What’s there to say about The Awakening? I thought it was short and enjoyable, especially after reading Anna Karenina. I especially loved the part where I was on page 50 and thought “hey, I’m half way there!”, because it made me feel special and accomplished and all these things I no longer feel now that I’m an IB student.
I loved the many cryptic symbols and foreshadowing, like that creepy lady in black and all the mentions about Edna swimming too far out in the sea. They gave me a sense of what to expect from the novel without revealing too much, as I hate spoilers and the whole class probably knows this by now because I whine about it a lot. I enjoyed reading about the characters, especially since there isn’t one I actively disliked.
Let’s go over the characters. I didn’t particularly like or dislike Edna. She’s a well-off lady with fancy dresses, expensive dinner parties and an interesting personality to read about, but as we discussed today in class, she’s also pretty spoiled. Of her two “foils”, I liked Mademoiselle Reisz best. Perhaps because I can easily identify with her – were I a fictional character in The Awakening, I would probably be a shut-in with a bad reputation and eat candy all the time too. Mlle Reisz is not particularly amiable, but she seems to have most sense out of the women in this novel. As for Robert, I found him a pretty understandable character, with no outrageous expectations of Edna. Before I read the novel, I expected him to be somewhat like Vronsky. However, he doesn’t seem to have his head stuck in the clouds and therefore renders him more likeable for me.
To me, Edna Pontellier’s suicide seemed excessive. Her life was good, and as I mentioned earlier, she was very well off with a good husband and a good reputation. Did she really have to go and do that? I understand she wasn’t given much choice, but I don’t go off throwing myself in front of trains or out in the ocean every time there’s an exam I can’t avoid. Joking aside, her demise raises a good question: what drove her to this? If Robert had not seen her after his return from Mexico, would she still have drowned herself?
Your title makes me think of a question we almost got to in class today: can Edna, like Anna and Tess, be seen as a casualty of social convention? After all, if not for the social and legal barriers to divorce, Edna’s story might well have been much different. And your closing raises another question: is it not possible to see Edna’s suicide as a principled action, an act of integrity—where any of the other alternatives would have been in one way or another dishonest, a betrayal of principle?
I don’t know. I didn’t think that hard when I wrote the title. I just thought that there are support for everything.