Death as a Metaphor in “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin

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Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include :  The Awakening by Kate Chopin: The Process of Edna's Awakening •  Gender and Social Criticism in The Awakening by Kate Chopin  •    Character Analysis of Edna in "The Awakening" and Discussion About Conflict & Climax   •   American Literature in Historical Context : 1865 to Roosevelt  • Plot Summary of "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin   •   Critical Analysis of "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

 

At this point in the plot of “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin, Edna reacts to this first loss of Robert on a deeply physical level as well as an emotional one. She seems to have lost her breath, and while “[t]he conditions of her life were in no way changed…, her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing” (58). Although Edna (full character analysis) eventually admits that Robert’s departure has made her life “very dull,” she is downplaying the significance that this loss is having; she feels it as acutely as if Robert had died. While this is not a clear cut example of actual death in “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin, it is, nonetheless, an instance that invokes tones and images of death and in some ways, even foreshadows the eventual death of Edna.

 

Although Robert’s departure from Grand Isle is as painful to Edna as the death of someone loved dearly, his leaving does not diminish the desire she has for him or her dream of being with him again. She tells Madame Reisz that she will feel, as she expresses in one of the important quotes from "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin, “glad and happy to be alive” should Robert return (60). When Robert does return from an unsuccessful business prospecting trip to Mexico, Edna’s hopes are revived, but only briefly. Although she feels enlivened by his very presence, and is still more alive when Robert finally admits that he loves Edna deeply, she is devastated by the fact that he has reached the conclusion that they cannot be together because Edna is married. Edna has killed off all social conventions, having left her husband with her children so that she can live independently—and having done so “without even waiting for an answer…regarding his opinion or wishes in the matter” (62)--  but Robert is committed to his ideals and the image he believes he must uphold, and his unwillingness or inability to act otherwise signifies his final symbolic death.

 

When Robert leaves his good-bye note for Edna, she understands that while their love for one another has not died, the possibility of fulfilling their love within a relationship has died and cannot be revived under any circumstances. The pall and despondency of death descends upon Edna during the night that follows Robert’s departure, and she does not sleep. Edna is preoccupied thinking about Robert, the thought of who would eventually, she realized, “melt out of her existence, leaving her alone” (93). Because she cannot tolerate the thought of bearing such a solitude, Edna decides that the only option that is available to her is death. While some scholars have interpreted the conclusion of The Awakening to be ambiguous and indeterminate (Heuston 224), this writer believes that no such ambiguity exists; Edna has decided to die, and the textual evidence supports this argument. She is unable to hold on to the newly forged image of herself, unable to associate life not with Robert alone, but with the newfound abilities and interests that she has cultivated with him: swimming, painting, playing the piano, making decisions about and for herself.

 

With her understanding of the situation that now exists between Robert and herself at this point in the plot of “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin, it becomes clear that Edna’s resolve to embrace death is firm. It may seem strange and even perverse to the reader, but Edna finds release and, more curious, new life in her decision to commit suicide by drowning herself in the sea, the place where she came to know so much about herself. As she makes her way to the water’s edge, the narrator describes Edna as feeling like a “new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known” (102). The reader understands implicitly that it is through death that Edna expects to finally attain a life that she can live, a life without the painful losses that are consequences of our decisions and relationships.

 

Although Chopin’s novella seems to be ostensibly about a woman’s awakening to her own physical and emotional landscape, it is also, ultimately, about death. Edna’s decision to kill herself is a reaffirmation of all of the other symbolic deaths that occur over the course of the novella, deaths which all serve to underscore the impermanence of everything and the difficulties of both achieving and sustaining a stable self-identity. The reader should not necessarily interpret Edna’s suicide as antithetical to the knowledge that she developed about herself. It was impossible, perhaps, for Edna to live in her time and in her society with the new knowledge and awareness that she had developed, whether it was with Robert or without him. The conditions of her socio-historical moment would not have permitted Edna Pontellier to have lived as she wanted and needed to do (Gray 55). Given these circumstances, the only viable option that she perceived for herself was to die. Ironically, it is through death that Edna hopes and expects to achieve the full realization of herself and the life that she has come to embrace.

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. London: Women’s Press Ltd., 2002.

Gray, Jennifer B. “The Escape of the ‘Sea’: Ideology and The Awakening.” Southern Literary Journal 37.1 (2004): 53-73.

Heuston, Sean. “Chopin’s The Awakening.” The Explicator 64.4 (2006): 224-226.

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