Surviving Edna: A reading of the ending of The Awakening

In the first five chapters of The Awakening realistic voices dominate, beginning with the cacophony which greets the reader on the opening page: the parrot, the mockingbird, the playing of the children, and the pianothumping of the Farival twins. These sounds and images represent an almost mindless repetition and copying, and we feel Leonce Pontellier's irritation and boredom with the Grand Isle scene. When he compares his own decision to bathe early with Robert and Edna's risking sunburn by bathing in the hot afternoon, Kate Chopin reveals the irony of his reaction by observing: "That was why the morning seemed so long to him" (1976, 4). Then she allows us to see on our own how he uses his male privilege to leave in search of better entertainment in town without committing himself to any specific time of return, a privilege not available to Edna or to the other women at Grand Isle. Chopin uses a slightly different technique in the third chapter, where Leonce returns late and feels disappointed by his wife's lack of interest: "He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in the things which concerned him and valued so little his conversation" (7). If there is irony here, it is not because the author separates herself from Leonce's sensibility He does think Edna is the center of his existence, and if Chopin allows us to count his habitual neglect of his wife against the truth of what he believes, she also brings us into partial sympathy with him at the same time. In Bakhtinian terms, "the author is put on a level with his character, and their relationship is dialogized" (Volosinov 1994, 71).

Chopin has woven the several voices of her novel into a heteroglossia, much as a composer uses different instruments to create tension and dialogue in a symphony To a degree, Edna internalizes these voices, but this is not to say that any one of them controls her thinking or directs her actions. Leonce's voice is at times merely wheedling, and fairly early in the book Edna is capable of rejecting what he says. Her friend, Madame Ratignolle, is the voice of the mother-woman whose narrowly defined idea of a woman's life Edna can not accept. Her sons, with their claim upon.her sense of responsibility, are another voice. There is also Robert, who approaches Edna with the voice of love and devotion.

Then there is the voice of Mlle. Reisz, the solitary artist who holds much of what she sees around her in contempt. She feels Edna is the one person at Grand Isle worthy to hear her play (Chopin 1976, 27).At times she can seem to be an irritating friend, as when she tells Edna how she would act if she were in love with a man like Robert:

"You are purposely misunderstanding me, ma refine. Are you in love with Robert?"

"Yes, " said Edna. It was the first time she had admitted it, and a glow overspread her face, blotching it with red spots.

"Why?" asked her companion. "Why do you love him when you ought not to?"