ENCW 205: Art & Identity in New Orleans

At the sound of Stanley calling for her, Stella steps outside. She stands at the top of the stairs, looking down with an expression that is equal parts fed up and exhausted. Stanley stares back at her, his own expression guilty and pleading. She descends slowly, keeping her eyes on him, though now her expression appears more reproachful. It’s clear that in this moment, she holds all of the power, and she knows it; every slight, deliberate movement of her body is brimming with sensuality, heightened by the sultry soundtrack. She reaches the ground, sees her husband fall to his knees as he sobs with fear and regret, and suddenly her expression turns to one of anguish, of pity. The sexuality is palpable, the moment so impossibly raw; she leans down over him, and they kiss, both of them sobbing with remorse as they embrace, level with one another now–equal. We track them as he lifts her up, carrying her into their home off screen.

While it’s not completely accurate to how the scene is written in the play, I much prefer Kazan’s take on it. Williams writes that Stella’s eyes “are glistening with tears” as she descends the staircase; to have her instead be facing Stanley somewhat defiantly, to have her asserting control over him as she makes her way down, makes for a much more engaging scene and shows a more interesting dynamic between these two characters. To have her feelings change to be more sympathetic only later on, at the very end of the scene, adds a new layer of complexity to their relationship. When she wants or needs to be, she can be just as controlling over Stanley as he is over her. There is something of a threat in the way that she regards him, and it becomes even clearer with his final words of the scene: “Don’t ever leave me, baby.” She isn’t entirely helpless; she knows how to manipulate, how to dominate, how to threaten—in this case, she doesn’t even need words.

This is a scene that tells us everything we need to know about these two characters; it tells a story all its own. Without it, or if it had been filmed as Williams originally intended it to be, I doubt it would have as great of an impact or have quite as much to say about Stanley and Stella.

Mexican Woman [she is at the door and offers Blanche some of her flowers]:

Flores? Flores para los muertos?

Blanche [frightened]:

No, no! Not now! Not now! (p. 148)

It was the death of her husband that led to Blanche DuBois’ desire for men – to fill the void in her heart left by his death (“Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan – intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with… (p. 146)”). Blanche sought attention from men who reminded her of her deceased husband and shockingly began an inappropriate relationship with a seventeen-year-old student which led to her termination and shunning.

She fled to Elysian Fields on a streetcar named Desire to make a new life for herself (“I’m going to do something. Get hold of myself and make myself a new life (p. 73)!”). However, Blanche continued to relive the past and often became overwhelmed with the memory of the death of her husband, which she attempted to suppress with alcohol. Haunted by his memory, Blanche briefly lost herself at the sight of a young man who resembled him (“[Without waiting for him to accept, she crosses quickly to him and presses her lips to his.] Now run along now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I’ve got to be good – and keep my hands off children (p. 99).”).

Blanche and Mitch meet at Elysian Fields and bond over their shared understanding of loneliness, sickness and death (“You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be – you and me, Blanche (p. 116)?”). Until Stanley shared Blanche’s notorious past with Mitch, she sincerely hoped that he could permanently fill the void that Allen had left (“You said you needed somebody. Well, I needed somebody, too. I thanked God for you, because you seemed to be gentle – a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in! But I guess I was asking, hoping – too much (p. 147)!”). It was during Blanche’s confrontation with Mitch that she came to the realization that it was too late for the void to be filled, that she was no longer desirable and, therefore, death was not far.

Blanche:

Death – I used to sit here and she used to sit over there and death was as close as you are. …We didn’t dare even admit we had ever heard of it!

Mexican Woman:

Flores para los muertos, flores – flores…

Blanche:

The opposite is desire. (p. 149)

This realization led to her initial mental deterioration and her rape, as well as the disbelief from her sister, accelerated it. Blanche was admitted into a mental hospital against her will with her realization of death having been suppressed with the idea that Shep Huntleigh was coming to take her away.

Blanche:

What you are talking about is brutal desire – just – Desire! – the name of that rattle-trap street-car that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another…

Stella:

Haven’t you ever ridden on that street-car?

Blanche:

It brought me here. Where I’m not wanted and where I’m ashamed to be… (p. 81)

Edna is a sad character made out to be a hero because of her circumstances. Let me explain.

From the beginning, Edna is presented as a woman bored with the mundanity  and her position in her own life. When we first meet her, we hear her (or perhaps the narrator) introducing the reader to how ordinary her days are at the beach with her family during the summer. It’s the same people every time with the only change being the weather, really. Her husband goes out every night to gamble and carry on while she stays at home and minds the children while they sleep. She’s expected to be a proper woman and live her life under her husband’s thumb.

It’s very close to the beginning of the book when Edna goes through her “awaktening” and she begins to realize that she isn’t happy in her life. She married a man simply because her parents said no and had kids to please her husband back when she cared about what he thought. Once she realizes this, she frees herself and does as she pleases. But does this make her truly happy?

Yes, Edna goes through periods of intense joy when she thinks everything in the world is properly aligned and that she could fight the world. However, she also has days of equally intense sadness where she can’t bring herself to do anything. While this could just be a sign of mental illness (which is true), it also shows how tragic she truly is. She’s doing all the things she loves without restraint, and that should be a true sign that she’s living her best life. However, we can see that she’s not truly happy with anything that she does and that she’s going through the motions of being happy until she can’t anymore. Which ultimately ends in her suicide.

Many people read said suicide as a way of release for her, which is true in a way. She doesn’t have to live under the constant stress she was under while living with her husband and children or the memory of her love that would never be. But therein lies her tragedy. She has almost everything she’s ever wanted and it still feels like she’s living in a cage and the only way to free herself is through ending her life. That is the real tragedy of Edna. She’s trapped in her own head.

Chopin’s novel presented a rebellious and independent awakening of the character Edna Pontellier. Edna discovered herself in some way or the other in every chapter. Her discoveries were followed by the desire to be independent and to cater to her own needs instead of others. Chopin showed how Edna’s character initially unhappily conformed to societal expectations. She was to serve her husband, be his possession and take care of her children. 

Edna had something to learn from everyone she met at Green Isle. Her friend Adele Ratignolle was someone Edna was able to open up to. Even though Adele was a married Creole whose life centered around her husband and her family, she helped Edna learn how to candidly express herself. Edna had always been the girl who kept to herself. She was not the friendliest with her sisters either. So a little gesture of closeness from Adele helped Edna open up about her repressed thoughts. And then there was Robert, who Edna was very much in love with. To say Robert awakened the kind of Edna in Edna that is happy and joyful would not be completely accurate. The process of this awakening in Edna was gradual. And everyone around her contributed to that. 

Edna’s self-discovery and need for independence were not only associated with disliking her husband’s company or being in love with Robert, but it was also about being in love with herself and everything around her. She enjoyed the idea of being Edna, and not just a wife or a mother. The solitude and independence that Edna acquired were about herself. She prioritized her well-being over anyone else’s. There was another character in Chopin’s novel that acquires solitude – it was the lady in black on the background. The lady in black lived a life as her husband’s possession. Because her life was centered around him, losing him left her alone and lonely. Her identity was described by her husband and she connected with the world through him. Her solitude referred to withdrawal from life. Her silence resembled a lack of individuality. Even though the topic of solitude comes here in both the cases of the lady in black and Edna, they both exemplified two very different kinds of solitude. 

The lovers often seen at the beach symbolized the happiness and passionate love that a woman experiences before she dives into the world of obligations. Mrs. Pontellier walked away from that very world of obligations. She allowed herself to enjoy her urges and freedom. She let herself be free during her time with Alcee but did not allow herself to be dominated by him. She retained her individuality.

At the end of the novel, Robert’s inability to enter the forbidden relationship and Adele’s words pushed Edna into thinking that she acted on selfishness. This may have awakened a sense of remorse in Edna but Robert’s rejection or the worry for her kids did not push Edna to take her own life. Her suicide perhaps was not a latent remorse dwelling within Edna but the need for ultimate independence. Edna’s independence was always accompanied by solitude. It helped her with discovering herself. Perhaps Edna was at the end of her self-discovery journey. And once this journey came to an end, Edna did not find any reason to keep on walking that path. She knew herself, she knew freedom and she knew love – what more was there for her to see?

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.

Though not a mother-woman, and not fitting of most common turn-of-the-century characteristics of a married woman, Edna Pontellier is an incredibly sensitive and complex character. It is interesting to see the ways in which she remains, for the most part, emotionally detached from her husband and children (save a few outbursts of affection), while at the same time she performs, physically, the role of mother, housewife, and socialite. The first interaction between Mr. and Mrs. Pontellier, in which Mr. Pontellier regards his wife “as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage,” (Chopin, 3), Edna does not speak. She simply holds up her hands in question and waits for her husband to return her rings. I found it interesting that she remained quiet until he gave her back the jewelry, which likely included her wedding ring, that could symbolize his ownership and control over her, and thus his permission for her to speak. I thought this could also be a symbol of the relationship between the pair and how it represents Edna’s complacency, in the beginning, with her situation; she is confined to the role that her husband has designated her and though she may set it aside for a little while, to go swimming or walking down the beach, she never fully leaves it behind. 

The Pontellier children are not mentioned until page 3 when they are described as belonging to Mr. Pontellier: “Mr. Pontellier’s two children were there–sturdy little fellows of four and five.” Their introduction is brief and provides little insight as to what the children are like. Their names are not given for several pages.  Throughout the novel, the boys often fall to the back of Edna’s mind, forgotten, until they move suddenly or cry out for her. “She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them… Feeling secure regarding their happiness and welfare, she did not miss them except with an occasional intense longing. Their absence was a sort of relief, though she did not admit this, even to herself. It seemed to free her of a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her,” (Chopin, 28). This passage revealed to me an emotional disconnect between Edna and the rest of her world, a streak of tenacity that is seen several times more. She explains to Madame Ratignolle, on page 72, “I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself.” Though it became evident, to me at least, later in the novel that Mrs. Pontellier suffered from mental illness that caused her to experience manic-like symptoms, which seem to make her question several aspects of her existence, she does not falter from this belief of her self, or from her unwillingness to part with it. 

As she becomes more independent and self-actualized, Edna becomes more resistant to the physical roles and duties that she once performed. When she wishes to lay outside, in the hammock, and her husband presses her to come in the house, she grows angry. “She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she then did,” (Chopin, 47). Later in the novel, when Edna’s father comes to visit and witnesses a scene of her resistance towards her husband, he tells Mr. Pontellier, “You are too lenient, too lenient by far, Leonce… Authority, coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down good and hard; the only way to manage a wife. Take my word for it,” (Chopin, 109). It is interesting to me, how men’s perspectives are performed in this novel because they seem so outdated but there are still many men who would agree with Mr. Pontellier and his wife’s father, though perhaps they wouldn’t phrase it so bluntly. 

The poignancy of this novel is not in how it differs from today’s societal expectations of women, but how it aligns with them: women are often expected to fulfill womanly duties; manage their households, their husbands, their jobs, and of course to be beautiful, and thin (but never too thin) and yet to have curves (but never too many). We are expected to be feminine but never show too much emotion, encouraged to be the “boss” but never more so than our male counterparts, for fear of giving offense. Edna Pontellier saw and felt all of these expectations when she was awakened, but it seems to me that she did not know how to cope with the weight of them; she could not know what she did and still perform her duties for her children and husband and friends without sacrificing her self. Though not explicitly written on the page, it is likely that her newfound knowledge and unwillingness to sacrifice drove her to suicide. On page 177, as she swims towards the horizon, one of the last of her thoughts is one of defiance: “They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul.” There is also the idea that she knew the repercussions of her actions, and how they would affect her family. More specifically, how they would affect her children. As she mentioned several times, she was always willing to sacrifice her life and material possessions for her sons, just not herself, so it would make sense that in order to protect them from her actions, and not sacrifice the only thing that she wasn’t willing to give up for them, she would give her life for them. I know that the text never explicitly states Edna died, but I find it interesting that where suicide (even if only implied), is usually considered a selfish action, in Edna’s case it was possibly the most selfless thing she could have done, given the societal expectations of the time, but still served her purposes. I think that is what makes the final scene of The Awakening so interesting; the tension between her selfishness and her selflessness. 

And the ladies, selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontillier was the best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontillier was forced to admit she could think of none better. (pg. 11)

This isn’t the first time we see Edna Pontillier’s deep-rooted dissatisfaction with her lot in life, but this line, at least in my reading, set the tone for the rest of the book.

Leonce Pontillier believes his wife to be a bad mother. He criticizes her every opportunity he gets. When confronted with her unusually irritable and asocial moods, his worry is not about her as an individual, but about her neglected roles of hostess and homemaker, which impede his own social climb. His solutions to this were to scold her as if she were a child (pg. 87) and to ask a doctor to assess her in secret (pg. 102), again not for her sake, but for his own. Even upon his learning that she may leave him and their children, “He was simply thinking of his financial integrity… [Edna’s departure] might do incalculable mischief to his business prospects.” (pg. 143) All of this, and she believes he truly is the best husband she can find.

Throughout the novel, Mrs. Pontillier is fixated most often on what she cannot have. Even when we learn of how she and Leonce ended up married, we learn far more of the tragedian with whom she had been infatuated (pg. 26-27), with our narrator even telling us “The hopelessness of it colored it with the lofty tones of a great passion.” (pg. 26) This pattern of thinking continues into her relationship with Robert, with her fixation on him seeming to stem mainly from his newfound lack of presence in her life. Even her affair with Arobin seems to mainly focus on the fact that she would be better off to stay true to her husband. This stubborn contrarianism is a direct manifestation of her desire to be in control of her life as an individual.

For any woman who had been made for the role of 1890’s wife, wealthy, devoted Mr. Pontillier likely would be the ideal husband. For Mrs. Pontillier, someone so perfectly suited for the lifestyle of upper middle-class New Orleans would be eternally at odds with what she wanted from her life. The problem was not with her, or even with Leonce. The problem was Edna’s unfortunate timing of life. Trapped in and dissatisfied with what she believes are the best circumstances she can attain, we can hardly blame Edna for leaping into the sea.

The circumstances surrounding Edna’s death at the end of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening have long been a topic of debate among literary scholars and readers. The ending of the novel is left open to interpretation since the text does not explicitly state Edna died. However, the most widely believed notion is that Edna committed suicide. This is likely the end of Edna’s life because throughout the novel Edna becomes more despondent and depressed. This theme beings in early in the novel when “An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness filled her whole being with a vague anguish.” (Chopin 9)

 Following this event, Edna grows increasingly more detached from her husband, kids, housework, and other social obligations. After her husband leaves for a long business trip, she gets worse. Dissatisfied by her duties as a wife and mother, Edna sends her children away for the summer and even moves into a smaller home. She also has small affairs with two different men. Although there are small moments of feverish like joy, one can clearly interpret that Edna was mentally ill, displaying classic signs of Bipolar Disorder or Manic-Depression. Even though no clinical diagnosis is given, additional support for this belief is present in the work when she is approached by Doctor Mandelet. He urges her to make an appointment with him to seek treatment so she can discuss her feelings. She, however, refuses to take his advice. 

Enda is dealing with a constant internal struggle with her identity throughout the novel. The realization that she will never be content with her life, as a wife and mother,  in a depressive phase of her illness is what ultimately led Edna into the water, to end her struggle and end her life.

Among the high society creoles at the Grand Isle, there is one young Spanish girl who resides there, Mariequita. She is described to have a “round, sly, piquant face and pretty black eyes” and small hands in contrast to her “broad and course” feet (Chapter 12). Although not much is known about Mariequita’s past, it is made clear that she has a reputation. During a conversation with Mademoiselle Reisz, Edna learns that Robert and Victor got in a physical fight over her. Mademoiselle Reisz goes on to say, “Oh, she’s a sly one, and a bad one, that Mariequita” (Chapter 16). While she was on the boat with Edna, she was, “deprecatory at one moment, appealing to Robert. She was saucy the next, moving her head up and down, making “eyes” at Robert and making “mouths” at Beaudelet” (Chapter 12).

 
Edna seems to be disapproving of the young Spanish girl, but Mariequita does have some influence on her character development. For one, Mariequita is someone that acts freely with no apologies and doesn’t concern herself with other’s opinions. Edna is captivated with Mariequita when they meet, staring at her up and down, particularly at her feet which Mariequita “did not strive to hide” even with the “sand and slime between her toes” (Chapter 12) This freedom in behavior is something Edna craves and develops more and more as her story continues. Her observations of Mariequita acting with autonomy and free will was an early inspiration to Edna on her path to independence.

 
Edna was not the only one who was influenced by Mariequita, Robert was too. During their conversation on the boat, Mariequita asks Robert if Edna is his sweetheart. He doesn’t say no, just that Edna is married with children to which she responds “Oh! well! Francisco ran away with Sylvano’s wife, who had four children. They took all his money and one of the children and stole his boat” (Chapter 12). Mariequita doesn’t think it is out of the question for a married woman to be with another man. If even subconsciously, Robert seemed to take this to heart. He makes several more plans with Edna that allow him to be alone with her. He realizes that he is in love with her, and in just a few chapters, he has run off to Mexico to avoid it.

It isn’t hard to see how Edna’s feelings for her children might not have been the most sincere. In the 19^th century, women were taught from a young age that eventually they would one day marry and have children, that it would be their greatest joy and their sole purpose in life. Whenever we see Edna being affectionate with her children, it’s usually in the presence of someone else—Robert, Madame Ratignolle, Leonce, the nurse; to me, it’s almost as if she is trying to prove to others, as well as herself, that she is a good and loving mother, that she doesn’t lack the loving and nurturing qualities thought to be inherent in a woman. Surely there is some true motherly affection there, but it is likely that the majority of it is more out of obligation—she had two children; now she must look after them and love them the way she’s always been told a mother must.

As the story progresses and Edna’s desire for independence grows, her relationship with her sons becomes even more distant; she spends many days by herself painting and eventually moves into her own little house. When she does interact with her children—posing for her pictures; Edna going to visit them in Iberville—it is fleetingly and on her own terms. She is drifting further and further away; though her love for them is always there, she continues to avoid more and more of her motherly duties and obligations until, at last, she chooses to end her life.

In a way, Edna ends up being right when she tells Madame Ratignolle, “I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself.” She ends up committing suicide because she knows now that everything will be different; she’s come to realize who she is and what she wants—to be free, unattached, fully independent—and knows that she cannot be that and be a mother at the same time; she won’t sacrifice who she truly is for her children. And so she ends up giving her life for them, perhaps because she believes that having no mother is better than having one who will never fully cherish them and love them in the way that they deserve.