that he “had his hands full with his brokerage business. He could not be in two places at once; making a living for his family on the street, and staying at home to see that no harm befell them” (The Awakening, p. 7). With such pressures upon women, Dix notes in another column, their thoughts of suicide come as little surprise. Dix states that if suicide is ever justifiable, women have far more reason to take their own lives than men. Chiefly, “woman's whole life is one long lesson in patience and submission. She must always give in” (Dix in Chopin, p. 134). In the novella, unable to submit and be patient any longer, Edna Pontellier swims out to sea, possibly to drown. On her way, she thinks of Léonce and the children. “They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul” (The Awakening, p. 114). Coincidentally, Dix's column on suicide appeared during the same year as The Awakening.

Quadroons

New Orleans of the mid- to late 1800s relied on its own code of racial segregation. Persons with African blood occupied the bottom of the social ladder. This category was further broken down according to the degree of African ancestry. People with 1/16th, 1/8th, or 1/4th black blood were the highest on this scale and referred to as octoroons; the term quadroon refers specifically to a person with 1/4 black ancestry. After them, in descending social order, came the mulattos (1/2 black), griffes (3/4 black), and sacatras (7/8 black). The Pontellier family, like many Creole households of the late 1800s, employs a quadroon as a nurse for the children.

Regarded as great beauties, quadroon women often became mistresses of Creole men. Although the quadroon in Chopin's novella is not having an affair with Mr. Pontellier, such an arrangement would not have been out of the ordinary. Because Louisiana in the 1800s was populated by far fewer white women than white men, interracial affairs were common. An 1807 law (which remained on the books until 1972) outlawed marriages of mixed races; as an alternative, Louisiana society turned to the practice of plaçage. Under this arrangement, a man would formally settle an illicit dowry of sorts with a quadroon's family. He would furnish her with a house and a comfortable living in exchange for her sexual and social services. While such women did gain a certain status in Creole society, they and other quadroons remained lower than their white counterparts and received less than equal treatment. The quadroon nurse in The Awakening follows after the Pontellier children “at the respectful distance which they [the Pontelliers] required her to observe” (The Awakening, p. 13).

Victorian Women and Sexuality

Prior to the late nineteenth century, people believed that women were inherently less lustful than men. This opinion prevailed especially in Protestant, middle-class households. Between the 1790s and the 1830s, America witnessed a rise in evangelical religion. These churches taught their parishioners that sexual intercourse served only as a means of child production. The act itself was a sin, not to be enjoyed. In Protestant circles, public opinion advocated female chastity and sexual control to promote human virtue. Reinforcing this opinion was an idea spread in manuals of the day that women's “superior delicacy” meant they harbored less sexual desire than men (Gregory in Cott, p. 166). Girls who grew up with such notions often continued to hold these beliefs in their adult lives.

The novel's Edna Pontellier has grown up among Protestants in Kentucky bluegrass country. “She was an American woman, with a small infusion of French, which seemed to have been lost in dilution” (The Awakening, p. 6). Coming from this environment, she expresses shock at the Creole women's casual references to sex and sexuality. Her own Protestant upbringing had taught her that polite conversation did not include such talk and that a “good” woman possessed no inclination toward physical love. Only when her feelings are awakened by a lover does Edna realize the absence of passion in her own life.

The Novella in Focus

The Plot

The novel opens as Edna Pontellier takes a summer holiday on Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico. Prior to this, Edna has led a typical domestic life for a woman of her elevated economic and social status. As the wife of a prominent New Orleans financier, Mrs. Pontellier troubles herself with little besides the care of her household and the maintenance of her social engagements. While not a blood member of the Creole milieu in which she lives, Mrs. Pontellier fits in comfortably with these acquaintances of her husband. She discovers a special kinship with one younger man in particular, Robert Lebrun.

In the Creole circles of her day men did not harbor jealousies toward their wives' male acquaintances, since a woman's betrayal of her husband was considered unthinkable. No one takes notice, therefore, when Mrs. Pontellier and Robert begin spending an inordinate amount of time together. From bathing in the sea to special boating trips, the two remain inseparable for the duration of the summer. Robert's sudden departure for Mexico not only shocks Edna, but it leaves her quite alone. Unable to relate to her husband and his obsession with money and social appearances, Edna no longer displays the conventional behavior expected of a wife and mother.

The end of the summer brings the Pontellier family back to New Orleans, along with most other upper-class New Orleans Creoles. Instead of taking up her former household responsibilities, however, Edna is unable to forget the freedoms that summer on Grand Isle offered. She begins seeking new assertions of her independence at home, refusing social calls, asserting her will against that of her husband, and even ignoring her father's commands. Although concerned about the sanity of his wife, Mr. Pontellier attributes her change of habits to female caprice. When Mr. Pontellier leaves for New York on a business trip, Edna decides to remain in New Orleans without him.

Temporarily left alone, Edna, who has always enjoyed painting as a hobby, begins to explore her artistic talents more intensively. She earns a meager income of her own and gains a defiant independence. In an effort to ease her romantic longing for Robert, Edna makes the acquaintance of another male devotee, a noted seductive cad named Alcée Arobin. With his help, she moves from her prominent New Orleans mansion on Esplanade Street into a smaller residence. Soon Robert Lebrun returns from abroad.

With some trepidation Robert expresses his affection for Edna, stating that he left the country only to avoid troubling her marriage. Unfortunately, their reunion is short-lived. Convinced that the relationship could never be a happy one, Robert leaves again—this time for good. Knowing “there was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert,” Edna swims slowly out to sea, perhaps to drown (The Awakening, p. 113).

The Ideal Southern Woman

The character Adèle Ratignolle serves as a foil to Edna Pontellier. Complacent in manner, devoted to her husband and children, Madame Ratignolle embodies the quintessential well-bred Creole woman of New Orleans. In her subservience and dedicated maternity, she contrasts with virtually every major characteristic of Mrs. Pontellier. Writes Chopin, “There are no words to describe her [Madame Ratignolle] save the old ones that have served so often to picture the bygone heroine of romance and the fair lady of our dreams” (The Awakening, p. 10). In comparing Madame Ratignolle to a “bygone heroine” Chopin seems to suggest that she has many of the characteristics that society valued in women in the pre-Civil War South. Growing up on lush plantations, women who conformed to these values strove toward pure, refined elegance and grace. One writer remarks that “nowhere else in America have hospitality and social intercourse among the better classes been so cultivated or have constituted so large a part of life as in what is called the old South” (Tillett in Chopin, p. 122). Among other qualities, physical beauty, neatness, grace, and an unwavering devotion to family and friends comprised the attributes of the ideal woman.

Much of this idealistic persona was destroyed by the Civil War and in the postbellum period of Reconstruction that followed. Many formerly wealthy women were forced into financial hardship after the war and lost their slave laborers. As a result, some of these Southern women became less devoted to refined behavior, although others, like Adéle Ratignolle, managed to preserve the ideal attributes. Chopin writes, “There was nothing subtle or hidden about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent” (The Awakening, p. 10). Madame Ratignolle expresses an appropriate degree of shock when Edna Pontellier confesses that she would not sacrifice herself for her children. Although willing to die for them, Edna does not wish to consume herself in motherhood. Madame Ratignolle, on the other hand, craves just such an existence of devoted motherhood.

Southern custom admired helplessness in women. In fact, in some instances, competent, able-bodied women would rely on the charity of friends rather than seek a means through which to support themselves. When ill, Madame Ratignolle demands the presence of her friends and family. Because her husband leaves her bedside for a moment, she asks, “Where is Alphonse? Is it possible I am to be abandoned like this—neglected by everyone?” (The Awakening, p. 108). She does not even wish to face the rigors of a bad cold without her husband at her side. In contrast, Edna abandons her husband and children in favor of death. Not by any means the ideal Southern woman of the past, Edna Pontellier better represents an emerging, more independent, attitude that women in the South as well as other regions were beginning to display at the turn of the century.

Sources

Kate Chopin draws heavily from her own personal history in the composition of her novella. The situation and setting for the book come entirely from the pages of Chopin's own life. Like her main character, Chopin married into a wealthy Creole family and moved with her husband to New Orleans. The Chopins also maintained a summer residence on Grand Isle. Oscar Chopin, like Léonce Pontellier, worked as a broker and maintained an office on Carondelet Street, New Orleans' version of Wall Street. (Actually he was a cotton factor—an agent, a banker, and a broker all under one roof.) The author also showed the same defiant independence that she gives to her character. She liked to stroll alone throughout New Orleans, smoking cigarettes, a prohibited way to walk for women of her social standing. In The Awakening, Edna remarks, “I always feel so sorry for women who don't like to walk; they miss so much—so many rare little glimpses of life” (The Awakening, p. 105). Long walks are a way in which Edna asserts her independence, as Chopin did in real life.

Unlike her character, however, Kate Chopin became involved in Oscar Chopin's business. In a very odd situation for the times, Oscar consulted his wife in business affairs, and she often accompanied him on visits to the cotton mills that he represented. The Chopins, in fact, enjoyed a much more egalitarian marriage than did the Pontelliers. However, just as rumors circulated about Edna Pontellier's character, New Orleans gossips told vicious tales of Kate's flirting. When Oscar died, “some of the wives felt that their husbands' sympathy for the young widow prompted them to be a little more solicitous in helping her ... than was necessary” (Toth, p. 164). Whether the Chopin marriage was happy or not has given Chopin biographers some cause for debate. But the author and her husband do not appear to have experienced the severe marital problems that face Edna and Oscar Pontellier in Chopin's novella.

Chopin uses events from her own life even for small details. Edna seeks the friendship of an older woman and accomplished pianist, Mademoiselle Reisz. Moved by her music, Edna finds the strength to become an artist in her own right. As a young girl, Kate Chopin took piano lessons from her great-grandmother, Madame Charleville. The older woman became an important mentor for the young Chopin, teaching her French and relating tales of her strong matrilineal heritage and of pioneering days in the Louisiana Purchase region. Throughout her life, Kate maintained her musical studies and her belief in the strength of women. In fact, Chopin's first published short story, “Wiser Than a God,” tells the tale of a pianist who loves her craft more than she loves a young suitor.

Reception of the Novella

Published in 1899, Chopin's novella originally encountered criticism and hostility. The Public Opinion writes, “If the author had secured our sympathy for this unpleasant person [Edna] it would not have been a small victory, but we are well satisfied when Mrs. Pontellier deliberately swims out to her death in the waters of the gulf” (Public Opinion in Chopin, p. 151). In a similar vein the Chicago Times-Herald notes, “It was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the overworked field of sex fiction” (Times-Herald in Chopin, p. 149). So intense was the public outcry against the book that it was removed from library shelves in Chopin's hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, and its publication resulted in her being refused membership in the St. Louis Fine Arts Club. After going out of print, it remained so for over fifty years until the feminist movement rediscovered The Awakening as an insightful piece of feminist literature.

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Edited by Margaret Culley. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976.
Cott, Nancy F., and Elizabeth H. Pleck. A Heritage of Her Own: Toward A New Social History of American Women. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.
Gil, Carlos B., ed. The Age of Porfirio Diaz. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977.
Lindig, Carmen. The Path from the Parlor: Louisiana Women, 1879-1920. Lafayette: The Center for Louisiana Studies, 1986.
Toth, Emily. Kate Chopin. New York: William Morrow, 1990.
Ware, Susan, ed. Modern American Women. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1989.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)

Moss, Joyce, and George Wilson. "Overview: The Awakening." Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them, vol. 3: Growth of Empires to the Great Depression (1890-1930s), Gale, 1997. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=wood35792&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1430002253&it=r&asid=37e5e56ae2ff33b9df787c5815f5abf4. Accessed 7 Feb. 2017.