Leonce Pontellier, Edna Pontellier's husband in The Awakening of Kate Chopin, becomes very upset when his wife, within a few months, suddenly abandons all her responsibilities. After she admits that she "let things go," he angrily asks, "for what?" Edna is unable to provide a definitive answer and says, "Oh! I don't know. Let me go; you bother me" (108). The uncertainty he expresses arises from the ambiguous nature of the transformation he has undergone. It is easy to read Edna's transformation in strictly negative terms, as a move away from the repressive expectations of her husband and society, or in strictly positive terms, as a movement toward the love and sensuality she finds in the summer resort town of Grand Isle. . While both of these moves exist in Edna's story, focusing on one aspect closes the reader to the ambiguity that seems to be at the very heart of Edna's awakening. Edna cannot define the nature of her awakening towards her husband because it is not a unique discovery; he comes to understand both what is not in his current situation and what another situation is. Furthermore, the sensuality to which she has been awakened is not itself simply the male or female sexuality to which she was accustomed before, but rather the sensuality that comes from the fusion of the masculine and the feminine. The book's most prominent symbol, "the ocean to which he finally surrenders," embodies not one aspect of his awakening, but rather the multitude of contradictory meanings he discovers. Only once we understand the ambiguity of this central symbol can we read the end of the novel as the culmination and extension of the novel's themes, and the novel regains a coherence that is missing in a single interpretation of Edna's awakening. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Numerous feminist critiques focus on the entrapment Edna feels in her marital situation. Edna realizes that "all her life she had been accustomed to harboring thoughts and emotions that never expressed themselves. They had never taken the form of fights" (96). In the novel the struggle against the demands of her husband and children begins. As she enters the ocean at the end of the novel to escape her life, she thinks, "they didn't need to think they could possess her, body and soul" (176). Emily Toth states that "an escape from confinement is the main theme of The Awakening" (242). The primary means of this emotional confinement is the social expectation, held since the beginning of the American Republican era, that "'the best way for a married woman to hold her own is to give in sometimes.'" Jan Lewis states that in early America “it was the wife who had to bend” (712). This remained true until mid-century, when William Alcott declared that "the balance of the grants rests with the wife. Whether the husband grants or not, she must" (32). Edna comes to understand that early in her life she followed this dictation without even thinking about it; he admitted in all cases, "not with any sense of submission or obedience to his irresistible desires, but without thinking, as we walk, move, sit, stand or go through the daily rhythm of the life assigned to us" ( 78). But now he realizes that this model was a simple treadmill whose path was always determined by someone else. The female treadmill of late 19th-century bourgeois culture is shaped by more than just the expectation of submission. One of the major aspects of 19th-century American marriage, according to Hendrick Hartog, was coverture, whereby a woman's public identity was altered by her marriage: "coverture gavewives not an absence of identity but, rather, a recognized particular identity, which sometimes granted them certain privileges” (127). Edna finds these privileges in the thoughtful packages, jewelry, and furniture her husband sends home. But these gifts come at the expense of an expected identity to which Edna must subscribe. This identity has its duties which are spelled out in Thorstein Veblen's description of the leisure class at the end of the 19th century. In the leisure class, such as the Creole culture in which Edna lives, conspicuous leisure and consumption are necessary indicators of a family's success, and "indirect duties of leisure and consumption belong only to the wife" (81). Edna realizes and rejects her participation in this system when she abandons the Tuesday afternoon reception "an emblem of prominently practiced leisure" with a vengeance. Her husband confirms that these hours are not important in themselves, but rather as part of the economic framework of New Orleans society. He angrily tells her, “we must observe les convenances if we are ever to expect to go forward and keep pace with the procession” (101). Edna at some point realizes that the establishment of marital expectations is itself inviolable. It's like the diamond on her wedding ring that she stepped on violently, only to find that "the heel of her little boot left not an indentation, nor a mark on the little glittering circlet" (103). The institution is an ornament carefully cut by someone other than the wearer, an ornament that has little value other than pride to the wearer. He realizes that stepping on the ring was a "useless expedient" (109) that accomplished nothing. Rather than trying to undermine the system, he distances himself from it. As Edna rejects her position within this system, the narrator says, “she was becoming herself and every day she put that fictitious self aside” (108). For Edna, this fictitious self does not arise from the specific conditions of her relationship, but rather from the logos of the leisure class. He visits Madame Ratignolle and sees "domestic harmony" reigning in their family through sincere and happy involvement of both husband and wife in the relationship. But even in this scene of marital bliss Edna sees a "dreadful and hopeless boredom" (107). Edna managed to "escape confinement," as Toth explained, and because she rejects not only the specific condition, but also the general condition of her confinement, Edna becomes a model of female liberation. Missing from the discussion so far is any mention of the conditions that generate this awareness of confinement. This is because any discussion focused on imprisonment only considers the negative aspect of Edna's quest. In becoming herself, Edna doesn't just shed old layers, she also discovers new, or at least previously repressed, layers. As he contemplates abandoning his old world, he says, "the greengrocer, the flowers that grew there before his eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world that had suddenly become antagonistic." This antagonism, it is suggested moments later, occurs because "she was thinking of Robert. She was still under the spell of her infatuation...the thought of him was like an obsession, always pressing on her" (104). Robert's presence is the emblem of the positive towards which she is moving, of the awakening of her sensual part. And Robert's presence immediately throws into confusion the true nature of Edna's rebellion against her confinement. The narrator says that the absence of the loved one makes even the flowers seem antagonistic. The use of the blameless flower here directs the reader to interpret all of Edna's antagonism, not as arising from anything inherent to the antagonistic object, the person, of thesystem itself, but rather from Edna's subjective understanding of them while under the influence of her obsession. In this moment we are gently nudged to see Edna's rebellion as a mere manifestation of her sexual obsession. This understanding of Edna, Priscilla Allen argues, fills male written criticism of Edna Pontellier: "Eros rules all about this; there is general agreement among modern critics" (226). This reading of Edna highlights the way in which "as a woman she must be dehumanized. It is universal in our culture that she is designed solely to fit biological functions, to be a sexual partner [if not to be] a mother" (229). Under Allen's guidance we might see that this discounting of Edna's rebellion is too simplistic, not least because Edna says she has always had an antagonism towards certain treatments she received from her husband (for she has not always had an antagonism towards flowers). After a scene in which her husband abandons her to take care of household chores, we learn that "she was quite familiar with such scenes. They had often made her very unhappy" (102). Edna does not create the problems she finds in her marriage and motherhood. He says he has always had the "questioning inner life," and now he is simply giving that life an outer voice (57). But we can't say that her love for Robert is irrelevant in bringing out this rumor. When we come to understand Edna's awakening, then, Chopin does not direct us to read her awakening as purely a consequence of her oppressive conditions, or purely a result of the positive element she finds in Robert; instead the ambiguity is prominent when we begin to consider Edna's Search. But to define the positive element "the sensuality hitherto attributed to Robert" as strictly an element of her relationship with Robert is once again a simplification of things. The central elements of Edna's movement towards awareness are highlighted in the structure of the first five chapters, and in these chapters we have highlighted both the ambiguity of the positive/negative nature of Edna's awakening and the ambiguity of the sensual awakening she has. underlined. The first chapter of the book is the only one in the novel in which Mr. Pontellier is the focus of the narrative. The world is seen through its economic eyes, where Sunday is the day when there are no market reports due to the lack of newspapers. Mr. Pontellier's eyes immediately turn to Edna, and we see Edna and her adventures from his point of view; his laughter is explained as "utter nonsense; some adventure out there in the water" (45). Edna is understood as a narrative product of her husband, and this commodification of Edna is made explicit when Mr. Pontellier is said to look at "his wife as one would look at a valuable piece of personal property" (44). This commodification of the wife is what Veblen talks about when he explains the indirect acts of consumption of free time that fall to the woman. The first chapter presents this male view of Edna because this is the framework in which both she and others have understood her up to this point. We later learn that she had always possessed some internal questioning, but even she admits that before her transformation she "never realized the reserve of her character" (61). This first chapter narratively represents Edna's pre-transformed position as a vicarious actor for her husband, something he can see, enjoy, and use to his economic advantage. In chapter five the transformation has begun, as the narrator says that Edna was becoming aware of "a certain light that began to dawn darkly within her, the light that, pointing the way, forbids it" (57). There's something newwhich is powerful and off limits to the male point of view. The source and cause of this light are not individually defined as the three chapters separating Edna's initial male-centered vision and Edna's new internal vision discuss not one, but three separate interactions. In the second chapter Edna converses with Robert and enjoys his company. No sudden desire arises in Edna, but first we realize that his presence is more frequent and pleasant than that of Edna's husband. In the third chapter, she suddenly gets angry with her husband when he asks her to check on their son's health. By her own admission, she suddenly feels bothered by requests that had not bothered her before: "they never seemed to weigh much" (49). These two themes have already been discussed for the role they play in Edna's transformation, but in the fourth chapter a new element is introduced when we are introduced to Adele Ratignolle. In her description she is described in overtly sensual terms, as no other character is in their initial introduction: "one would not have wanted her white neck a little less full or her beautiful arms more slender. Never were the hands more exquisite than his" (51). A few moments later this relationship enters the more openly sensual realm when Adele allows herself to place "her hand on that of Mrs. Pontellier, who was next to her. Seeing that the hand was not withdrawn, she shook it firmly and warmly. I caressed a little, with affection." At this moment Edna comes into contact with a feminine sensuality to which she was unaccustomed: "the action confused Edna a little at first, but she soon lent herself readily to the Creole's sweet caress" (61). This feminine sensuality separated from any male presence continues in the book in her interaction with Adele and with Mademoiselle Reisz, at whose piano "the passions themselves awakened in her soul, swaying it, lashing it, like the daily waves crashing on her soul." her beautiful body" (72). This presence of female sexuality makes it difficult to say that Edna's sexual awakening is simply the result of Robert. Something happens in these middle chapters that leads Edna, for the first time, to feel a light" that begins to dawn faintly within her." For the first time she hears the "voice of the sea" speaking to her soul about his touch, a "sensual touch, enveloping the body in its soft and tight embrace" (57). This heralds the most obvious awakening that comes a few days later, when Edna suddenly finds within herself the ability to swim, "and intoxicated by the power she has just gained, she swims alone" (73) Barbara Solomon says that in this moment Edna finds one new life, and "the waters awakened her" (xxvi). But it is crucial to see that the water is not the source of her awakening. She becomes aware of the symbolic sensual force of the water only after the light has been awakened in her from the elements expressed in the first four chapters. When Edna takes her epic swim, during which she decides to "swim out to sea, where no woman had ever swum before" (73), it is tempting to interpret it simply as the result of the sensual awakening provided by Mademoiselle Reisz's piano playing that occurred immediately before the group headed to the beach. We are also encouraged to do so by the description of Edna's response to the execution, which includes a reference to the sensation of the waves beating "on her beautiful body." But there are two other vital elements that affect this swim. One is the fact that Robert "proposed" the late-night swim and then "directed" the crowd toward the ocean. It is during the walk to the sea that Edna feels her first desire for Robert, as she "wondered why he didn't join [her] 'on the way down'" (72).is that in this swim she swims away from the shore, where her husband is. Water is therefore not the agent of awakening and, furthermore, cannot be read as the symbolic consequence of just one of Edna's multiple accomplishments: the personal pleasure she finds in playing Mademoiselle Reisz's piano, or the gratification she found in her time with Robert, or the challenge she is developing towards her husband. Instead, the sea becomes the ideal symbol of the ambiguous confluence of these factors. The ocean is both strong and receptive, thus embodying dominant traditional notions of both male and female sexuality. The symbolic power of the ocean is clarified by the other dominant symbol that is omnipresent during this early awakening: young lovers. They can be defined as a single symbol because they are never distinguished as individuals, or even as male and female. Their description since "The Young Lovers" suggests reading them as a fusion of the sexes. And to accompany the young lovers there is always the "lady in black", who spends her existence telling the rosary or praying. Its constant proximity to the fusion of sexuality represents the figure of Orthodox theology that accompanies every situation of this kind, preventing the couple from ever merging too intimately. It is a parallel manifestation to the church of Cheniere Caminada, which immediately causes Edna "a feeling of oppression and drowsiness" (82). The woman represents the traditional social restrictions from which both the lovers and Edna, in her molten sexual discovery, seem perpetually to escape. His awareness of the ocean as a force of life and death during his first swim represents a symbolic awakening to the confluence of repression and sexuality, and both female and male sexuality. Immediately afterwards Edna says breathlessly, "a thousand emotions have overwhelmed me tonight. I don't understand half of them" (75). This should not be read simply as his response to the swim, but as his response to the transformation he has undergone in the preceding days. A few moments later, when the narrator describes her new condition there is a similar effort at ambiguity: "she saw with different eyes and became acquainted with new conditions in herself that colored and changed her environment" (88). The narrator carefully avoids linking these new eyes to specific conditions. The image of the ocean and the lovers constitutes Chopin's most powerful directive to avoid understanding the awakening of the title, which is embodied in the swim, as an awakening in a single aspect of freedom or oppression, but rather as an awakening in the multitude. Describing both Edna's first contact with the sea and the first light that dawns within her, the narrator explains that "the beginning of things, of one world in particular, is necessarily vague, intricate, chaotic, and extremely disturbing" ( 57). After the swim Edna struggles with each of the problems evident before the swim. As already discussed, she begins to reject her duties to her husband and children and instead spends her time in her studio practicing drawing. He leaves the house in which he was merely a piece of furniture and establishes an independent dwelling. Early in the novel, Madame Ratignolle tells Robert that Edna is not as sexually liberated as other members of Grand Isle society, but she eventually has trysts with Alcee Arobin and surrenders almost daily to Madame's sensuality. Reisz's piano playing. But in each of these struggles he realizes the futility of his actions. She understands that, as Dr. Mandelet tells her husband, her refusal of marital duties is interpreted as an illness, which could even be hereditary (118). Furthermore, her pursuit of independence is impossible without relying on her husband's funds:, 1899.