Kate Chopin's The Awakening

April 14^th 2020



“She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that they concerned no one but herself.” (Chopin 62)

“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult! (Chopin 17)

“She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her, as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility.” (Chopin 42)



I chose these three passages because these three points and oppositions are what both problematize and give cohesion to Chopin’s novel. We are left at the end with the question “Why?”: why did Edna need to kill herself? Why was she driven there?

              Could it be that the author wanted to highlight the position of having the ultimate agency over one’s life, even to the point of choosing death and when and how to die? I think that is part of it, although I don’t think it goes deep enough. The answer is in the middle quote. She had shed her layers and was thrown into a world where we start from zero. The moment she accepted Robert’s kiss was the moment that she shed convention and all of the connections that convention holds within not only society, but within herself: all meaning for her had been lost at that point. She had reached “the beginning of things”. Unfortunately, her psyche and I would argue, also, her body were not prepared for this shaking off of ties to the world and society.

              The first quote talks off our soul, and Edna’s inability to express her soul through voicelessness. Her voicelessness stifled her agency. Because she was left in silence, and therefore unable to act upon her words, her life became not hers. The end result was that she was being led by “alien hands”. Her soul became utterly disconnected from her life at all. She could not act, she could not speak, she regressed into infancy where all that existed were her basic needs. She regressed so far “into the water” as to become one with it. My theory is that this ending scene is her regression back into the primeval beginning, or metaphorically back into the womb where she would achieve the ultimate sense of safety and free expression.

              I do think Chopin is asking us to think hard about what happened to Edna: to consider “why”. Because if we as the readers don’t consider Edna’s why then the only conclusion would be that she killed herself over Robert. We have no proof that she was distraught or overwrought by his leaving her “because he loves her”. What we do know is that it appears that Robert could not stop thinking about her and loving her. It was his own guilt acting against himself that promoted his final letter to her. Could Edna have expected this? Probably she did. It didn’t take much for her to make the choice of walking into the water. Almost like she was already on that trajectory. I think it was her feeling so utterly alone that caused her to continue to follow that path. Alone as an infant in the womb, caressed by the water and shielded from pain. The third quote signifies her relinquishing of agency to fate. It was as if she was saying “Let faith, or the water, take me and decide what it will do with me.” Edna had lost all agency in the end, and she gained all agency in the end. We are left only with that paradox. I don’t think we can make that choice as readers.  

We need a third option

Today I’m feeling for all those high school seniors who are missing their rites of passage, those young people going out on the job market for the first time (or not), those people who were at a moment in their lives that was pivotal and they won’t get it back, those who felt something starting that hit their passions and are seeing that dwindle away, those who are losing precious time with loved ones because they are prevented from seeing them, those who have lost loved ones and could not be with them in those final moments, those who are having mental and physical health difficulties who can’t reach those who are there to help them, those who’s job and purpose is now gone due to the Economic downturn, those who were in the middle of something (anything) and it was disrupted for the worse. I am thinking about all of those people today. And so I say...

We need a third option.

What is left for us now?

I am in between books right now, finishing one and making way for another: a sort of liminal space. What is striking to me on this day in particular (the day after Easter and mid global lockdown) is that the photos I am taking now fit peculiarly well into the theme I had chosen for my third book which I will be calling Spelling Bee: Locked Within/Locked Without (the name was decided upon long ago). The book itself will be tactile and visual (not just written). I wanted to document my hometown of Buffalo and its ruins and past through material objects. What I find as quite moving is that within all of this, we are experiencing a loss: a loss of the life that we knew before, a feeling of the loss that should have been acknowledged (our ecosystems and history), and most all of a loss of the feeling of being carefree and genuinely blessed by an abundance that may not return any time soon. I took a walk yesterday along the lakefront to one of the new parks that was built over the past five years in anticipation for Buffalo's newly planned waterfront. The ruins of these new spaces filled with hope show a particular moment of paradox. What is new is now old and now looked back upon as ":the moment". Not the future, but the past. The excitement we felt then was felt in the present moment. What is left for us now? in my opinion, we now do the real work of putting together what has been dismantled: putting it back together in the right way. It was a pivotal moment in history to see Andrea Bocelli standing in an empty piazza in front of the Duomo di Milano singing "Amazing Grace". As sad as these days are, they do bring me hope and the feeling that things will change. 

Finally.

"It is only after have lost everything that we're free to do anything." Chuck Palahniuk.

The Interesting Narrative and Plato.

I would like to address the idea of “improvement” as it applies to Olaudah Equiano’s work and as it applies to his focus on religion at the end of Interesting Narrative. It was pretty apparent to me that this entire narrative was focused on the path to self-betterment. His narrative structure reminded me of the structure of Plato’s Symposium in that it was a ladder towards the higher ways of thought, giving importance to faith and the belief in a higher purpose to life. We can see how he traces each chapter from enslaved person to preferred and highly valued slave to overseer and then to a struggling freeman.

              I would argue, however, that his path is following the prescribed path given by the convention of the time i.e. the structure that was already in place, rather than a personal journey away from societal obligations. Nussbaum focuses on this Dubois’ concept of the double consciousness ("merge his double self into a better and truer self”), and I would argue that we can see evidence in this narrative that Equiano struggles with this within himself and trying to better himself as a person. Who is this “better person”? What standards are we using to decide what is improvement and what is not? The most valuable part of this work is his admittance to the feeling he was experiencing each step of the way: we as readers can see first hand that he did struggle with his position even as he rose further towards gaining some traction. He was asked to whip the slaves as overseer. He was asked to hold a position of authority many times and what this could mean not only by what actions he needed to take, but whether these actions were in fact justified or simply a product of the flawed system. We can see what he is feeling, but where does he derive his standard of comparison? Would he take the lives of the slaves as the standards by which he should strive? No, they are underprivileged. So, he derives his standards by observing the successful white men. Did he have a choice though? Probably not, but it is important to address this first off before we can trace and understand why this is a narrative of improvement and the implications. The idea of a double consciousness is the problem that Equiano struggles with and it is a problem throughout the narrative. Could his own improvement narrative and movement towards faith and religion have been his way out of the double bind and into reconciling the two sides of his consciousness?

              If we step off the path of empirical knowledge (i.e. observation and experiment in the world around us) in order to escape the prevailing standards and societal narrative, the world of ideas and higher knowledge would be a place to turn, just as Plato traces love to the platonic ideal, away from the physical and away from possession and romantic love/lust. Would this be the ideal way to “improve” when other methods fail? If Equiano could not get out from his position of the ever guilty, ever black freeman, improvement could be undertaken through his thoughts, philosophy, and mind. No one could control that for him. He can escape the double bind. Question is: does he? If he is taking on the Protestant faith, isn’t he being plunged right back into the life he is attempting to escape from? Same standards, but the only difference being he is choosing to do it. Can we say confidently that this choice was through his own free will? Apparently not, but there is an escape hatch, I think.

              In the end, this idea of improvement was present in this text, and it most certainly aligned with the concept of improvement in England at the time, but, can we not see it as a form of recycling old ideas and not really escaping the mold? Not if we take Plato as an example of how the ladder of thought could hold as truth in Equiano’s life. Religion or spirituality, in general, could then be seen as the ultimate form of improvement and the true goal of Enlightenment values. And, really, when we truly understand that no person can truly escape from his circumstances, shouldn’t he have embraced the truth of his life regardless? It was his life, and he lived it, after all.

             

Loss, Rupture, and Displacement

Why did Mohsin Hamid choose to place his narrative within the fictional realm of magical realism in the novel Exit West and not within a creative non-fiction piece?

First off, I think the reason why Hamid may have chosen magical realism and a fictional narrative is due to the idea called the curse of knowledge. Curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand. So, by creating a fictional and magical realm where the story takes place, he allows every reader to start out on the same page without bias. This way, even if we see similarities to factual events, we can never be quite sure which events he is referring to. So, this allows every reader to feel what Hamid presents us with in his fictional narration. It is common empathic grounding. If he had placed it into a singular real event, then we all would use what we already know as a background to the narrative, potentially missing any point by Hamid as author. He not only offers those with no knowledge a leg up, he also cuts down the knowledge of those readers who know quite a bit about the subjects he is conveying.

The second question I would like to address is: Why did Nadia and Saeed separate, eventually after journeying through the portal? I think the clue is in the birth scene as Nadia enters the portal. They both need to leave their old lives behind as they enter the new worlds. I think Hamid's message is pointed. We need to live the experience with the characters, in order to understand what they go through and how that affects them in the end. Moving to new places and entirely different environments unlike home is bound to change a person in many ways. Can a relationship survive this? Maybe. But if the bond between the individuals is dependent upon prior conditions and for these to still be in existence, then the grounding that relationship has gained would fall away. The Novel The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton comes to mind.  The last chapter (ch.12) deals with their reuniting "half a century later" (pg. 229). They returned to the place of their birth, the city where they came from. I do think it is telling that this reuniting occurs here in this place. The novel is left uncertain, and I believe this was purposeful, because it gives the reader hope and possibility that they will embrace their lives anew in this old place called home:
"He nodded and said if she had an evening free he would take her, it was a sight worth seeing in this life, and she shut her eyes and she said she would like that very much, and they rose and embraced and parted, and did not know if that evening would ever come." (pg. 231)

They both had been changed by their journey away and the return home. Can they reconcile the changes now in the aftermath? I think the rekindling of their love may be the answer to the question of : Can they recover the home that they had lost a long time ago, or is it gone forever?

Hamid wants the reader to answer this question, and I do think he purposely created this narrative in order for the reader to ultimately decide the answer to this question.

In times like these where our future is uncertain and we wonder how we will survive some very profound changes to our ways of life, reading a narrative of migration enables us to place ourselves within a fictional world of displacement. There is a rupturing that occurs each time we move and we change. Like a birth, we are asked to enter (in many ways only with our souls to guide us) into the unknown. What happens and how we survive is the real story. Who falls away and who is regained is the important question that should ultimately be adressed? Can our relationships survive this rupture? There is a Pablo Neruda poem that is called to mind as I write this:

It is called The Dream.

The Dream

Walking on the sands

I decided to leave you.

I was treading a dark clay
that trembled
and I, sinking and coming out,’
decided that you should come out
of me, that you were weighing me down
like a cutting stone,
and I worked out your loss
step by step:
to cut off your roots,
to release you alone into the wind.

Ah in that minute,
my dear, a dream
with its terrible wings
was covering you.

You felt yourself swallowed by the clay,
and you called to me and I did not come,
you were going, motionless,
without defending yourself
until you were smothered in the quicksand.

Afterwards
my decision encountered your dream,
and from the rupture
that was breaking our hearts
we came forth clean again, naked,
loving each other,
without dream, without sand,
complete and radiant,
sealed by fire.

And I have also written a poem about change and loss.

Troy Burns



The pretty picture

In our shaded thoughts becomes

Vapid and empty

As the flames take it over

And burn it to the core.



Well, what for?

No reason

Just the season of war.



More more more

Now this is history

There was no before

Only the hunter and his lithesome companion

So true

As they walk through the ruins

And dust of yore

Soaked through.


conclusion: What is left after everything has been destroyed?

Answer:  A Sea of  Possibility.

The Importance and Impermanence of Physicality

For a long time now, I have been writing a book, in essence, about our ability/inability to transcend the physical. Through possibility, effort, and, sometimes, magic (be it illusion or very real magic), we can transcend the physical realm, but this involves plenty of ingenuity and intelligence in order to problem solve these limitations.

Prior to these past 3-4 weeks, the majority of Western society has not had to deal with threats to our physical space. Or have we? Have we taken for granted that we have full reign over our own bodies, or do we put immense trust into the structures that hold us all into place as a cohabiting group of humans? Do our fellow humans have the right to transcend this space, and if they dont, do they use other means in order to take control? In trying times like these, we have an opportunity to solidify where we stand and make sure human rights are being honored in all instances and at all times. As we all clamor for much needed food and supplies, we have allowed the "powers that be" to order us away from the commercial spaces. We are being asked to share in an extremely limited supply of life sustaining rations: those supplies and their rapidly diminishing quantities were not even acknowledged prior to March at least in the US; neither not acknowledged, nor even considered as potentially corruptible. We are being faced with numerous situations right now where they have been corrupted and the source and viability of supplies have been exposed.

The question I would like to ask is why, in a world where we undeniably place trust into strangers to govern and make sure we thrive as individuals, does so much distrust exist amongst us against others? I think it should be acknowledged right now in this moment that we do trust each other. Saying that we don't doesn't change this. When will we stop trusting? When our safety and ability to live within our environment becomes threatened. I will say this again:

We will start to distrust others and those who are in power when our safety and ability to live within our enviroment becomes threatened. 

We have proof of those who have fled from situations such as this: refugees. Our current administration has brought down the number of allowable refugees coming through our borders to an astonishingly small amount, considering the numbers there are out there and how much resource we hold in our country: roughly 22,000 people. 

Right now there is a miniscule little window open for us to feel just slightly the immense despair that refugees experience when their homes have been taken over. In Mohsin Hamid's book Exit West, he has used the techniques of magical realism to show this passage from place to place. He has said he used this method in order to put emphasis on the emotional aspects. For me, my experience reading it is more that it takes magic for this transfer of physicality to happen for these people. Some manage to physically flee, risking their lives in the process, only to be stopped and told they cannot come in once they reach the promised land.

Hamid writes, "It was said in those days that the passage was both like dying and like being born, and indeed Nadia experienced a kind of extinguishing as she entered the blackness and a gasping struggle as she fought to exit it, and she felt cold and bruised and damp as she lay on the floor of the room at the other side, trembling and too spent at first to stand, and she thought, while she strained to fill her lungs, that this dampness must be her won sweat."

The imagery here is one of childbirth and what an infant would experience upon entering the world, but it is also imagery of the water. The crossing over a body of water be it the Gibraltar Strait or the Meditereanean Sea or any number of bodies. 

We watch as the two protagonists are forced to fall in love exclusively through online means, even though they live in the same city. We see that this form of communication is no worse than the physical. In fact, it confers benefits that the physical space would not allow. There is a sense of the beauty of this falling and how, even through adversity, they can and did triumph. 

In my own fiction writing, I make use of this sort of imagery in order to illustrate experience. It is analogous to various forms of struggle as well. The transcending of the physical is a sign of the 21st century, I believe. We are at the start of a  millenium of infinite time through the virtual world and memory and infinite space as well through not only the virtual, but through infinite means of communication that we have currently. We cannot be forced out of our own bodies if we can escape virtually, or can we? Time will tell, but some have been forced. Many have been forced. The moment we stop listening to those small voices in peril is the moment we lose the very humanity we have fought to retain.  

A Future as Far as the Seas

When Odysseus leaves on his journey, the sea takes him away. The sea signifies silence and vastness, yet it promises hope and the eternal. The sea gives a promise of rebirth.  It is no coincidence that a baptism (or a taking of the waters) is a process of being born again. The water gives this purification or a repeat of the cycle.

To be reborn, we need a mother. Where do we find the mother of Odysseus? We do know that Penelope is weaving and unraveling a death shroud for Odysseus’ father. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, isn’t a renowned beauty like Helen, but she is loyal, and Odysseus cherishes her in his manliness. He isn’t a typical romantic husband. He is not handsome and the problem is he keeps leaving, and he is gone a long, long time. Penelope is left at home to fight off all of the suitors that threaten to steal his palace from him. They try to convince her he is dead. When he eventually returns, no one knows. This was necessary. Being hidden and deceptive was necessary to ensure that he could regain his palace and land. So, he disguises himself as a feeble old beggar. He tricks the suitors by accessing his son Telemachus and plans the attack. A contest is held over who is strong enough to shoot Odysseus’ bow. Not one of the suitors can do it. When Aethon tries (the old beggar), he succeeds. It is only then that his identity is secured and proven, and the story is then able to conclude as it should. Penelope and Odysseus are reunited, and the kingdom is regained. Isn’t this book also a celebration of the mother, as well as a celebration of the heroic nature of the father figure? Overcoming of adversity is a strong plot device in both of these complimentary characters.

My thoughts these days revolve around where The Odyssey and Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion converge. The reunion of Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth could only have happened within a setting of the sea. Wentworth being a successful sea captain is significant here. The seaside towns, the fossils at The Cobb, Bath and its social conventions embedded within a ceremony of baptism for health all contribute to the final reunion and the unquestionable hope leading up to this moment. Both Anne and Frederick are forced into the same sort of silent surrender. All of their real and true communication occurs second hand-whether it was overheard or spread through secondary characters, they never communicate openly to each other. This gives the reader a feeling that their minds have been attached. Austen opens up the possibility in the final revised chapters of her writing career of mental telepathy occurring between these two characters. How did they know? How could they both be so sure?

It appears that Austen is making the attempt to incorporate equality in her final novel. A mirroring of contrasting and converging feminine and masculine strength that we also see in The Odyssey.

Critics have called Persuasion a book about autumn and potentially the autumn of Austen’s life. But autumn symbolizes loss: a loss we never quite see in this book. Instead we see a piece of writing entirely based on the idea of hope and constancy. A woman in danger of becoming a spinster has unconsciously waited for the love of her life to return. It is my thought that The Odyssey and Persuasion have more in common than just a man and his journey away from home and the women they leave behind.

I will be researching this deeply in the hopes to find a thesis that would incorporate these ideas and to take them further over the next few months. I hope to reach a greater understanding of Jane Austen as a writer and a mature one, along with a greater understanding of what the idea of sea means when we engage it within a literary work.

The silence and the rhythm of the sea find balance within these two works.

“When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”

                                                          -Anne Elliot, Persuasion.  

“I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.”

                                                          -Mrs. Croft, Persuasion.