MEANINGFUL?

A beautiful woman, fulfilled by everything a woman would dream of called Edna Pontellier is quickly introduced to readers by Kate Chopin in The Awakening. Since the first few chapters, female readers start to think, what is Chopin trying to tell us, when giving us a character like Edna in a 19^th century based novel? A female protagonist in the early 1800’s is like writing about a gay African American president in the United States during that same period. Because women were extremely underestimated during that time, and only until perhaps the late 1900’s have a handful of women been considered worth admiring.

So as a reader, I ask myself why is it that Chopin decided to compose a novel about a woman during the 1800’s, and why wasn’t she successful in her awakening? And I realize that the reason is because Chopin did not want a Jane Austen novel; where the main character got exactly what she wanted. Chopin wanted a historically accurate story where the character failed, because she was ignorant to what she should have done in the eyes of a XXI century reader.  That is why, in the discussions of the novel, all I could think about to describe Edna’s immature behavior was saying that she acted like a teenage girl, thinking only of herself, ignoring society’s boundaries, and failing because she did not manage to change anyone else beside herself during her awakening.

People often look for the meaning of what they read. In this case, readers were in search of something bigger- the meaning of the author’s intention. After hours of thorough discussion, I find it simple to state that what Chopin did with Edna Pontellier’s death was no other than a message saying that change must come slowly, and it must come with the mere purpose to change more than one subject. Or else that change will be unaccredited, and death will come soon and it will change nobody. Or else, one becomes Edna.