Edna: The “Other” Woman “Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment. ” John O’Donohue, an Irish writer, priest, and philosopher, wrote this in Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.
It fully encompasses how Edna Pontellier, the main character, felt in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening. Published in 1899, this time period did not give Edna the same chance the women of the early 20th century had. Instead she plays the role of the housewife as she was supposed to, until her first awakening where she learns how to swim. After she realizes she has her own wants and needs, and drifts further and further from what American society wanted her to be in that day and age. Edna would be considered an “Other,” or someone who does not fit into the dominant culture. While the Other may feel alienated or exhilarated by his or her condition, the dominant culture is always bent on getting the other to change and fit into it” (Bordelon). Chopin’s depiction of Edna highlights what American culture does not want a woman to be in the late 19th century: creative, sexually free, and socially independent. The creativity of women, and by extension the art produced by that creativity, was thought to take away from a woman’s duties to her family. American society did not always like it, but becoming an artist was not an impossible feat for women in the 1800s.
It is similar to when someone says they are going to school for a medical degree comparatively to when someone says they are going to school for an art degree. Society looks at the medical student with approval since they are seen to be helping others and using their time in a valuable way. When a student says they are getting an art degree, often times it is met with the assumption that they are wasting their time on something with no real value. It is not that the art student cannot become an artist and make good money, it is just a lot harder and not looked at nicely by society.
Women in Edna’s’ time but it would be viewed in the same way as the art student. Whereas if they devote their life to their family, it would be seen in the same way as the medical student. An encyclopedia entry from Colonization, Revolution, and the New Republic states that “Although women in literature and the arts generally had to work against societal restrictions on how they expressed themselves, many of them succeeded in finding their artistic voices. ” Edna was able to identify as a painter closer to the end of the novel, but before that she has to deal with her husband’s views on her creativity.
Mr. Pontellier sees that Edna has been painting and neglecting her duties around the house because of it. “It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a household, and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier days which would be better employed contriving for the comfort of her family. ” “I feel like painting,” answered Edna. (606) He says it is “the utmost folly” to do things that are not for the betterment her family. He is implying that doing anything for herself is wrong if she could be doing things for your household or children.
He might as well say that her happiness is unimportant if she is not tending to her husband and children. She, on the other hand, feels no remorse over doing the things she wishes to do, saying that she feels like it and that is a good enough reason to do it. Similar to her creativity, sexual freedom was at an impasse in Edna’s time period; on one hand American society was uninterested in giving women the right to do as they pleased with their bodies, and on the other, sexual freedom was vailable for those who did not care about the cultural norms. Female sexuality was being redefined by writers in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Dale Bauer asks in her book, Sex Expression and American Women Writers, 1860-1940, “How much could American society regulate the norms of sexuality for its female sexual citizens? ” She talks about the way female writers were creating a new way that women could be seen as sexual beings. There were plenty of people in America trying to do the opposite, to keep women from being sexually free.
It is seen in The Awakening that Edna is making this transition into sexual freedom whether society likes it or not. At Grand Isle where all the Creoles stayed, Edna had met Robert Lebrun who was the first man Edna had felt something with since she had been with her husband. For many weeks he had flirted with her, even to the point where she felt he was being too forward. It was not given a second thought because he flirted with most women on Grand Isle at one point or another and was seen as harmless.
Having just experienced her awakening at the beach, Edna and Robert went back to where the houses were and she got onto one of the hammocks. He seated himself again and rolled a cigarette, which he smoked in silence. Neither did Mrs. Pontellier speak. No multitude of words could have been more significant than those moments of silence, or more pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire. (585) Chopin uses the words “pregnant” and “throbbing” which reinforces the idea of sex in this scene.
The desire in this moment also solidified the new woman she had become after her swimming experience. This had been her first encounter with a man other than Mr. Pontellier that had a sexual connotation, but not her last. As she moves her way toward sexual freedom, she meets another man known for his seductive ways: Alcee Arobin. They have become friends since Edna has gotten home from the Grand Isle, and have a lustful connection between them. While talking to him one day she recognizes she is different from other women. One of these days,” she said, “I’m going to pull myself together for a while and think-try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don’t know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can’t convince myself that I am. ” (626) Edna shows that she knows about her “Otherness” through saying “By all codes I am acquainted with. “. She understands it is not ethical by the norms of her society to act in the “wicked” ways she does, such as being interested in men that are not her husband.
At the same time, she cannot convince herself that she truly is wicked. Since her awakening, she has questioned the norms and rules in the society she lives in, instead of merely accepting them as they are in the way she used to. Society has labeled her desires as wicked, even though she has only acted upon her own wants and not harmed anyone in the process. She also says “specimen of the sex” after calling herself wicked, which shows she understands that if she had been a man then her desires would not held against her.
Sexual freedom is not only the capability of being sexually available to the men she chooses, but being sexually unavailable as well. Edna is no longer interested in pleasing her husband and has no desire to have sex with him. Mr. Pontellier has been worried about how Edna has been acting, so he went to see the family physician he is good friends with named Doctor Mandelet. When talking to Dr. Mandelet about Edna, Mr. Pontellier says “She’s got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women; and—you understand—we meet in the morning at the breakfast table” (613).
When he says that they meet at the breakfast table, he is getting at the fact that Edna does not sleep in bed with him anymore. If she does not sleep in the same bed then they can’t have sex whenever he pleases. Not doing as the husband desires was cause for concern back then because women were considered property of the husband. If women were property, then the idea that women had any rights at all, much less “eternal” or permanent rights, was just a silly thought to him. And to conclude Mr. Pontellier’s problem with the whole ordeal, he is confused as to why Enda thinks she has the right to not have sex with him.
