Rereading Notes: Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Rationale: No reading is complete without a closer examination of the "presentational aspect" (rhetoric, literary strategies, cultural implications) in the text and its effects on readers. Our first readings are usually plot and information-oriented; therefore they are linear, selective, focused on those details that allow us to figure out the general direction of the narrative or the general argument of a poem. First reading often yields an incomplete, impressionistic interpretation that tends "to settle too soon, too quickly" the text. Only a second, retroactive reading can produce critical "significance" by identifying and reconfiguring the various perspectives of the text (Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry, pp. 81ff). Rereading refocuses the reader's attention on the text's structure and rhetoric usually missed in first reading. While first reading depends primarily on the expectation of pleasure (of a vicarious kind), rereading draws on critical (self)-awareness. Enjoyment is not absent from this second phase of reading, but it involves the transformation of experiential pleasure into the intellectual pleasure of interpreting and connecting. A successful reading will emerge from the interplay of naive absorption and critical reexamination, participation and self-reflection.
As the French poststructuralist critic, Roland Barthes, put it:
Rereading, an operation contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society, which would have us `throw away' the story once it has been consumed (‘devoured’), so that we can then move on to another story, buy another book, and which is tolerated only in certain marginal categories of readers (children, old people, and professors), re-reading . . . alone saves the text from repetition (those who fail to re-read are obliged to read the same story everywhere). (S/Z, 1974, pp. 15-6).
One way we can make rereading more effective is to organize it around specific questions that call for a comparison between first and second reading. Start your rereading of The Awakening with a clear critical agenda in mind, a few specific questions you want to explore. Create some contrast with your first reading, modifying your main focus (e.g., pay more attention to the structure of images and their foreshadowing of the transformation undergone by the characters), identification (take another character’s perspective), and understanding of the genre (e.g., reread the novel as a cultural-allegorical story, as a psychological plot, as novel about gender relations, etc.). You do not need to reread the entire text: focus on those sections and passages that help reorient your understanding of the novel. Use some of the questions below to structure your note taking during the process of rereading:
Rr4 Note A: Before the second reading, I read the introduction to the novel by Nancy A. Walker. This changed my perspective a little bit. It made me think that Chopin probably was closer to Mme. Ratignolle than Edna. It made me think that maybe Chopin was doing something that was philosophically and morally impossible for her to do, but very powerful from a literary point of view. I personally do not that suicide fixes any problems and I would not try it, but I have written several stories in which the characters commit suicide in several ways. I also believe that I'm too coward to try to kill myself, which makes me think that people who commit suicide or try to are very brave.
Note B: I watched the movie after the first reading. I was amazed because I was able to predict and even recite several chunks of dialogue, something that I usually don't do because I remember whole scenes better than dialogue. The movie only helped me with the voices of the characters, the landscape that I cared too much about in my first reading, and it made me pay more attention to Edna's relationship with Mme. Ratignolle.
Rr1 Focus = During the first reading, I paid too much attention to the landscape—gardens, houses, the street---and imagined the smell of each place. I also worried too much about the baths in the ocean. This is a very important issue for me because I spent about two days feeling itchy because of the idea of taking a bath in the ocean without rinsing with regular water.
Rereading = The second time, I paid more attention to the dialogue and the phrases and scenes that point to the final scene. I realized that there are several mentions to the ocean as a peaceful and sensual place. There are also several points in which the narrator describes Edna's descend into a lifeless, careless situation. This time I didn't itch because I thought that in those bathhouses by the ocean, they probably had some water to rinse themselves before going back home; however, this is still a mystery for me, because they don't spend too much time at the bathhouse anyway.
Identification = After I finished the first reading, I realized that I had taken Mme. Ratignolle's point of view, because I believed that Edna was a bad mother and that she should not have a relationship with Robert or Arobin. In my rereading, I tried to take Edna's perspective, not as mother or wife, but as woman that has decided to live like a strong person, which in those times it meant to behave like a man. Also, Edna tries to do whatever excites her—sketching and painting, the horse races, a house of her own, etc. Edna married Léonce because it meant rebelling against her father and her religion; now she has an affair with Robert because she's rebelling against her husband and the Creole culture.
Rr2 Genre = The first time I read the text, I considered it a novel. The second time I read it as a series of vignettes—to be more specific, three vignettes. The first vignette is about Edna in Grand Island, the second one about Edna and Léonce in New Orleans, and the last one about Edna alone in New Orleans. I downloaded the electronic version of The Awakening from The Gutenberg Project [http://www.gutenberg.org] and run the count words tool; the total number of words is 49,776 words. Some definitions of novel state that a novel has to have 50,000 words or more. If divided into three, the vignettes are around 17,000 words each. [I'm thinking too much about math and publishing conventions, probably.]
~how does the novel's general purpose and orientation change when you approach it through a different focus or interpretive perspective?
After the second reading, I believe that Edna had probably thought very early in the summer in Grand Isle to distance herself from her old self, or at least from her husband. In the past, her father did not approve her marriage completely, but now he even asks for Léonce's advice in the purchase of his other daughter's wedding present. The father also tells his son-in-law how to treat Edna. This means that there is no point for Edna to continue being married to Pontellier, because her father has finally approved it. The dialogue between Mme. Ratignolle and Edna at the bathhouse is essential to understand why Edna is not happy. Even the narrator starts the text describing the husband, instead of describing Edna.
Rr3 I think that what happened to Edna is that she understands what liberum arbitrium or “free will” means—she is free to believe or not in God, and the Catholic Creoles cannot mess with that. From this perspective, I understand why Léonce doesn't do that much to keep his wife in the house, for example.
~have you changed your identification (with a particular character or perspective) in rereading? How does this shift in identification affect your understanding of the narrative?
Yes, instead of thinking like Mme. Ratignolle, I tried to take Edna's perspective. This fact let me pay more attention to her dialogues with Ratignolle and to compare what the doctor says about Edna with what she now believes—that she is nobody's property. First, Edna's relationship with Alcée seemed completely out place to me, because she was supposed to be in love with Robert. However, now I understand now that the purpose was not only to be with Robert, but to push herself to the limit of not belonging to anybody. I understand now that the only ones who owned Edna were her sons, because she chose to kill herself instead of putting them in an awkward situation. This way, the kids would had a better image of their mother if she died instead of divorcing their father and living with another man. After Edna kills herself, the kids will live a normal life, because they will not have that many memories or they will forget her; while Léonce and Robert will remember her for a longer time or with more pain in their hearts. I don't believe Alcée will suffer for Edna. The idea of free will makes more sense now.
~what aspects of the story have you "misremembered" from your first reading? What cues in the text or personal assumptions seem to have caused these "misreadings"?
During the first reading I thought for several chapters that these families stayed at Grand Island for the whole year. It was probably the idea of salty water all over my body during the summer time that made me skip or misremember that these families spent only the summers at Grand Island.
I also missed the description of Arobin as the local Don Juan. Just like the dialogue between Adèle and Edna that I read but did not take it as one of the main points of the text, just like that I missed the two lines that talk about Arobin's fame.
In the second reading, I realized that the first ten chapters provide a lot of information about the end, more than I first thought.
~what possibilities of the text have you ignored during your earlier reading? For example, have you paid enough attention to the novel’s setting and historical context, to the cultural conflicts embedded in the novel, to its intertextual relations to other works of the time?
In my earlier reading, I thought that Edna's believes were very different from those of the doctor or Mme. Ratignolle. However, I now believe that Edna knows that according to any of the two societies—the Creole or the one from Kentucky—she cannot kiss or flirt with a man who is not her husband, and that she has a destiny to fulfill, which is to disappear in the ocean. For Edna, the ocean equals the blue grass from Kentucky, and when she's in either place, she is herself. The blue grass is not her father and the ocean is not Léonce, since she is closer to the ocean than the blue grass, she kills herself in the ocean.
~what "mysteries" in the narrative are still unresolved?
One of the few questions that I still have is 'why does Léonce not demonstrate that he loves his wife?' Only once or twice we read that he loves Edna, but he actually allows Edna to do whatever she wants to. My suspicion is that he has a lover in New York, and he probably has another one that he sees at the club.
The other mystery is, 'was Robert only a buffoon when he followed Adèle for a year, or was he only her companion?' Even if Mme. Ratignolle is so prudent now, she also had Robert following her. Can we believe that Robert did not fall for Adèle when she's the most beautiful character described in this story?
The last mystery is the way non-white and non-Creole people—blacks, Cajuns and Mexicans—are portrayed. All the nurse-maids and the girls who help Mme. Lebrun seem to be non-existent, their lives don't matter when they do their job—the cook becomes important when Léonce doesn't like her food anymore, for example. The Cajuns seem to be much more inferior than Robert and his family, even if they are so clean they're still frugal. The Mexicans are not the best people according to Mme. Ratignolle, which makes me think that they are not the best for Chopin either. The name “Mariequita” is misspelled—the “e” in the middle is not necessary—and it resembles the careless look of the young girl. However, she “serves” Victor so she becomes a likable character. The Mexicans are bad probably because of the war with Spain and because half of their land now belongs to the United States, and as Amy Kaplan points out in her “Domesticity Manifesto,” the duty of the United States is to educate and indoctrinate the wild Mexicans.
~ how does the point of view help shape the story and its meaning? Is the narrative perspective neutral or involved (taking the perspective of a character), ironic (at times) or straightforward? Is the narrator omniscient, with access to all characters’ inner perspectives?
It helped me think more about Edna's most important decisions: a)to leave her family, b)to disengage herself from her sons, c)to flirt with the local Don Juan, even if she says that she loves Robert, d)to kill herself. The fact that she didn't want to attend her sister's wedding or visit her family in Kentucky is not as important as any of the points in my list, since Kentucky really means the past for Edna.
Edna's perspective is not a neutral point of view, in fact it is more active than taking Ratignolle's point of view. Before, I had said, “well it happened because she is a bad mother/wife/daughter/sister” but now I have adventured into other possible answers for her behavior. Therefore, this is a very involved perspective.
The narrator doesn't seem to have that much information from Lèonce once he leaves New Orleans; other characters seem to have more information than the author in this matter. Another perspective that we don't have is the domestic worker's; only at the end—when Edna gets help from her staff to prepare the small house.
~what importance does language play in this narrative? Do language and style enhance the complexity of the novel? What is your response as a twenty-first century reader to Chopin stylistic and narrative approach
Rr5 One of my readings is from the language teacher perspective. This is not the only reading and it's usually my first opinion about a literary text, but this novel makes me think a lot about language and culture.
Most characters in The Awakening live in between languages and cultures, which is one of the reasons I like it. Just like I move between English and Spanish constantly, and try to survive a conversation in Portuguese, Chopin and her characters move between English and French, a little bit of Spanish --the weakest one in the mix and the one with the "misspellings"--. In the novel, the ability to speak several languages mirrors the ability to function in several cultures and communities.
We don't hear (read) Edna speaking French, but she understands it. Adèle has a strong accent when she speaks English, but she is fluent in her second language. Adèle understands Edna more than Edna understands Adèle.
