Podcast appearances and mentions of edna pontellier

Support our Podcasts: https://libri-vox.org/donate Kate Chopin's 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. While on vacation at Grand Isle, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, Edna befriends the talented pianist Mlle. Reisz and the sympathetic Robert Lebrun, both of whom will influence her startling life choices. Chopin's novel created a scandal upon its original publication and effectively destroyed her writing career. Now, however, it is considered one of the finest American novels of the 19th century. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/librivox1/support

Kate Chopin's 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. While on vacation at Grand Isle, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, Edna befriends the talented pianist Mlle. Reisz and the sympathetic Robert Lebrun, both of whom will influence her startling life choices. Chopin's novel created a scandal upon its original publication and effectively destroyed her writing career. Now, however, it is considered one of the finest American novels of the 19th century.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Kate Chopin's 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. While on vacation at Grand Isle, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, Edna befriends the talented pianist Mlle. Reisz and the sympathetic Robert Lebrun, both of whom will influence her startling life choices. Chopin's novel created a scandal upon its original publication and effectively destroyed her writing career. Now, however, it is considered one of the finest American novels of the 19th century.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Kate Chopin's 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. While on vacation at Grand Isle, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, Edna befriends the talented pianist Mlle. Reisz and the sympathetic Robert Lebrun, both of whom will influence her startling life choices. Chopin's novel created a scandal upon its original publication and effectively destroyed her writing career. Now, however, it is considered one of the finest American novels of the 19th century.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Kate Chopin's 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. While on vacation at Grand Isle, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, Edna befriends the talented pianist Mlle. Reisz and the sympathetic Robert Lebrun, both of whom will influence her startling life choices. Chopin's novel created a scandal upon its original publication and effectively destroyed her writing career. Now, however, it is considered one of the finest American novels of the 19th century.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Kate Chopin's 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. While on vacation at Grand Isle, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, Edna befriends the talented pianist Mlle. Reisz and the sympathetic Robert Lebrun, both of whom will influence her startling life choices. Chopin's novel created a scandal upon its original publication and effectively destroyed her writing career. Now, however, it is considered one of the finest American novels of the 19th century.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In Great American Novel Podcast Episode 18, our final Season 2 episode, we plunge ourselves into New Orleans of the fin de siècle in Kate Chopin's 1899 novel The Awakening. Edna Pontellier wrestles with a life she never chose, beset by a bore of a husband, a flimsy excuse for a lover, and a patriarchal society which has tried to restrain her choices to almost nothing. One of the great early feminist novels, we discuss its slow but steady climb from obscurity to ubiquity.The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture.  Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we'll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration.  Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter.  All opinions are their own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.  We may be contacted at greatamericannovelpodcast (@) gmail.com.

The Awakening is an American classic, first published in 1899. The novel's focus is the inner life of Edna Pontellier, a 29 year-old a married woman and mother of two boys, whose husband Léonce is a New Orleans businessman of Louisiana Creole heritage. The book's notoriety derives from Edna's refusal to accept the role that American society of the late 19th century has allocated to her. After the controversy that greeted it on publication, The Awakening sank from view until it was rediscovered by a new generation of readers after the Louisiana State University Press published Chopin's collected works in 1969. Now acclaimed as a feminist classic – it was published in the UK in 1978 by The Women's Press and is now both a Penguin and an Oxford classic, a Canongate Canon, and one of the most popular university set texts in America. We're joined by the Irish American writer Timothy O'Grady and publisher Rachael Kerr to find out why. This episode also finds Andy revelling in Beware of the Bull, a new biography of the incomparable Yorkshire singer-songwriter Jake Thackray (Scratching Shed), while John enjoys Louise Willder's Blurb Your Enthusiasm, the product of her twenty-five years as a copywriter at Penguin. Timings: 04:57 Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder 11:00 Beware of the Bull: The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray by Paul Thompson and John Watterson 18:59 The Awakening by Kate Chopin * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm * If you'd like to support the show, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/backlisted

Kate Chopin - The Awakening - Episode 4 - Symbolism, Romanticism, Nihilism And A Dissonant Ending!   Hi, I'm Christy Shriver. We're here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.    I'm Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our final episode in our four-part series of Kate Chopin's masterpiece The Awakening.  There is a lot layered in such a short book.  In episode 1, we discuss Chopin's life, we introduce the concept of “local color” and we arrive on the colorful shores of a summer resort village in Grand Isle, Louisiana.  Episode 2 we spend time on Grand Isle.  We meet Edna, Adele, Mr. Pontellier, Robert Lebrun and Madame Reisz.  We watch Edna awaken to an inner awareness she had never understood before, and we see this awakening occur through a physical sensuality she has never experienced before.  She learns to swim.  Edna Pontellier leaves Grand Isle a very different person than how she arrived at the beginning of her summer. Episode  3 we start with chapter 18 as Edna arrives back home in New Orleans.  Nothing would be the same.  She cannot  conform to the roles she has previously played.  She does not fit into the culture; she doesn't want to anymore.  She abandons almost all that she had previously identified with and experiments with different lifestyles: the arts, the horse races, men, ultimately she decides to leave the ritzy Esplanade street and take up residence in what she calls her Pigeon House just around the corner.  Today, we begin with chapter 26 and we follow Edna's progression through the end of the book.       Stylistically Chopin wrote what we call a realistic novel. The story, the settings, the characters truthfully represent the real world.  Grand Isle really exists and the resort there existed in the way she described it.  The same is true for Esplanade Street.  The details are accurate as Chopin represents the reality the great city of New Orleans at the turn of the century.  The French language, the customs, the way people behave, the races, the music, even the Song, “Ah, si tu savais”…is a real song. All of these things reflect reality.   However, as we get farther to the end of the novel, and as the reader gets more submerged into Edna's perspective, things get more and more romanticized.  Objects that seemed liked just objects at the beginning are now understood to be metaphorical and are symbolic.  We notice that objects are repeating and evolving- they are motifs.   In other words, the objects are still what they have always been, but they have taken on to mean MORE than just what they originally meant.  We understand things to be symbols in two ways.  The first way is whey the author spends an inordinate amount of time describing something that maybe isn't THAT important otherwise.  A second way is when we notice something to keep showing up over and over again.  Here's one example  There is music in the beginning.  It's described in detail, but notice just how much music there is in this book.  Notice how much time is devoted to describing it.   There is music in the middle and there is music at the end.  It means something, but of course it's up to us to draw our own conclusions as to what.  The birds work the same way.  There are birds on the first page, they come back in the middle and there is a bird on the last page.  It means something.  Food and meals are often symbolic.  Meals are archetypal symbols for fellowship.   Chopin use meals as a way to sort track what's going on with Edna and her relationships throughout the story.  Following the symbols helps us understand the universality of the story.  The biggest symbol is the sea, and by the end of the book it takes on mythic proportions.  The sea, as we pointed out in the beginning is personified.  It's alive.  But by the end, if we look carefully, we see in the description that the ocean is described as a serpent- uh ohh.  That's a Biblical symbol- but even in the Bible a serpent is not just one thing.  But it's not just the Bible that that is alluded here in these ocean references.  Edna as called Venus, and Venus emerges from the sea. What is that about? Although everything is still realistic- there are no superheroes or magic or pirates or fairies of any kind, there symbols somehow feel allegorical; is Edna even a real person or is she a type?  I know that's a little hyperbolic, but not by much.  Today as we end our discussion, I'd like to see this book as indeed political; there certainly is that side of it, but that is just the surface.  It goes beyond that to ask questions that are personal.  But before we can do that, we must first address the political.  Chopin was, by her very essence, a woman in the vein of what Europeans of her day called the “New Women” of the fin de siècle.    Garry, Chopin, was a well-read French speaker and reader very attune to the political, social and literary movements of her day, but we are not- although I will say, I've learned a lot about new women by watching them evolve in Downton Abbey, but what is a “new woman” and what does the term “fim de siècle” mean beyond the obvious translation of end of the century.    The term “New Woman” was actually an invention of the British media- it's not an American thing- and you're right, it's showcased in a lot of period pieces.  Here's one tell, a new woman might be the one riding a bicycle as a display of her independence.    A bicycle.  That's funny.      You'd have been the first to get your hands on one, I'm sure.  Think about it; just being able to wear clothes that would allow you to ride it would be liberating.  Anyway, the term first came out in the The Woman's Herald in August of 1893.  To use the newspaper's words, “woman suddenly appears on the scene of man's activities, as a sort of new creation, and demand a share in the struggles, the responsibilities and the honurs of the world, in which, until now, she has been a cipher.”  This feminist vision, as you can imagine was highly controversial and threatening to the status quo.  Among other things, it involved a new definition of female sexuality.  Some considered this alone to be the beginning of the apocalypse- the world was certainly turning upside down.  The mainstream media portrayed the new woman as a mannish brute towering over men- someone who is extremely hideous and monstrous- something most women obviously would not want to embrace- very propagandic.  Opponents were making caricatures as negative as possible of these “independent women”  wearing masculine clothes and pursuing unwomanly pursuits like sports, politics or higher education.     How dare they?    There was a lot of cigar smoking in these pictures.  These were meant to be negative images; the women would have angry faces, maybe with their hands on their hips scowling at the reader.  But in the feminist media, the new woman was portrayed very differently.  The traits were the exact same but portrayed in a positive way.  The new woman in these publications  was portrayed as a social warrior defending her home, using her political positions, social standings to compliment traditional household duties.  The idea being a new woman didn't neglect her family she was a better provider and defender of self and family because of it.  The main difference between these new visions of a new woman had to do with what you do with motherhood.   Femininist media created images of women incorporating traditionally male domains not necessarily excluding motherhood.   The big political interests that stand out were women's suffrage and property rights. Women were interested in careers outside the home and higher education.   Women's periodicals emerged with pretty large readerships, and not all of these readers were women.  Women were publicly and in writing asking other women to openly express their views on contemporary life- this was new.  The question of the era was “What is the role of the ‘new woman'?” I quote the North America Review here, “the great problem of the age is how to emancipate woman and preserve motherhood.”   In the 1890s, the new woman wanted to be what some called a “respected radical”.      And of course, we don't have to get far into The Awakening to see these political and social concerns embedded in Chopin's work.  She is a voice speaking to this socio-political moment in time, and she's commenting in a serious way on women's struggle to speak- Edna struggles to speak for herself at everyone point in the book.  Interestly enough, Edna didn't have a mother and doesn't know what to do with motherhood.  She had no personal role model.    I noticed that, and it matters psychologically when we watch Edna vacillate at the end of the book.  Chopin created a character of extreme economic privilege for her day, yet still, Edna has terrible trouble articulating even to herself what she feels or what she wants.   The reasons for this are not simply resolved.  Chopin seems to suggest to me that for sure there are political, social and cultural adjustments that must be made giving women more rights, but that's just one part of it.  Chopin illustrates this from the vantage point of a woman.  There must be a redefinition of respectable womanhood that is not so polarizing.  Here there are only two versions of respectable women-  Madame Reisz and the other Adele Ratignole.     By chapter 26 Edna clearly understands she is not one or the other, but there is an inarticulate lostness.  Where does Edna fit in?  She tells Madame Reisz that she's moving out of her home, and for a brief moment you wonder if she's got some sort of radical plan, except she doesn't and her reasons don't even make a lot of sense.  They're emotional. She's literally moving  “just two steps away in a little four-room house around the corner.  It looks so cozy, so inviting a restful, whenever I pass by, and it's for rent.  I'm tired looking after that big house.  It seemed seemed like mine, anyway- like home.  It's too much trouble.  I have to keep too many servants.  I am tired bothering with them.”  She goes on to say when Madame Reisz doesn't buy that explanation, “The house, the money, that provides for it are not mine.  Isn't that enough reason?”    Obviously those are NOT reasons enough- what does she get out of this move? When Madame Reisz asks how her husband reacted to this plan this is her response, “I have not told him.   I only thought of it this morning.”      Very impulsive.    SOO impulsive.  I'm ashamed to say, I know people that do things like this, but this is not my vision of the real pioneers of the women's movement- not today or from the turn of the century- women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Isadora Duncan, Clara Burton, Mary Wollstonecraft- they aren't anything like Edna Pontellier.    Well, no they are not, Edna has some deficiencies for sure, and they express themselves in various ways.  One of these is expressed through this confusion of passion with relationship like we see with Robert LeBrun.   She indulges in fantasy which is fun, of course, and the idea of Robert is a wonderful fantasy.    This is something else that frustrates me, personally, with Edna. I keep wanting to say, “snap out of it, child!”  Chopin builds this tension but she never lets Edna snap out of it.  And even though the title of this book is The Awakening, and it is true is that Edna awakens continuously throughout the book, There is another sense paradoxically where Edna is always asleep literally and figuratively.  Edna is not a villain; Edna is not a pathetic character; Edna is a realistic character who vacillates all the time between this illusion and reality.  She's continually uncovering things that haven't been real, but then constructing things that are totally fake- like her life in this pigeon house or her relationship with Robert. Unpacking Edna is seeing a real life- a struggle. Chopin's evolutionary character awakens from a very female - not a male one, not a neutered life; the complexity derives from realities that are unique to women, specifically those from the turn of the century, but the social and culture implications aside, in universal terms, what does it mean for Edna to be in love with Robert?  To love someone means something in a universal way.  People love in all cultures in all times all around the world.  For a woman to love a man as she claims to love Robert, what does she mean?  Is she saying she desires a life with him; does she want to take on any responsibility for his happiness or good?  That is what I find confusing, because Edna doesn't seem to be doing that for anyone.  In what sense is Edna “in love” or should we not take her at her word on this?        Ha!  Do we take anyone at their word when they are “in love”?  Of course, when she is asked to describe what she means, she describes the biochemical addiction we all feel when we can't get enough of another person.  That experience is overwhelming for anyone; and Chopin has gone to a lot of trouble to show us that Edna has never been “in love” before.  Edna is a woman who recently just turned on her feelings.  Turning on our feelings is important, and it is very sad that it was so long in happening for her.  Contrary to popular opinion, feelings are good.  To experience feelings is not a sign of weakness. Not taking into account her feelings is what got her into a loveless marriage to begin with.  We have to learn to incorporate our emotions if we are going to live as a whole individual- a person with no dead spots.  Edna has lived from her childhood onward with lots of dead spots.  This has handicapped her in many ways.  In this case, what does it mean for Edna in Edna's mind to love Robert LeBrun?  What does it mean if he loves her?  I'm not sure the relationship between these two is what is important for Chopin.  It appears to be the backdrop of a larger issue?  Love is not the end game for Edna; passion was the catalyst to her awakening, to be sure, but the relationship between Edna and Robert is not a Romeo and Juliet type story.  The Awakening is not a love story.    Indeed, Madame Reisz recognizes that as well.  Madame Reisz calls Edna “Ma Reine” in chapter 26.  She then asks, “Why do you love him when you ought not?”       And why does that term “ma reine” draw your attention?    Because that term means, “My queen”, and that seems to be more in line what Edna wants instead of a relationship with Robert LeBrun.  What has Edna discovered in this world.  She's discovered she doesn't want to be woman-mother.  She discovered she doesn't really want to be artist woman.  She's trying out what it's like to be a “man” in some ways.  But really what she wants is to be Woman-queen.  Which is a nice role- I'd like that to be that one as well.    Ha!  Not a Disney princess.    Heck no- I'm all for mother-queen.  But here's Edna'a problem.  She's not prepared nor does she seem creative enough to invent this role for herself in the actual real world in which she lives; she likely can't conceptualize it.  This illusion of a mother-queen will be the model from here to the end of the book.  The thing is, it's not real; Edna is creating an illusion.  In fact, this whole book is a discussion on illusion versus reality.  What did Edna awaken to, if not to the understanding that her entire life was an illusion- she was living an inauthentic life.  Except, look at what she does in response to that?  She's building more illusion- exhibit A-  this relationship with Robert- if it is anything it is an expression of illusion.      Edna doesn't need a fantasy.  She needs hope.  She needs to see her own potential- a creative vision of what she can become, something she would like to become- if not mother, if not artist, if not horse-racer, if not socialite, then what.    In chapter 27, Edna says this “Don't you know the weather prophet has told us we shall see the sun pretty soon?”  The sun is a very ancient and universal symbol.  It represents hope.  It represents creativity; it's a male archetypal symbol, btw, the sun represents energy.  If you remember, Edna can only paint in the sun, and that's exactly right.  That's all of us, we all can only create in the sun.  We can only move forward when we have hope.  The Sun gives us life and without it we live in darkness, without hope.  Edna is wrestling with finding hope, but that seems to be problematic because she can't even decide if she's a good person or a bad person.  Listen to what she says to Arobin, “I'm going to pull myself together for a while and think- try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly I don't know.  By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilish wicked specimen of the sex.  But some way I can't convince myself that I am.  I must think about it.”      It is in that line that I think Chopin enraptures many female readers.  I want to read it again, “  By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilish wicked specimen of the sex.  But some way I can't convince myself that I am.  I must think about it.”      In other words, the world tells me I am a bad person because I'm not conforming properly.  I'm not doing the right things; but something inside of me defies that.  I don't feel devilish.  But I'm told I am, and there is my disconnect.    Indeed-and isn't it interesting that it is here at this point that Edna revisits something Madame Reisz has apparently told her previously but we are only getting to see in this context after this confession, “When I left her today, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said, ‘the bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.  It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.”    I agree, but what kind of bird is Edna?  Madame Reisz is not using language that suggest Edna IS this kind of woman.  She's challenging her to be a certain way.  She's saying if Edna wants to have a certain outcome, she must display certain characteristics.  But, notice the next thing that happens, Edna and Arobin kiss passionately.  “It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really responded.  It was a flaming torch that kindled desire.”  Chopin is very delicate in how she expresses the implied sex scene.  The entire chapter is very short- very different than how Shonda Rimes does these things in Bridgerton.  Let's read it.    Chapter 28    I know this is not the majority view here, but this is not only Edna asserting independence.  This is Edna running into more illusion. From here, she immediately moves out of Leonce's house, but not without running up a crazy expensive bill with a lavish dinner party.  Arobin calls it a coup d'etat.  “It will be day after tomorrow.  Why do you call it the coup d'etat?  Oh! It will be a very fine; all my best of everything- crystal, silver, and gold. Sevres. Flowers, music and champagne to swim in.  I'll let Leonce pay the bills.  I wonder what he'll say when he sees the bills.”    This dinner party is very strange.  For a book so short, why should so many pages be devoted to a dinner party that is essentially meaningless in terms of plot development.      It is long.  One critic pointed out that it's literally, “the longest sustained episode in the novel.”     So, why?  It does not develop the plot; it does not develop any characters; nothing provocative is uttered.  What is going on?    Well!!!  Meals are never just meals- not in literature, not in the movies.  In fact, food is never just food.  It's almost always symbolic of something.  Food is so essential to life, in fact it IS life,  but meals are essential to community.  They don't just symbolize fellowship- they ARE fellowship.  This Thursday night we are going to celebrate our niece, Lauren,  graduating from Collierville High School, and how are we going to do this, we are going to eat together.  Eating together is bonding.  With that in mind, notice how many meals are consumed in this story.      So, what's with the dinner Edna holds?  Her family isn't there.  Her husband isn't there.  Adele, her closest friend, isn't even there.  Many literary critics have suggested, and I honestly think there is validity to this, that Chopin is creating a parody of Jesus' last supper.  Edna has invited a select 12 to join her on her birthday dinner.  There's irony there.  In some sense, it's not just a day where she is celebrating turning 29.  She sees herself as being reborn- her birth…day.  She is celebrating her departure, but unlike Jesus' humble meal in the upper room before his crucifixion and resurrection- Edna goes high dollar.  She sits at the end of the table presiding over her dinner guests, who all have a magnificent time, btw. She wears a cluster of diamonds she had just received that morning from her husband.   There is a specially designed cocktail her father invented for her sister's wedding that she didn't attend; there are multiple courses, everyone has a special chair.  Everything was queenly.  Let me read the description of Edna, “The golden shimmer….    Page 103    Madame Reisz on her way out at the end of the party again says this, “Bonne nuit, ma reine, soyez sage.”  Translated- Good night, my queen, be wise.”    Well, you've made your case…she is playing the part of the queen. But who are the other people in this charade?  Specifically, why is  Mrs. Highcamp there who we know she doesn't like, and why is she weaving a garland of yellow and red roses and laying it over Victor…according to Chopin transforming Victor into a vision of oriental beauty, his cheeks the color or crushed grapes and his dusty eyes glowed with a languishing fire. After that she drapes a while silk scarf on him. It's just weird…and pagan feeling…nothing like the Lord's Supper of the bible, if you were trying to make that comparison.      No, it's the very opposite. That's why critics say it's a parody of Jesus' last supper.  It's imitating but not recreating.  It feels pagan, doesn't it?   Edna is Queen but she has no stated purpose; she is not Jesus sacrificing his life for the sins of the world.  Another moment of parody is when Victor, Judas' like, quickly falls out of favor or betrays her so to speak by singing a song Edna associates with Robert.  But he is shut down.    In the chapters that follow, we see Leonce saving face by remodeling the house as a way of explaining Edna's odd behavior and moving out of the family home.  Edna feels happy about what she's done.  Of course, these are all feelings but “Every step which she took to relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual.  She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life.”   Again, Chopin never gets far away from the idea that Edna is trying to understand for herself what is real and she is doing this by stripping down, an image we will see all the way to the end.    And yet, the text never clarifies exactly what it is that Edna is learning about the world and herself.  She draws no conclusions, makes no provisions, takes on no responsibilities.  Reality is an immovable thing.  It is not something we simply escape- that is not possible.      Well, I'm not sure Edna knows that.  She visits her children and weeps when she ssees them. Let me quote here, “She lived with them a whole week long, giving them all of herself, and gathering, and filling. Herself with their young existence.”  She tells then about the Pigeon house and the kids get real very quickly.  They ask her where they would sleep, where papa would sleep. Edna's answer betrays her unwillingness to problem solve.  She says and I quote, “the fairies would fix it all right.”      Edna rejects reality over and over again.  She responds with fantasy at every point.  Madame Ratignolle recognizes this.  In chapter 33 she pays Edna a visit at the pigeon house.  She asks about the dinner party.  She warns her about her behavior with Arobin, but she also makes Edna promise that when the baby comes, Edna would come be a part of the delivery.  Before leaving she says this to Edna, “In some ways you seem to me like a child, Edna. You seem to act without a certain amount of reflection which is necessary in this life.”      Adele is referring to whatever is going on with Arobin, but really, the relationship with Robert is the epitome of her fantasy.  As long as Robert is flirting with no goal- like he did on Grand Isle, Edna is in love with him.  On Grand Isle they share a meal together.  They talk about spirits and pirates.  She loves that.  But here in New Orleans, Robert approaches Edna with a desire to be honest and she rejects that.  The text says that in some way “Robert seemed nearer to her off there in Mexico than when he stood in her presence, and she had touched his hand”.   After Edna's birthday we see no more communal meals, Edna eats alone- there is no more fellowship at this point really with anyone.  Edna invites Robert to eat with her at a little restaurant called “Catiche”.  Edna requests a plate and puts food in front of him, but he doesn't eat a morsel. He walks her home and comes inside.  Edna kisses him.  He confesses his love and how he is tormented because Edna is not free.  Let's read this exchange.    “Something put into my head that you cared for me; and I lost my senses.  I forgot everything but a wild dream of you some way becoming my wife.”    Your wife!    “Religion, loyalty, everything would give way if only you cared.”    Then you must have forgotten that I was Leonce Pontellier's wife.”    “Oh I was demented, dreaming of wild, impossible things, recalling men who had set their wives free, we have heard of such things.”    Yes, we have heard of such things.”    There's a little more back and forth until we get to this line of Edna's, “You have been a very very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free!  I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not.  I give myself where I choose.  If he were to say “here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours, I should laugh at you both.”    He of course responds with, “What do you mean?”  He has no idea what Edna's talking about.      Exactly, and here is where the a plot complication makes things interesting.  Their conversation is interrupted when Madame Ratignolle's servant comes to say that Adelle is having her baby.  Edna leaves Robert.  She says this to Robert, “I love you.  Only you; no one but you.  It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream.”      Robert begs Edna, as if she really were Queen Edna.  He begs her to stay with him- to not go to Adelle.  This is kind reminiscient of the stereotypical female damsel in distress begging her hero to stay- except in revere.  She pulls away, promises to return and leaves him and  quote the text here, “longing to hold her and keep her.”      This Birth scene is symbolic in many ways.  It also is a return to the female reality.  Is there anything more real in this world than bringing life into it?  This birth scene reminds readers that this is a uniquely female story because this is one way men and women engage the world differently and there is no way around it. Motherhood and fatherhood are not the same.  Edna goes to Adelle and begins to feel uneasy. Let's read this paragraph from chapter 37.     Page 127    On the surface, it seems that Adele is hoping to inspire Edna to resume her role as a Woman-mother.  On the surface it seems that Edna is battling social conventions and her own sensuality.      Of course, the whole experience leaves her dazed.  The doctor walks her home, and I quote, “Oh well, I don't know that it matters after all.  One has to think of the children some time or other; the sooner the better.”  Let's read the rest of this dialogue between the doctor and Edna.    Page 128      Even at the end of the chapter, Edna cannot articulate her own thoughts, not even inside her own head.  Still she remembers Adele's voice whispering, “Think of the children; think of them.”  She meant to think of them; that determination had driven into her soul like a death wound- but not tonight.  Tomorrow would be time to think of everything.”    Of course, when she gets inside the pigeon house there is no Robert.  He left a note. “I love you. Good bye- because I love you.”  Edna grew faint; uttered no words and stayed up the entire night, apparently just staring at a flickering lamp.    Again, may I point out- light represents hope and hers is flickering.      Speaking just in a general sense, we are co-creators of our reality- our circumstances proscribe lots of things, but we create out of those circumstances and we know it.  And since we know this, no person can run away from his own innate moral obligation to live up to whatever potential we find inside of us.  Whatever we determine that to be.  We cannot run away from that reality.  No matter how hard we try to put it off until tomorrow, that sense of obligation to create something out of our lives is inside of us.  We can't run from it because it is not coming from outside of us.  Edna, in all of her confusion, and she, is very confused about a lot of things at various points in the book, but she never wavers about that.  She clearly says early on in the book, that she understood herself to have an obligation first and foremost to herself.  But what is that obligation- it is for her what it is for everyone.  She must meet her own potential.  We cannot fail at that.  If we feel we are failing at that, that's when despair sets in.      Edna looks at certain realities in her life and awakens to an awareness she doesn't want to face.  She sees obligations in her future- not opportunities.  She doesn't want tomorrow to come, but not going to bed does not put off the morning from arriving.      The end of the book circles back to where it starts- Grand Isle.  Except it is not the Grand Isle of the summer.  Archetypally, Spring represents new birth, summer represents youth; fall represents adulthood or maturity.  Grand Isle is still there, but the women from the summer resort are not.  It's barren. The sun and the warmth is not there either.  Edna returns to find Victor there.  She arrives to find that he's been telling Mariequita all about her birthday dinner.  He has described Edna and and I quote, “Venus rising from the foam”.  If you remember from your Roman mythology, Venus is the goddess of love and is said to have emerged full-grown from the ocean foam.  So read into that what you will.  Anyway Edna asks him to prepare a meal of fish.  She then leaves Victor for the beach for a swim.  If you recall, it was at this place where she had her first swim and experienced her first real awakening.  But now this beach is dreary and deserted.     Let's listen to the thoughts in Edna's head, “She had said it over and over to herself.  “Today it is Arobin' tomorrow it will be someone else.  It makes no difference to me.  It doesn't matter about Leonce Pontelllier- but Raoul and Etienne!”  She understood now clearly what she had meant long ago when she said to Adele Ratignolle that she would give up the unessential, but she would never sacrifice herself for her children.  Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never lifted. There was no one thing in the world that she desired.  There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone.  The children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her, who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul's slavery for the rest of her days.  But she knew a way to elude them.  She was not thinking of these things when she walked down to the beach.”    There's a lot of nihilism in those comments.  Edna has found nothing that excites her passion.  “There was no one thing that she desired” – that's the line that stands out.  Desire is the fuel of human behavior.  It's where we see our potential.  This is a huge expression of someone who has given up all desire to have responsibility for anyone or anything- and it is unthinking here.  She is completely detached to a degree that it's actually shocking.  I see why this book unsettled so many people.  We don't want to believe people can detach like this.  We know it's dangerous.     She wades out into this ocean because the seas is seductive.  It whispers, it clamours; it murmurs.  It invites her soul to want in the abysses of solitude.  Edna looks up to see a bird with a broken wing beating the air above and falling down disabled to the water.  She then takes off all of her clothes and stands naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun with the waves inviting her to come in, and so she does.  Let's read this final page.    Page 133      We notice right away the sea is a serpent about her ankle.  Most of us think of a serpent as a symbol for the devil, and that's true in the book of Genesis.  But that is not the only time we see a serpent in the Bible.  In the book of Exodus, the Israelites in the desert look up to a serpent on a stick for healing.  Archetypally a serpent is a symbol of rebirth.    Edna retreats into thoughts of her childhood which reminds me that Edna has no mother.  Honestly, this does not read like a suicide. I For one, think, Chopin leaves it completely open ended.  Can we be sure Edna even dies?  Chopin ends this book entirely unresolved.  It's disturbing.      It hinges on what you want to do with that ocean.  And scholars have come to zero consensus on how to understand this ending.  Oceans symbolically can be sources of self-awareness.  They can be places to find rebirth.  But, what's jarring about this ending is that there is nothing in Edna's characterization at any point in the book to suggest that Edna wants a beginning or even an ending for that matter.  Edna doesn't search for closure not one time in this story- even the bedtime story she tells her kids there's no ending.  Edna is not just rejecting society's roles for her; she seems to be rejecting herself as an individual here.  Do these final images of her childhood suggest she wants to start over or does she give up up?    When ending a good song, every musician knows you have to create closure at the end or you don't resolve the tension in the music.  Non musicians may not know that but they feel it when it happens. Try ending a song on the 5 chord.  And for a woman with such a keen sense of music, it seems Chopin purposely leaves her song unresolved.  There is no funeral; nobody on the beach; not even any thoughts of exit in Edna's mind.  There is nothing.  Instead, Edna is focused on all the repeating elements of her own life's story.  It is a totally directionless ending.    And that's what people love about it- it's messy and unresolved.  It's realistic but also kind of mythical.   I guess, if we want to we can finish the tale in our own minds.  We can either kill her off or revive her.  She either sinks into further illusion, or she awakens one final time into a creative reality.  The central motif of this book is this sleeping/waking thing that goes on the entire time.  And maybe that's where we find ourselves-- hopefully to a much lesser degree than Edna- the messiness of life sets in when we find ourselves oscillating between waking up and further deluding ourselves at some lost point in our lives.  We will make a mess of things (as Chopin says about Edna) – being a victim of forces without and forces within.  Yet what happens after we go into the ocean- or do we even dare?  I like to see this ending positively.  I like to think of Edna rising up and finding she CAN attach to other humans in a way where one does not consume the other.  She can find meaning in her children, in work, in art, in society.   She can find a way to make peace with her culture, her society, her limitations from without and within.  In my mind's eye, she arises out of the foam-like Venus to rob a term from Victor.  So, whether it's realistic or not- In my mind, Edna comes back up- A woman- Queen.  I know I'm adding extensively to the text and that is a terribly bad no no, but hopefully while she was under water listening to all those bees she came up with a good plan.      HA!  You do like to find the silver lining in every storm.  Well, thanks for spending time with us today.  We hope you enjoyed our final discussion on this very perplexing piece of literature.  Next episode, we move from Louisiana up the road to our home state of Tennessee to discuss the music and life of our own Dolly Parton, self-made woman of this generation, whose displays the very idea of local color in her music.  We would ask you to please share our podcast with a friend.  Email or text them a link.  Share a link on your social media.  That's how we grow.  Also, visit our website at www.howtolovelitpodcast.com for merchandise as well as free listening guides for teachers and students of English.      Peace out.                                     

Kate Chopin - The Awakening - Episode 3 - Edna Pontellier Battles The Forces Without Only To Meet The Forces Within!   Hi, I'm Christy Shriver and we're here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.    I'm Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our third episode discussing Kate Chopin's controversial novella, The Awakening.  Week 1 we introduced Chopin, her life and the book itself.  We talked about what a stir it made during her lifetime ultimately resulting in it being forgotten and then rediscovered midway through the 20th century.  Last week, we spent all of our time on the vacation resort island of Grand Isle.  We met Mr. ad Mrs. Pontellier, as well as the two women who represent got Edna, our protagonist, two alternating lifestyles.  Edna Pontellier, we were quick to learn, is not a happily married woman.  Her husband is outwardly kind to her, but readers are told outright that love and mutual respect was never part of the arrangement between these two.  Edna is indulged by Mr. Pontellier, for sure.  He gives her anything she wants in terms of money or material, but in exchange, she is his ornament, an expensive hobby, a pet even- something to be prized- or as Ibsen would describe it- a beautiful doll for his doll house.      The story starts in the summer at the vacation resort town of Grand Isle, Louisiana.  While vacationing on the island, Edna Pontellier experiences what Chopin terms “the awakening”.  She awakens to the understanding that she is not a pet or a doll in the doll house, and just like Nora in the The Doll's House, she decides she really doesn't want to be one anymore.     No, I guess if that were the only thing to this story, we'd have to say, Sorry Kate, Ibsen beat you by about 20 years.  In Ibsen's story, Nora awakens when her husband, Torvald, turns on her over money.      That's a good point, what awakens Edna in this book is not a marital crisis over money.  It is a crisis that awakens her, and it totally informs how she views her marriage, but it is a crisis concerning her husband at all that is the catalyst.   She is awakened to her own humanity by discovering her own sensuality.  I want to highlight that this awakening isn't overtly sexually provoked.  No man comes in and seduces Edna; she does not go off with a wild vacation crew.  She is left vulnerable, if you want to think about it that way, because of loveless marriage, but she is sensually and emotionally provoked through three  very different relationships- all of which affect her physically as well as emotionally.  The first is with a Creole woman, Adele Ratigntole, one with a younger Creole man, Robert LeBrun, and the third with the provocative music of Madame Reisz.  Experiences with these three awaken something in Edna that encourages maybe even forces her to rebel- rebel against her husband, against the culture, against the person she has always been, against the roles she has played, against everything that she has ever known.      The problem is- rebellion only takes you so far.  You may know what you DON'T want, but does that help you understand what you DO?  And this is Edna's problem.  Where do we go from here?     And so, in chapter 17, we return with the Pontellier's to their home in New Orleans.  And, as we have suggested before, New Orleans is not like any other city in America, and it is in these cultural distinctives of Creole life at the turn of the century that Chopin situates our protagonist.  But before we can understand some of the universal and psychological struggles Chopin so carefully sketches for us, we need to understand a little of the culture of this time period and this unusual place.  Garry, tell us a little about this world.  What is so special about Esplanade Street?    Well, one need only Google tourism New Orleans and a description of Esplanade street will be in the first lists of articles you run into.  Let me read the opening sentence from the travel website Neworleans.com    One of the quietest, most scenic and historic streets in New Orleans, Esplanade Avenue is a hidden treasure running through the heart of the city. From its beginning at the foot of the Mississippi River levee to its terminus at the entrance of City Park, Esplanade is a slow pace thoroughfare with quiet ambiance and local charm.  According to this same website, Esplanade Street, during the days of Chopin, functioned as “millionaire row”- which, of course is why the Pontelliers live there.    It actually forms the border between the French Quarter and the less exclusive Faubourg Marigny.  At the turn of the last century it was grand and it was populated by wealthy creoles who were building enormous mansions meant to compete with the mansions of the “Americans” on St. Charles Avenue.    “The Americans”?    Yes, that was the term for the non-Creole white people.  The ones that descended from the British or came into New Orleans from other parts of the US.     Esplanade Street was life at its most grand- there is no suffering like you might find in other parts of New Orleans.  The Pontelliers were wealthy; they were glamorous; these two were living competitively.      The first paragraph of chapter 17 calls the Pontellier mansion dazzling white. And the inside is just as dazzling as the outside. Mrs. Pontellier's silver and crystal were the envy of many women of less generous husbands.  Mr. Pontellier was very proud of this and according to our sassy narrator loved to walk around his house to examine everything.  He “greatly valued his possessions.  They were his and I quote “household gods.”    The Pontelliers had been married for six years, and Edna over this time had adjusted to the culture and obligations of being a woman of the competitive high society of Creole New Orleans.  One such obligation apparently centered around the very serious etiquette of calling cards and house calls.  This is something we're familiar with, btw, since we watch Bridgerton.  It was something we saw in Emma, too.  Garry, talk to us about the very serious social business of calling cards.     Well, this is first and foremost a European custom during this time period. It started with simple cards designed to announce a person's arrival, but as in all things human, it grew and grew into something much larger and subtextual- and of course, with rules.  During the Victorian era, the designs on the cards as well as the etiquette surrounding were elaborate.  A person would leave one's calling card at a friend's house, and by friend meaning a person in your community- you may or may not actually be friends. Dropping off a card was a way to express appreciation, offer condolences or just say hello.  If someone moved into the neighborhood, you were expected to reach out with a card, and a new arrival was expected to do the same to everyone else.      The process would involve putting the card on an elaborate silver tray in the entrance hall.  A tray full of calling cards was like social media for Victorians- you were demonstrating your popularity.    For example, if we were doing this today, we would have a place in the entrance of our home, and we'd make sure the cards of the richest or most popular people we knew were on to.  We would want people who dropped off cards to be impressed by how many other callers we had AND how impressive our friends were. The entire process was dictated by complicated social rules, and as Leonce explains to Edna, to go against these rules could mean social suicide.     It could also mean financial suicide because business always has a human component.  The function of an upper class woman would be to fulfil a very specific social obligation and this involved delivering and accepting these calling cards.  Every woman would have a specific day where she would make it known she was receiving cards, and the other ladies would go around town to pay house calls.  In some cases, a woman might remain in her carriage while her groom would take the card to the door.  During the Regency era like in Jane Austen's day, there was a system of bending down the corner of the card if you were there in person, and not if you were sending it, but by Chopin's day, I'm not sure if that was still a thing.     The main thing was that the card would be dropped off on this special silver tray. If it were a first call, the caller might only leave a card.  But, if you were calling on the prescribed day, the groom would further inquire if the lady of the house were home.  A visit would consist of about twenty minutes of polite conversation.  It was important that if someone called on you, you must reciprocate and call on then on their visiting day.      Well, the Tuesday they get back, Edna leaves the house on her reception day and does not receive any callers- a social no-no.  In fact, as we go through the rest of the book, she never receives callers again. This is an affront to the entire society, and an embarrassment to her husband; it's also just bad for business, as Mr. Pontellier tries to explain to his wayward wife, let's read this exchange.    “Why, my dear, I should think you'd understand by this time that people don't do such things; we've got to observe “les convenances” if we ever expect to get on and keep up with the procession.  If you felt that you had to leave this afternoon, you should have left some suitable explanation for your absences.      One thing I find interesting.  Mr. Pontellier assumes that Mrs. Pontellier is on the same page on wanting the same things as he wants, and what he wants is to keep up with the procession.  They'd been doing this for the last six years, and doing it well.    Another thing I notice is that he doesn't rail at her for skipping out. Mr. Pontellier, unlike her father, even as we progress through the rest of the book, is not hard on her at all.  In fact, he's indulgent.  The problem in the entire book is not that he's been overtly abusive or cruel.  Read the part where he tries to kind of help her fix what he considers to be a serious social blunder.    Page 60    Well, if taken in isolation, this exchange doesn't seem offensive, and I might even have taken sides with Mr. Pontellier if it weren't back to back with this horrid scene of him complaining about his dinner then walking out to spend the rest of the evening at the club where he clearly spends the majority of his time.  You have to wonder what is going on at that club, but beyond that.  Edna is again left in sadness.  “She went and stood at an open window and looked out upon the deep tangle of tea garden below”.  (On an aside, if you've read Chopin's story, the story of an hour, you should recognize the language here and the image of this open window).  Anyway,, Here again we have another image of a caged bird, or a person who is looking out in the world but not feeling a part of it.  “She was seeing herself and finding herself in just sweet half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars.  They jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid even of home.  She turned back into the room and began to walk to and from down its whole length, without stopping, without resting.  She carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from her.  Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet.  When she saw it there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it.  But her small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the little glittering circlet.  In a sweeping passion she seized a glass vase from the table and flung it upon the tiles of the hearth.  She wanted to destroy something.  The crash and the clatter were what she wanted to hear.”    She's clearly angry…and not just because Mr. Pontellier complained about the food and walked out of the house.  She's angry about everything.     Never mind the fact that we are never told what goes on at this club, but there are several indications in different parts of the book that Mr. Pontellier may be doing other things besides smoking cigars in crowded rooms.  Adele even tells Edna that she disapproves of Mr. Pontellier's club.  She goes on to say, “It's a pity Mr. Pontellier doesn't stay home more in the evenings.  I think you would be more- well, if you don't me my saying it- more united.”      Although I will add, Edna quickly replies, “'Oh dear no!' What should I do if he stayed home? We wouldn't have anything to say to each other.”  - the fact remains that MR. Pontelier does not see any need to nurture any sort of human or intimate relationship with Edna- theirs comes across as a cordial business arrangement, at best, with Edna in the position of employee.      True, and although I don't know if this is the right place to point this out, but in terms of the sexual indiscretions that may or may not be going on when Mr. Pontellier is at the club, there is likely a lot in the culture at large going on under the surface that a person from the outside wouldn't immediately be aware of.   Edna is naïve at first to all that goes on in her Victorian-Creole world.  There just is no such thing as “lofty chastity”  amongst the Creole people, or any people I might add, although Edna initially seems to believe that in spite of all the sexual innuendo in the language, nothing sexual was ever going on.  There are just too many indications otherwise in the story that that is not the case.  The reader can see it, even though Edna cannot.     True, and if you didn't catch it on Grand Isle, in the city, it is more obvious, and the farther along we go in the story, it gets more obvious as well.  Mrs. James Highcamp is one example.  She has married an “American” but uses her daughter as a pretext for cultivating relationships with younger men.  This is so well-known that Mr. Pontellier tells Edna, after seeing her calling card, that the less you have to do with Mrs. Highcamp the better.  But she's not the only example.  Victor basically details an encounter with Edna of being with a prostitute he calls “a beauty” when she comes to visit his mother..ending with the phrase that she wouldn't comprehend such things.  And of course, most obviously there is the character Arobin with whom Edna eventually does get sexually involved, but his reputation has clearly preceded him.       Well, Edna's awakening to all of this would explain part of her anger, but  there is more to Edna's awakening then just Leonce, or the new culture she's a part of, or really any outside factor.     Yes, and it is in the universality of whatever is going on inside of Edna that we find ourselves.  That's what's so great about great literature- the setting can be 120 years ago, but our humanity is still our humanity.       I agree and love that, but let's get back to her setting for a moment. I think it's worth mentioning that the 19th century culture of the Creole people in New Orleans is messy and complicated in its own unique way.  It's fascinating, but for those who are not of the privileged class, life was often a harsh reality.  The world, especially in the South, was problematic for people of mixed race heritage.  So, and this is more true the closer we get to the Civil War and the Jim Crow era, but those who called themselves “white creoles” had a problem because of the large existence of the free people of mixed race ancestry in New Orleans.  There was a strong outside pressure to maintain this illusion of racial purity, but the evidence suggests this simply wasn't reality.  Let me throw out a few numbers to tell you what I'm talking about.  From 1782-1791, the St. Louis Catholic Church in New Orleans recorded 2688 births of mixed race children.  Now that doesn't seem like a large number, but let me throw this number out- that same congregation at that time same only records 40 marriages of black or mixed race people.  Now, I know Catholics are known for having large families, but I'm not sure 20 women can account for 2688 births.      No, something feels a little wrong.  That number suggests another explanation may be in order.      Exactly, and by 1840 that number grows from 2688 to over 20,000 with mixed raced Creoles representing 18% of the total population of residents of New Orleans.  And if that doesn't convince you, here's another indicator, during this same period many many free women of color were acquiring prime real estate in New Orleans under their own names.  These women had houses built and passed estates on to their children, but notice this detail, the children of these mixed-raced women had different last names then their mothers.  We're not talking about small amounts of property here.  By 1860 $15 million dollars worth of property was in the name of children with last names that were not the same as that of their mothers, oh and by the way, a lot of that property was in the neighborhood where Edna rents her pidgeon house just around the corner from Esplanade street- in other words around the corner and walking distance from millionaire row.      Well, that's really interesting, and I guess, does add a new dimension to the subtext in the language for sure.    Well, it does, and it is likely something readers of the day would have certainly understood, more than we do 100 years later when the stakes of identifying as being of mixed raced heritage are not the difference between freedom and slavery.  But beyond just that, it's an example of cultures clashing.  Edna represents an outwardly prudish Puritan culture coming into a society that is French, Spanish and Caribbean- very different thinking.  This is a de-facto multi-cultural world; it's Catholic; it's French-speaking; it's international.  She doesn't understand what she's seeing.  And in that regard, her own situational reality is something she's realizing she is only beginning to understand, and she comes into it all very gradually. She is not, in Adele's words, “One of them.”  In fact, there may have been irony in the narrator in Grand Isle suggesting that Robert LeBrun's relationships every summer were platonic.  His relationship with the girl in Mexico we will see most certainly is not, but nor was his relationship with Mariequeita on Grand Isle, the girl they meet on the day they spent together.      Indeed.  You may be right- perhaps there is a real sense that Edna has been blind, and perhaps not just to her husband but by an entire society that presents itself one way but in reality is something entirely different altogether.  When she visits Adele and her husband at their home, everything seems perfect- of course.  Adele is the perfect woman with this perfect life.  Adele is beautiful.  Her husband adores her.  The Ratignolle's marriage is blissful, in fact to use the narrator's words, “The Ratignolles' understood each other perfectly.  If ever the fusion of two human beings into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely in their union.”      Do you think it's sarcasm again?  Was it truly perfect, or just presenting itself to be perfect?     It's really hard to tell.  Maybe they have worked out a great life together.  I think there is a lot in this passage to suggest they are truly happy together.  Edna even expresses that their home is much happier than hers.  She quotes that famous Chinese proverb “Better a dinner of herbs”.  The entire quote is “Better a dinner of herbs than a stalled ox where hate is.”- meaning her house has better food but she thinks of it as a hateful place- whereas this place is the opposite.   Poor thing- she sees her reality for what it is.  I still see a little sarcasm in the narrator's language, but even if Adele is every bit as perfect as she seems, and even if her home is every bit as perfect as it seems, and even if her husband is every bit as perfect as he seems, in the most real of ways, that could all be true and it wouldn't matter.  E    Precisely, The Ratignole's life can be every bit as perfect as it appears. and it wouldn't make Edna want it any more.  Edna leaves Adele's happy home, realizing that even if she could have it it's not the life she wants.  She wouldn't want that world even if Leonce loved her.  It's just not for her.  The problem is, that's as far as she's gotten with her problem solving.  All she knows is what she DOESN'T want.  Her new world is a world of negation.  She wants to quit, and so she does.  She absolutely disregards all her duties to the point that it finally angers Leonce enough to confront her.    “It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a household, and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier days which would be better employed contriving for the comfort of her family.”    An atelier is an artist studio.  It' seems Edna has left all the responsibilities she had as a housewife as well as a mother.  And let me add, Edna was never dusting, cooking, or bathing her children.  She has several house keepers and nannies.  But now, she's not even overseeing what others are doing.  Instead, she's devoting herself entirely to painting.  And surprisingly, Leonce doesn't even have a problem with that in and of itself.  Edna tells her husband, “I feel like painting.”  To which he responds, “Then in God's name paint!  But don't let the family go to the devil.  There's Madame Ratignolle, because she keeps up her music, she doesn't let everything else go to chaos.   And she's more of a musician than you are a painter.”  Yikes, that may be honest, but it does come across as a little harsh.  I know.  I think it's kind of a funny line.  To which, Edna has an interesting comeback- it's like she knows it's not about the painting. She says, “It isn't on account of the painting that I let things go.”  He asks her then why she's let everything go, but she has no answer.  She says she just doesn't know.  Garry, do you want to take a stab at what's going on with Edna?   Well, I do want to tread carefully.  What is fascinating about this book is not so much that Chopin is arguing for any specific course of action, or warning against any specific set of behaviors.  She doesn't condemn Edna for anything, not even the affair she will have with Arobin.  Instead of judging, Chopin, to me, seems to be raising questions.  And it is the questions that she raises that are so interesting.  Edna is desperately trying to rewrite the narrative of her life.  There is no question about that.  But that is an artistic endeavor, in some ways like painting or singing.   I guess we can say Chopin is blending her metaphors here.  Edna doesn't want to be a parrot and copy, but she's living her life exactly the way she is painting- it's uncontrolled; it's undisciplined; it's impulsive.  I'd also say, it's rather unoriginal.  There is no doubt that the social roles offered to her are restrictive.  There's no doubt her marriage is a problem, but as we get farther into the story, it's hard to believe that even if all of these problems could be rectified that Edna would be able define a life for herself.  We, as humans, are always more than a reaction to the social and cultural forces in our world- I hate to get back to the word we used last week, but I can't get away from it.  Even under strict social norms, which I might add, Edna is NOT under for her time period- she is after all one of the most privileged humans on planet Earth at that particular time in human history, but even if she were under severe restrictions, she, as a human, still has agency- we all do.  Yes- and to use Chopin's words from chapter 6, Mrs Pontellier was beginning to realize her position as an individual as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world WITHIN and about her.  I think that Edna is like the rest of us in that it's easier to understand and manage the world about us as opposed to the world within.  At least I can SEE the world about me- how can I see within?  How can I understand myself?  And so Edna goes to the world of Madame Reisz having discarded the world of Adele Ratignolle- the world of art, the world of the artist- which is where Edna goes in chapter 21.  I would argue that she sees it as the polar opposite of Adele's reality.  There is the Adele version of being a woman- a totally objectified, sexualized but mothering type of woman= versus this version of womanhood who is basically asexually.  Perhaps Madame Reisz isn't a woman at all- she's an artist.    Except that world, the world of the artist, comes with its own share of difficulties nevermind that it is simply more uncomfortable.  Reisz' house is described as “dingy”.  There's a good deal of smoke and soot.  It's a small apartment.  There's a magnificent piano, but no elegant food or servants or silver trays for calling cards.  She cooks her meals on a gasoline stove herself.  Let me quote here, “it was there also that she ate, keeping her belongings in a rare old buffet, dingy and battered from a hundred years use.”  True, but there is also  the music and when the music filled the room it floated out upon the night, over the housetops, the crescent of the river, losing itself in the silence of the air and made Edna sob. The art is otherworldly, and there is something to that.  Something attractive maybe even metaphysical.  I want to talk about Kate Chopin's choice of music.  I don't think we noted this in episode one, but Chopin was an accomplished pianist.  She played by ear and read music.  She held parties, almost identical to the ones she described Madame Ratignole throwing in the book with dancing and card playing.  Music was a very big deal to Kate Chopin, so when she includes specific music in her writing, she's not just dropping in commonly used songs, she uses artists she likes for specific reasons, and in this novel, the pianist Frederic Chopin is selected intentionally- and not because he has the same last name, although I did check that out- they are not related.  Garry, as a musician yourself, what can you tell us about Frederic Chopin, the Polish composer and pianist?  Well, let me make this comparison, Frederic Chopin's music in his day was the pelvis gyrating Elvis' Rock in Roll of his day.  It was provocative.  19th century attitudes towards this type of harmony driven romantic music would seem hysterical to us.  They were seen as sensual and a destructive force, especially for women.  This may even be Chopin's sassy narrator playing with us again- Frederic Chopin's music is definitely driving sensuality in Edna. To say Kate Chopin is using it ironically is likely taking it too far, but I don't know, maybe not.  This narrator has been ironic before. The main undeniable connection is that Madame Reisz plays Impromptus.  Impromptus are improvisational music.  Frederic Chopin wrote only four of them in his career.  The one Kate selects here is called Fantasie-Impromptu in C minor- it's the only one in a minor key that he ever wrote.  You can pull it up on Spotify and hear it for yourself.   It is full of rhythmical difficulties.  It's very difficult to play. It's quick and full of emotion.  There is banging on low notes at times, thrills and rolling notes going faster and slower at others points.  Frederic Chopin, by the way, was a very temperamental person and in some ways shares a lot of the personality quirks of Madame Reisz. But he did have an interesting philosophy about music that I really like and does connect to our book.  He is recorded to have said this, “words were born of sounds; sounds existed before words…Sounds are used to make music just as words are used to form language.  Thought is expressed through sounds.  And undefined human utterance is mere sound; the art of manipulating sounds is music.”  Interesting, music is thoughts as sounds.  I like the expression “undefined human utterance” especially in regard to Edna because she absolutely cannot get her thoughts out nor is she willing to share then with anyone.  She expresses more than once that her inner world was hers and hers alone. She can't get her thoughts out when she talks to Adele; she can't get them out when she talks to her husband, and she can't get them out even with Madame Reisz which would have been a very safe space for her to express herself.  At the end of chapter 21, she's sobbing at the music and holding in her hands a letter from Robert LeBrun crumpled and damp with tears.   It would have helped her to have found someone to talk to, maybe the Dr. Mandelet that Leonce goes to in chapter 22 for advice about how to help his wife.    What we find out from Leonce's conversation is that Edna has withdrawn from every single person in her world.  She won't even go to her sister's wedding.  What the doctor sees when he goes to dinner at their house is a very outwardly engaging woman but an inwardly withdrawn one.  The Doctor wonders if she's having an affair, but she isn't.    She is, to use the title of the book, One Solitary Soul.  As a human being, there are only so many types of relationships we find meaning in: we have our parents and birth family, we have our intimate relationship, we have our children (if we have any), we have our professional relationships, and we have our social friends- at least one of these has to be working for us.  Edna finds no satisfaction in any of them.  She doesn't have a trusting relationship anywhere.    Yes, every single relationship in her life is basically a burden.  Edna is trying to relieve herself of every single responsibility in the world hoping that getting out of relationships will help her expand her identity.  The problem is getting RID of responsibilities is not really the answer.  To find meaning in this world you must DO something worth doing.  Something that takes strength and energy.  Something you can be proud of.  Of course as a classroom teacher, that is what we do everyday.  It's not helpful to give students high grades or marks for nothing.  It weakens them.  When you give them a difficult task and then they are able to do that task, they grow, they get strong, they learn they are capable of even great responsibilities.  If you want to get strong, you have to take ON responsibilities- you have to practice strength training, Edna goes the opposite way here.      Edna does look for models, and if she wanted a career path, or a professional life like we think of in  our era, Chopin threw in a character that could have served that function.  It's what I see going on in  the chapters about the races.  Edna is actually really good at horse gambling.  She knows horses.  She knows the horse-racing business and knows it well.  The text actually says that she knows more about horse-racing than anyone in New Orleans.  In fact, it's her knowledge about horses that puts her on the radar of the man she eventually has the sexual relationship with, Alcee Arobin.    Let's read the section where we see this relationship, if we want to call it that, take shape.  Arobin had first seen her perform well at the tracks and to use the narrator's words, he admired Edna extravagantly after meeting her at the races with her father.  Mrs. Highcamp is also a completely different version of a feminine ideal, although neither Edna nor the narrator seem to think enough of to give her a first name.  This confused me some when I read this because in my mind, Mrs. James Highcamp would have been this type of a liberated woman that Chopin might want to have Edna admire.  She's clearly sexualy liberated, but beyond that she's worldly, intelligent, slim, tall.  Her daughter is educated, participates in political societies, book clubs, that sort of thing.  But nothing about Mrs. James Highcamp is alluring to Edna at all.  She suffers Mrs. James Highcamp because of her interest in Arobin.   Let's read about these encounters between Arobin and Edna.   Here's the first one  Page 86     So, Arobin becomes fascinated with Edna, in part because she is so smart and different from other women.  At the end of that evening, they dined with the Highcamps. And afterwards Arobin takes Edna home.  The text says this “She wanted something to happen- something, anything, she did not know what.  She regretted that she had not made Arobin stay a half hour to talk over the horses.  She counted the money she had won.  There was nothing else to do, so she went to bed, and tossed there for hours in a sort of monotonous agitation.  And so the relationship with Arobin is born out of boredom.    Yes, the dominant movement in Edna's life is always drifting towards boredom.  Edna wants to rewrite her social script, but she can't seem to define what she wants.  She has trouble speaking, so she has no words to write her own story.  She doesn't want to be a mother; she doesn't want to work except in sunny weather; she has an opportunity with Mrs. Highcamp to get involved with political or literary women; but that doesn't spark her interest.  She could make a name for herself at the races, but the money doesn't motivate her- she's always had it and in some ways doesn't seem to know a world without money.  So, she's going to default into this relationship with Arobin.  I'm going to suggest that she is again playing the part of the parrot.  Messing around with Arobin is just the kind of thing she sees men doing.  It's what Victor does; it may be what her husband does; it is likely what Robert is doing down in Mexico, so she's going to try to mimic male behavior since she hasn't really found a female model she's interested in emulating, and Arobin is an opportunitiy for this.    And yet, she's self-aware enough to not be seduced by Arobin.  The first time he really tries to make a move on her by kissing her hand, this is what she says which I find insightful,  “When she was alone she looked mechanically at the back of her hand which he had kissed so warmly.  Then she leaned her head down on the mantlepiece.  She felt something like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into an act of infidelity, and realizes the significance of the act without being wholly awakened from its glamour.  The thought was passing vaguely through her mind, “what would he think?”  She did not mean her husband; she was thinking of Robert LeBrun.  Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse.  She lit a candle and went up to her room.  Alcee Arobin was absolutely nothing to her.  Yet his presence, his manners, the warmth of his glances, and above all the touch of his lips upon her hand had acted like a narcotic upon her.  She slept a languorous sleep, interwoven with vanishing dreams.”  Garry, is there a connection between Edna's boredom with her new life and her desire to pursue this relationship with Arobin.   Well, again, Dr. Kate Chopin is playing the psychologist.  Science has absolutely confirmed there is a relationship with boredom and risk-taking behaviors.  In other words, the more bored you find yourself, the more likely you are to do something risky.  It's one reason teenagers are so prone to dangerous behaviors like drugs.  They don't know yet how to cope with personal down time.  They can't manage their own boredom.  Bored people don't know what they want to do.  They also score low on scares that measure self-awareness.  Bored people can't monitor their own moods or understand what they truly want.  And here's another characteristic that should sound familiar in the life of Mrs. Edna Pontellier, notice that last line “vanishing dreams”, Edna is not dreaming.  She's not working at writing a script for her life..structuring a story for herself.  Her dreams and not building anything, they are vanishing.  That's not good.  And it's not that doesn't have illusions, she does, but a dream is not an illusion.  Dreams are what inspire us to do something different. Both a dream and an illusion are unreal, but an illusion will always be an illusion- it has no chance of becoming real; out of dreams new realities are born.  We are not seeing Edna dream.  Her dreams are vanishing.    Which brings us to the place where I want to end with this episode- chapter 26 and Edna's decision to move out of her husband's house.  I mentioned that this book is constructed with the archetypal 3 in mind at every point.  Edna has been living on Esplanade street- the wealthy gilded cage life, and she doesn't want that.  She has visited Madame Reisz's apartment, but she doesn't seem to want that- it's, and I quote, “cheerless and dingy to Edna”.  So what does she do? She moves two steps away from Esplanade Street, to a house Ellen calls, “the pigeon house.”  Pigeons are the oldest domesticated bird in the world.  They never fly far from home- homing pigeons is actually a term. She's building an illusion. Edna is going out of her husband's house to a place around the corner, but is she really building a new life of any kind?  What is this about?   Edna describes it to Madame Reisz, this way,  “I know I shall like it, like the feeling of freedom and independence.”    But is the feeling of freedom and independence the same as actually having freedom and independence?  Well, obviously not.  They are worlds apart.  But Edna lives in feelings.  She works when she feels like it.  She plays with her children when she feels like it, and now she admits to Madame Reisz that she's in love with Robert LeBrun, who by the way is coming back.  And when she finds that out she feels, and I quote “glad and happy to be alive.”  And what does she do after that, she stops at a candy store, buys a box to send to her children who are with their grandparents in the country and she writes a charming letter to her husband.  Her letter was brilliant and brimming with cheerfulness.  I'm sorry, but Edna frustrates the feminist in me.    Well, Edna is struggling for sure.  She can't connect with people.  She can't identify a dream worth pursuing.  She can't write her own story.  There is no doubt that a lot of this has to so with cultural and social forces at work in her world.   These are powerful forces.  However,  it is not the outside forces of her world that will do her in.  Edna is smart.  She's beautiful.  She's charming.  She actually has a lot going for her, especially for a woman during this time period.  If Chopin had wanted to write a story where a woman breaks free and soars, she has a protagonist who is positioned to do that very thing.    But she's in a mess.  And maybe that's why she's so relatable.  Many of us have made messes of our lives.  We have an incredible ability to screw up, but  humans are also incredibly resilient.  Look at Chopin's own life as an example.  In some ways, she's both Adele Ragntingole and Madame Reiz, at different points in her life she'd been both.  She may even have been Mrs. James Highcamp to a lesser degree. Why is Edna struggling here?  Well, humans are incredibly resilient, but you know what else we are- we are social beings.  Let's revisit that original book title, “One Solitary Soul”- it's my experience that no one gets out alone- not even the rich, the beautiful or the smart.  No one gets out alone.    Ah, Edna is strong enough to confront the forces without, but who will help her confront the forces within?  And so next episode, we will see her confront those internal forces.  There are no more female characters to meet; no more male characters either for that matter.  We will see Edna confront Edna alone, and we will see what happens.  Thank you for listening.  If you enjoy our podcast, please share it with a friend, a relative, your classmates, your students.  We only grow when you share.  Also, come visit with us via our social media how to love lit podcast- on Instagram, facebook and our website.  Feel free to ask questions, give us your thoughts, recommend books.  These are all things we love.  Thanks for being with us today.  Peace out.         

Kate Chopin - The Awakening - Episode 2 - Edna Pontellier Defies All Explanations!   HI, I'm Christy Shriver and we're here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.    And I'm Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our second episode in our four part series discussing the world of Kate Chopin.  Last week we introduced our author and what is generally considered her masterpiece, the novella, The Awakening.  Today we will continue discussing this book as we meet Edna and mosey around the Creole world of Victorian Louisiana on the vacation island of Grand Isle.      This book is like Camus' The Stranger in that it is incredibly complicated but deceptively simple looking.  It has been misunderstood since the minute it was published, and it's still misunderstood.  Critics have claimed it's a champion of the women's movement; a challenge to the patriarchy, an expose on depression, a discussion of narcissism, an exploration of female sexuality- and certainly it can be looked at through each of these lens without any difficulty at all and there are things to say there.  And yet, Chopin cryptically told one critic in response to her book nothing along any ideological lines.  This is how she chose to frame her book, and I never and I quote, “dreamed of Edna making such a mess of things and working out her own damnation as she did.”    What does that even mean?     Exactly, it's a consciously and deliberately messy book.  It is NOT best read as an ideological book of any kind- no matter if your prejudices lie for or against her apparent causes.  It certainly makes it easier to read if you're looking to make it a political statement, and when I was first introduced to it, that's how I was taught to read it, but I have since decided to reject easy interpretations of great literature in general primarily because that makes something great immediately uninteresting.  And this book is definitely NOT uninteresting.    So, if we're not to read it about being about politics, the patriarchy, oppression or that sort of thing, how should we understand it?    Isn't that the million dollar question?  What is so compelling about Edna Pontellier- and she has been compelling even maddening for the last 120 years.    I don't find her necessarily a likeable person, are we supposed to?  At first I wondered if it was designed so that men are supposed to not like her or maybe not like themselves by looking at what's happened to her, but do women generally find her likeable?  I also don't see how to avoid seeing gender as an important component of this book.    Oh I agree, you can't help but see gender and you're definitely supposed to.  It's about a woman- it's about being a woman- but is there anything more complicated than a woman?    That's a loaded question!!  Do you honestly think you can bait me into answer that?   Ha!  Wise man!  In all serious, it's about being human, but from a women's perspective- and that can't be reduced to any single set of definable variables.  That's what's messy about it.  It's about a woman in the Victorian era at the turn of the century- the particulars of the challenges women faced that that particular political moment in US history- the woman question, as they referred to it in those days, but that's just our starting point- the setting, so to speak- there are more interesting parts of Edna and her awakening than just resolving the contextual economic, sexual or matrimonial roles in society.  Beyond that, let's just look at the term “the awakening”.  It's kind of  a strange  term to use in a book where the protagonist spends an unusually large amoung of her time asleep.  I'm not sure I've seen a protagonist sleep as much as Edna in any book, except maybe Sleeping Beauty or Rip Van Wrinkle.    And yet, the title begs a question.  What is an awakening, or at least what is '”The Awakening”? as Edna is to experience it.  The first part of the book which we are going to talk about today- chapters 1-16 IS her awakening.  For her, it's kind of a gradual experience that happens to her over a summer.  Chopin first defines it in chapter 6, it's described as coming into one's own humanity – to recognize one's relations as an individual to the world within and about.    You know that's a great definition of what it means to grow up really- to find one's agency in the world.      Chopin insightfully connects someone's internal awakening with their sexual awakening.  This awareness of how you are a sexual being and as such interact with other beings as sexual beings- both of the same sex as well as the opposite sex.  Chopin illustrates this many ways and, and I would go far as to say seems to use sexual agency as an expression of agency of a general kind.     Yes, and what does that mean?  How should we define agency, as in human agency?  What do you mean when you use that term?  I know I asked a question that could be a long answer, but in just a few words.        Agency, in general, refers to our capability as humans to influence our own functioning.  It is our ability to direct the course of events through our own actions.  Said another way, it's our ability to determine and make meaning through purposeful and reflective creative action.      A psychologist by the name of Albert Bandura out of Stanford university is a leading figure in this field, so if you're interested, just Google his nam and you can read as much as you want.  But basically, according to Bandura, we exercise our agency in four ways.  We are self-organizing, pro-active, self-regulating, and self-reflecting. We are not simply onlookers of our behavior. We are contributors to our life circumstances, not just products of them.  That's a quote       We like to think, and we do think the younger we are, that agency means freedom.  And in many ways it does.  But what does freedom even mean?  Does it mean I get to do whatever I want?  Well, sort of, but we're interacting in a world full of forces both from the outside but also from the inside.  Understanding that seems to be what Chopin is wanting to explore in a very feminine context- because female forces aren't always the same as male forces, by definition.     Well, I will tell you what Bandura would say.  The problem is that Most human pursuits involve other people, so there is no absolute agency. Let me use Bandura's words here.  He says, “Individuals have to accommodate their self-interests if they are to achieve unity of effort within diversity. Collective endeavors require commitment to a shared intention and coordination of interdependent plans of action to realize it- in other words you have to get along in the world you live in.  That's the rub.      Ahhh- getting along with others.  That's another important idea to think about here.  The Awakening wasn't even the original title of this book. The original title was A Solitary Soul.  That makes you think of the story in an entirely different way.  Is this a story about waking up or being alone or both?  If there's something that we can see immediately in the characterization of Edna, is that she is a solitary woman.  She is very much alone and has been all of her life not physically alone, but emotionally.      Well, for me that title tells me that this book is about attachment and intimacy, but I may be jumping the gun.  We didn't get very far into the story last episode. We basically only got through the first chapter, so let's kind of start there.  We found ourselves on a vacation resort island, the Grand Isle- which is fifty miles from New Orleans.   Emily Toth, Chopin's biographer, described it as kind of a tropical paradise of sorts.  She said that For young mothers, like Kate Chopin it was a wholesome place to spend what otherwise was a dangerous season in the South.  Unlike New Orleens the Grand Isld didn't have open canals or cisterns.  There weren't swarms of disease infested mosquitos to threaten children or adults. No one there had to lock their doors.  The island was a tropical paradise.  It had palm trees, vines, orange and lemon trees, acres of yellow chamomile.  There were no actual streets only grassygreen or sandy paths.  It was seductive to the imagination, too, with tales of shipwrecks and pirate gold from Barataria Bay, the old haunt of the pirate Jean Lafitte.    And of course that makes sense Memphis is also sweltering hot in the summer.  And for years, summer months in the South were deadly.  Mosquitos came in and with them deadly diseases.  Yellow fever especially was terrorizing, so if you could afford to get away from the city in the summer you did; and many many people did exactly what we see the Pontellier's doing here.  Edna and the kids would stay at Grand Isle, Leonce would go into the city during the week and would come out to spend the weekends with the family.    Last week, we didn't actually meet Edna; we met her husband who is annoyed by these cackling birds that are making so much noise he can't read his newspaper- a parrot and a mockingbird, and we talked about how birds are important symbols in this book.      Yes- Birds and wings.  We have a parrot, we have a mockingbird, and later we're going to have a pigeon house.  We're also going to have a woman with angel wings, and another woman who tells Edna she needs strong wings.  But before we get to the lady friends with wings, let's meet Edna Pontellier.      Soon after Mr. Pontellier leaves the house,  Mrs. Pontellier and her summer companion Robert LeBrun come strolling along.  It's not one of the world's more normal love triangles- watch how these three interact-  Let's read this interaction    Page 4    Well, there's nothing quite so startling as introducing a book's protagonist as an object on page one.  Mr. Pontellier literally looks at his wife as a piece of property according to our narrator, and he seems to care less about the man she's spending all of her time with.    Yes, but there's more to see here.  She's clearly a beautiful woman and a prize for her husband, but what does she get in exchange- rings.  And they sparkle.   She also gets days at the beach free of responsibility- in fact, we will see that Edna is the only character in this book who does no work of any kind, ever. These two have made a deal.  And what we clearly see as we watch the relationship develop is that love was never part of their original agreement, at least not the way we would like to understand love as it works in an ideal marriage.  Edna married Leonce because he loved her and flattered her, but Chopin is careful to make us very aware that she never loved Leonce in return or even deceived herself into thinking she did.  She  was “running away from prayers, from the Presbyterian service” from her father.  Although, we have to jump ahead to chapter 7 to see that.  Let's just read the love story of these two lovebirds…to borrow from Chopin's bird motif:    Her marriage to Léonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in this respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of Fate. It was in the midst of her secret great passion that she met him. He fell in love, as men are in the habit of doing, and pressed his suit with an earnestness and an ardor which left nothing to be desired. He pleased her; his absolute devotion flattered her. She fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken. Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic, and we need seek no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for her husband.  The acme of bliss, which would have been a marriage with the tragedian, was not for her in this world. As the devoted wife of a man who worshiped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams.  But it was not long before the tragedian had gone to join the cavalry officer and the engaged young man and a few others; and Edna found herself face to face with the realities. She grew fond of her husband, realizing with some unaccountable satisfaction that no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby threatening its dissolution.    Not the most romantic love story I've ever read.  In fact, she seems almost proud that she doesn't love Leonce, but honestly, I think we can say that story is common enough.  How many girls and guys marry whoever they're dating in their youth just because it seems like it's the time to do something like that happens to be the person they met at that time- as Chopin would call it, “an accident masquerading as a decree of Fate”?  How many others make a deal of convenience- a financial transaction or sorts.    I agree completely- my favorite Marilyn Monroe movie, is about that- Diamond are a Girl's Best Friend. Although I will say, most of the time things don't work out like they do for Mrilyn Monroe.  Chopin's portrayal is more realistic.  People marry and then sooner or later, one or both partners start doing things that resemble Chopin's descriptions of the Pontellier marriage. In Victorian days, it was women, but today, I've seen situations where either partner experiences this exact thing Edna's experiencing- sad isolation- being discarded for one thing or another.  Edna and Leonce have two small children, but here in chapter 3, Edna finds herself in isolation and crying in the middle of the night.  It's gut-wrenching.  This relationship is cruel, and not just because Leonce wakes her up in the middle of the night wanting to talk- the scene  as it unfolds is an expression of a total lack of understanding between these two.     What is most cruel here is the total lack of intimacy between these two. And money doesn't make it all better even though they seem to think it does.  Leonce gives Edna a bunch of money the next day knowing that it makes her happy.  And later on after he goes back to New Orleans, Edna receives a care package from her husband, and she even admits to her friends that she knows of no better husband than Leonce Pontellier.      Of course, this comes across very ironic to the reader because Chopin has already taken us behind the veil of what looks like a perfectly ideal marriage to see a lonely woman who cries when no one is watching.       I also found it interesting that in the second chapter of the book before we even read the sad incident of Edna crying through the night, we are told that her mother had been dead- just a very psychological detail to introduce into the text.       She's a solitary soul.  There's a couple more important details I think we need to pay attention to here early on in the text- what about this gentlemen- Robert LeBrun- Robert spends all day every day with Edna at Grande Isle, but Leonce is not jealous of him at all.  In fact, we are told Creole husbands are never jealous- that the gangrene passion is one which has become is dwarfed by disuse- although I'm not really sure I understand exactly what that expression means.     No, On the contrary, Leonce seems to like the fact that Edna has a playmate. Robert takes Edna off his hands, so to speak.   Later in chapter 5, we are told that Robert picks a different girl every summer to fawn over. Some of the girls are single, but mostly  he picks married women- unattainable ones. These women apparently enjoy the attention, and Robert isn't taken seriously as a threat. It's part of the beach culture, and not a threat in this Creole culture.     Agreed, except, as we're going to find out, Edna isn't a Creole woman and things aren't the same with her- as Adele reminds Robert in chapter 8 as she tries to talk him into leaving Edna alone.  She point blank tells him, “Edna isn't one of us”.  And she very much is NOT. Edna, the reader knows, was raised in a very frigid home- nothing like the physicality, sensuality and the openness of the Creole people.   I've got more to say about that, but before we get too far from the crying scene in chapter 3, I want draw attention to the detail where Chopin connects Edna's loneliness and tears to the sea.  As Edna sat there alone and crying in the night, Chopin points out that and I quote, “no sound abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the top of a water-oak, and the everlasting voice of the sea.”  Two ideas here worth noticing- first Chopin is going to do a lot with sounds.  Music is important, which we'll talk about extensively next episode.  But Grand Isle is noisy place- we've already had noisy birds and little, girls playing the piano, but here's the second idea- notice the emphasis and presence of the sea, it is the most important symbol of the entire book. The ocean is also an archetype.    Just in case you haven't heard us talk about archetypes before and unfamiliar what we mean by them in this literary context, archetypes are psychological.  The psychologist Carl Jung famously theorized that they are symbols wired into our brains- that's one way to look at them- he called them a universal collective consciousness.  They are universal…meaning cultures all over the world throughout time having had nothing to do with each other use the same symbols to mean the same things- although they have had no way to coordinate this.  It's an interesting  and true phenomena whether you agree with Jung's understanding of the unconsciousness or not.  Not all traditional symbols are archetypes, but many are.  The ocean is an archetype that represents death, rebirth, timelessness, eternity, the mother of all life- it has in cultures of all times all over the world.  This is not a symbol Chopin just made up.  Do we know how she's using it here, Christy, any ideas?    Well, we'll have to see how she develops it along the way.  That's the thing about symbols, they take a life of their own in the story but also inside of every different reader.  But let's just take note of what we can see: they are at the seaside, Robert and Edna have been at the sea all day, and now Edna listens to the sea- to its mournful lullaby- it's just something to pay attention to and watch.    In chapter 4, we meet our first Creole woman,  Mrs. Adele Raginolle, and my goodness she is basically described as a goddess.   Chopin says there are no words to describe her, she's that gorgeous.  She's the bygone heroine of romance.    Oh yes, I'm intimidated by just reading about her.  I also want to point out before we get too far away from our discussion of archetypes that Chopin does a lot of things in threes- an archetypal number.  There are three women- Adele, Edna and this other one we're going to meet in chapter 9, Mademoiselle Reisz.  Edna was raised in a household of 3 girls.  She had three crushes before marrying Leonce.  She has three male lovers in the later part of the book.  She has three homes to consider living in later on- it's all carefully constructed and thematic, and we'll need to look at all of them. But we'll start with the women.  First, the amazing Adele.  She reminds me of some of the Louisianan beauties that intimated me when I showed up my ninth grade year at West Monroe  Junior High School, home of the Colonels.  Adele is perfect- gracious, well-mannered.  She is Southern charm writ large. Let me quote, “there was nothing subtle or hidden about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent: the spungold hair that comb nor confining pin could restrain; the blue eyes that were nothing but sapphires, two lips that pouted, that were so red one could only think of cherries or some other delicious or crimson fruit in looking at them.”  Does it get any more perfect than that?    HA!, well, before she even talks about her physical beauty we find out she is the ideal mother-woman, and Chopin describes what that is.  A  mother-woman is one who is “fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood.”  A woman who and again I quote, “idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.”  Christy,  of course we're supposed to notice the wings, but I can't help but detect a slight bit of sarcasm on the part of the narrator.  Is she mocking “mother-women”? That whole description of Adele and the mother-women sound over the top.    Great point and good question- and truly hits on another of the several brilliant strokes of this novel. We talked about this when discussing Jane Austen, but Chopin uses the same narrative style Jane Austen used- this thing we call free indirect discourse. And- for me this is important in understanding the novel as a whole.   What Chopin does is manipulates our perspective of events by mixing the perspective of a neutral narrator  and merging that perspective with perspectives of the characters, mostly Edna's but not always.  When we have this objective narrator we see sarcasm and strong opinion, like when we saw that Mr. Pontellier looked at Edna on page two as a valuable piece of property.  That's the narrator's perspective, but then sometimes we have with this also an ability to merge into the point of view of one of the characters and see how they see things- like when Edna describes not really being in love with Leonce when they got married or fighting with her younger sister or even crying alone.   Sometimes we even see things from the point of view of another character, and a lot of times this objective narrator is very ironic about this- like here, but we saw it before when Leonce came in from the club at 11pm after Edna was asleep.  Listen to how Chopin phrases this, “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.  Isn't that ironic and kind of funny.  It seems unreasonable for him to think of her as the object of his existence. But the way she writes it makes us understand that Robert really and truly believes Edna is the center of his universe.  We just don't buy it.  Here again, we truly believe that everyone thinks Adele is the ideal woman, we're just not so sure we should buy it.  It doesn't really seem a holy privilege to us to be efface oneself as an individual and grow wings as a ministering angel.  In fact, it sounds terrible.  Never mind the fact, that right after that glowing recommendation of Adele's perfection, we are let on to the fact that she fakes being sick all the time.  Why do that?  That's manipulative- that's not a perfect angel at all.    Well, being around Adele, being around all the sensuous women and you haven't mentioned the dirty book these ladies passed around, that embarrasses Edna- but all of this changes Edna.  She's not use to the carefree openness of the Croele culture towards sensuality.  She doesn't understand it.  And to add onto that, being around the ocean, being around this adoring younger man, Robert, being around the physicality of the females towards each other affects her- it's the sensuality that awakens something in her, if you will.  She had felt it slightly before, but shut it down and almost prided herself in shutting it down by marrying Leonce.       And, in some ways, it comes in slowly and takes her by surprise.  By chapter six Edna is starting to dream, to feel emotional- something beyond just whatever is going on between her and Mr. Pontellier.  In short, “Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relationships as an individual to the world within and about her.  Ths may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of 28- perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.  But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.  How few of us ever emerge from such beginnings!  How many souls perish in its tumult!  The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abyss of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.  The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.  The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”    Dang, that's definitely an outside narrator.  It feels a little like foreshadowing.       The language is metaphorical- the ocean is personified- it's alive.      There are two things that really stand out to me psychologically, the first is the admission that chaos is the beginning of things.  Which of course is true.  Organizing chaos is what starting anything is about.  But that is problematic.  Chaos requires a lot of effort and responsibility to untangle.  Is Edna ready to begin something like that?  Is that what she wants? Because we aren't given any hints that Edna looks towards anything.  The text goes to a lot of trouble to suggest that she's whimsical, thoughtless, impulsive, almost childish even.  What comes after an awakening is naturally more responsibility- the exercise of agency as Bandura would describe it.  We haven't seen much of a responsible side in Edna. The second is how dangerous the ocean is expressed to be- which of course is something everyone knows who's ever gotten into the ocean.  The ocean is certainly seductive; it's beautiful but incredibly dangerous?  And thus the second question?  Is Chopin suggesting that Edna is walking into something that is deceptively beautiful- something that looks enticing but is actually terrible- something that promises to be an awakening but actually something that would silence her forever.  Just asking for a friend, as they say?  As a man, I wouldn't want to presume to unsettle any woman's spiritual awakening.      HA!  No, I would say you would not- that would be wading in dangerous waters- parumpum.  And of course, you are right on all accounts.  Edna doesn't look forward, but she does look back and in chapter 7 as she and Adele stroll on the beach, Chopin takes us back into Edna's past.  Edna reflects on the three men she had crushes on, how being infatuated made her feel.  This is the chapter where Edna reflects on not loving Leonce but enjoying his flattery.    She also awakens in chapter 7 to the idea that she has mixed feelings about her own children.  She doesn't think she loves her kids the way Adele loves hers.  And I quote, “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…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. Garry, what do you think about that?    Well, it's hard not to diagnose Edna, even though it's not prudent to diagnose fictional characters. Obviously Kate Chopin is an incredibly observant student of human behavior.  She has seen this in real life.  Her interest in Edna is microscopic in some of the details.  What we know now from neuroscientists as well as psychologists who study attachment theory is that some women because they weren't nurtured as babies or children DO have trouble attaching to their own children.  Obviously that was not Kate Chopin's experience, but she clearly saw it somewhere.  She goes to great lengths to talk about how isolated Edna was as a child, how her mother was dead and her older sister was distant.  When we meet Edna's father later on in the book, the reader can see for themselves that he's mean.  It seems clear, that Edna either feels guilty or at least feels like she at least should feel guilty that she doesn't seem to feel the way Adele feels towards either her husband or her children.  There's a very telling passage at the end of chapter 16 where she tells Adele that she would never sacrifice herself for her children or for anyone.  That had actually started an argument with Adele.  Edna says this, “I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself.  I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend which is revealing itself to me.”    I would also add, that that might be a dangerous thing to say in a Victorian world.  A Victorian woman would never admit to having such a feeling.  That wouldn't be well-received.    Yes, I've read that passage too.  In fact, it's quoted a lot as a passage for female empowerment.  A woman saying she won't give up her essence as an individual- to be subsumed into anyone else- be it a child or a man or anything.    Yes, and maybe that's what it means, but it may not mean that.  It may mean that she just can't.  She literally can't.  Lots of men and women both give up their lives for their families, their friends, even their country- and giving up their lives doesn't mean giving up their identities. It means they love greatly.  I'm wondering if Chopin is suggesting Edna is realizing she is incapable of loving anyone outside herself, at least not loving greatly.  It's not entirely clear to me which direction she intends to direct this character.      So, if Adele is the first model of woman for Edna, the second model is Madame Reisz.  Adele and Madame Reisz are foils.  Total contrasts.  Chapter 9 introduces Reisz at an evening party there at Grand Isle.  I should mention that the treatment of time in this novel is completely non-traditional.  There are large gaps of time between events, so you just have to keep up.  Anyway, a few weeks have passed between chapter 8 and chapter 9.  In chapter 8 is where Adele tells Robert to stop flirting with Edna because, to use Adele's words “she is not like us” and she might take him seriously.      Of course, Robert ignores Adele's warning and spends all of his time with Edna.  He seems to have decide he's good with that.     Yeah, he's good with that until he isn't…but that's not the point I want to make here- In chapter 9, we meet another version of a feminine ideal in the person of Madame Reisz  The summer residents of the Grand Isle are having a party at the big house.  Everyone's dancing.  Adele is on the piano since she's too pregnant to dance herself, and everyone is having the best time. It's pointed out that Adele plays the piano, not because she cares about the piano but because music makes her kids and husband happy.  Music brightens their home.  It's a means to an end, but not the end itself.   She is passionate about her family- that's the goal.      She is the mother-woman, after all.      Exactly- but not so with Mademoiselle Reisz.  Mademoiselle Reisz we will see is the artist-woman.  Mademoiselle Reisz' relationship with music is much deeper.  Music is the end for her.  It's her passion. and her music doesn't make people happy it moves them to another place entirely.      Before we talk about how Madame Reisz' music affects everyone including Edna, let's see how Chopin describes Madame Reisz- and contrast that with how she compared Adele. if you remember Adelle is the most beautiful creature to alight on planert earth.  But here's Madame Reisz.    She was a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who had quarreled with almost everyone, owing to a temper which was self-assertive and a disposition to trample upon the rights of others….she was a homely woman, with a weazened face and body and eyes that glowed.  She had absolutely no taste in dress, and wore a batch of rusty black lace with a bunch of artificial violents pinned to th side of her hair.”    Well, that's not exactly flattering.    No, I'd say it isn't.  She is not a mother-woman either.  She's single and strong in a different way, not that Adele isn't strong because I think she is.   It's just a different feminine ideal. When Madame Reisz plays the piano it sends a tremor down Edna's spinal cord, literally.  Let me read the text here, “the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body.  She trembled, she was choking and tears blinded her.”      Edna is crying again, but this time it's very different.      True, and it is this night that Edna finally learns to swim.  Robert talks the entire party out into the white moonlight for a late night swim.  The sea is quiet, and Edna for the first time, boldly and with overconfidence goes into the water all by herself.   She has been trying all summer to learn to swim and has failed, but tonight it's different.  A feeling of exultation overtakes her.  She grows and I quote, “daring and reckless, overestimating her strength, she wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.”  She's intoxicated by her power to swim alone.  The text says, ‘she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.”  She tells Robert how swimming made her feel as he walks her back to her cottage.  She said this, “A thousand emotions have swept through me tonight.  I don't comprehend half of them…she goes on to say.  It is like a night in a dream.”      She stays on the porch that night instead of going in to bed like she usually does.  Mr. Pontellier comes home sometime past 1am (although I'm not quite sure where he went after the beach party), and she's still on the porch wide awake.  He tells her to come in with him.  The text says that she normally would have “yielded to his desire”- however you want to understand that- but this night for the first time in her life, she tells him no.  She feels strong- maybe even masculine.  He's kind of shocked and stays on the porch with her the entire night.  The text says this, “Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul.”    That sounds like she has had her awakening.      Well, it does, but then what does that awakening impel her to do?  The very first paragraph of chapter 12 says this, She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her, as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility.”  That does NOT sound like empowerment or Dr. Bandura's description of human agency.  It sounds like the opposite of empowerment.    Impulsivity and irresponsibility are not noble character traits that lead to success.    No, and if Edna is the parrot from the first chapter of the book, it seems to me, she might be parroting the behavior of her husband as her first acts of independence.  She tries to outwait him at night, then, the next morning, she gets up early and leaves him, just has he has done to her every single day.  She calls Robert and is gone, and she stays gone until 9pm at night leaving Adele to put her kids down.   It seems to me Edna and Leonce have more in common than we might have thought from the first two chapters of the book.      Yeah, the text literally says, “She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her, as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility.”  Robert even mentions to Edna that he had often noticed that she lacked forethought.    There's that word again- responsibility.  And hence the great paradox Edna does not understand responsibility and freedom go hand in hand.  If you don't have responsibility, you really can't have freedom.  Edna tries to have one at the expense of the other.      She also starts things and doesn't see them through.  Even on this little adventure outing, she starts the mass, but walks out.  She literally goes into the house of a woman she doesn't know, imposes herself by laying on her bed and sleeps the entire day away.  She is able to exercise freedom, but often only because other people are willing to take responsibility for her.      The first part of the book ends with chapter 16.  Robert has announced that he is leaving Grand Isle and going to Mexico.      We are left to infer, that after a day with Edna and the realization he might have real feelings for her, he doesn't want the entanglement taking responsibility for that will bring.  Edna, on the other hand, doesn't seem to get it.  She is distraught.  She doesn't know how will she spend the rest of her summer without Robert.  Her husband literally asks her, “How do you get on without him, Edna?”  Which I think is a question I would never ask you about another man, but again I'm not a Victorian Creole.    Ha, no, that's true, but these two don't think a thing about it.  Let me read this part, “It did not strike her as in the least grotesque that she should be making or Robert the object of conversation and leading her husband to speak of him.  The sentiment which she entertained for Robert in no way resembled that which she felt for her husband, or had ever felt, or ever expected to feel.  She had all her life been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves.  They had never taken the form of struggles.  They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and they concerned no one but herself.”- again that outside narrator commenting somewhat ironically on the state of affairs.      Well, our solitary soul has not found wings, but she has found her sea legs and is exercising them.  I don't find her behavior necessarily admirable at this point, but, but as we said in the beginning of the podcast- beginings are always chaotic.  That's the normal state of affairs.  The question will be, is Edna capable of creating a story for herself?  She has decided she hasn't been the protagonist of her own life, she's been a parrot, or an object of Leonce's.  She's awakened to that in some way, she has begun.  She has two models of womanhood before her- the mother-woman of Adele and the artist-woman of Madame Reisz.   Next episode we will see the middle part of her story, what will Edna do when she goes back home?  What will she do when she's away from the sea, the dreamy unreality of vacation life.  Will she take on new responsibilities with her awakening?      Will Leonce?    Indeed, things aren't always the same when we get back home after vacation.  So, thanks for listening………..    peace OUT.                              

Kate Chopin - The Awakening - Episode 1 - Meet The Author, Discover Local Color And Feminism!   I'm Christy Shriver, and we're here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.    And I'm Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love lit Podcast.  This episode we begin a journey to a very unique American location to discuss a very American author. Kate Chopin, was born in St Louis but her heritage is more associated with Louisiana than with Missouri as she is from an originally American people group, the Louisianan Creole's.  Christy, I know, you lived a part of your life in Louisiana, and your dad's family is from Louisiana.  As we discuss Kate Chopin and her unusual and ill-received novel The Awakening, I think a great place to start our discussion, especially for those who may not be familiar with American geography, is with the Pelican State itself.   What makes Louisiana so unusual than the rest of the United States, and why does that matter when we read a book like The Awakening.    Well, there are so many things that people think of when the think of Louisiana- Louisianan distinctive include Mardi Gras, crawfish bowls, jazz music, bayous, The French Quarter of New Orleans and its beignets.  The list is cultural distinctives is long.   But, just for a general reference, Louisiana is part of the American South.  Now, it might seem that the states that constitute the South are kind of all the same- and in some respects that's true.  Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and the rest of them, … after all, they all succeeded from the Union during the Civil War, they all had slaves, they all have had to one degree or another racial tension over the last two hundred years, and, of course, to bring it to modern-day, they all are deeply entrenched in a tradition of American football, barbeque, shot guns, sweet tea, the Bible and a general admiration of good manners that include addressing each other as mr. mrs, yes mam and no sir.      Ha!  Yes, that IS the South.  I remember moving down here and being frustrated that I could never find anywhere that served tea without sugar- and when they say sweet tea down here- I'm talking one step away from maple syrup.      I like it!!!       People do and feel strongly about it.  In fact a lot of people have a lot have strong feelings about this part of the United States.  Some love the South; others hate it.  It's a part of the United States that is historical, by American standards, although laughably young compared to other parts of the world,  and controversial- to this very day.     Yes, yet having said that,  once you move here, it doesn't take you long to realize that  The South is not one cohesive unit.  Every state is very different.  Florida was colonized by the Spanish- and has strong ties to places such as Cuba to this day.  Virginia was the seat of government and is still central to the heart of American politics.  The horse-racing people of Kentucky are very different from their cotton-growing neighbors in Mississippi.  There are many many cultural distinctives that are both old and deep.  Which brings us to the great state of Louisiana- Louisiana, especially South Louisiana, in some ways has more in common with the Caribbean islands than it does with other parts of the United States.  My daddy was born in Spring Hill, Louisiana and raised in Bastrop Louisiana which are in North Louisiana- far from the coast but the people of north Louisiana share many commonalities with their Cajun and Creole brothers.  I have early memories of magnolia trees, cypress trees, bayous, shrimp gumbo,  and, of my Uncle Lanny taking us in the middle of the night out with his hound dogs to go coon hunting- as in racoon hunting.      So, for the record, these are things you don't see in other parts of the United States.      Indeed, they don't have bayous and gumbo anywhere else- and although they do have racoons in other places and likely hunt and eat them, I don't know.  The whole government of Louisiana is different and its visible.  They have parishes instead of counties.  The law is based on French law, not British law which affects everything.   It is predominantly Catholic not Protestant, hence Mardi Gras, which is what they call Carnival in Brazil but which we don't celebrate in other part of the US.  But what interests us for this book is the ethnic origins of the people indigenous to the region.     The rural part of the state has been dominated by a group we call Cajuns.  Cajuns are Roman Catholic French Canadians, or at least their descendents were.      They were run out of the Captured French Colony called Acadia in North Eastern Canada- it's actually be termed “the Acadian diaspora”.  Acadia was in the maritime provinces up on the Atlantic side, near the US state of Maine. That part of Canada was very British hence the obvious antagonism.      Well, The word Acadians kind of morphed into Cajuns over the years.  That's one people group.  But we also have another distinctively Louisianan people group  called the Louisiana Creoles.  This group of people ethnically are entirely different group than the Cajuns but also speak French.  Our author today, Kate Chopin was a creole, and she wrote about Lousianan Creole people.  Garry, before we introduce the Mrs. Chopin, local color and her influencial work, The Awakening, let's learn just a little about these remarkable people.  Who are the Creoles of Louisiana?    Well, let me preface by saying, as Kate Chopin would be the first to admit, history is always messy- people marry, intermarry, languages get confused and muddled, so when we talk about distinctives, we are talking about generalities, and if you want take to talk about Creole people the first word that must come to mind is multi-cultural.  There are creole peoples all over the Caribbean.  Haiti is the first country that comes to mind, so we need to be careful as we speak in generalities. But  the first generality you will notice of the Louisianan Creole people shows up in the first chapter of Chopin's book, and that is that they also speak the French language, except for the Louisiana Creoles that can mean two different actual languages.  Today, and the latest stat, I saw was from May of 2020,  1,281,300 identified French as their native tongue- that would be Colonial French, standard French and the speakers of would include both people groups the Cajuns and the Louisianan Creoles.  But what is even more interesting than that is that the language Louisiana Creole is its own distinctive indigenous language, and is not the same as Haitian Creole or Hawaiian Creole or any other form of Creole where you might hear that word.  Meaning, Louisianan Creole although having origins in the French language is not French at all but its own distinct language.   This is confusing because the Cajuns speak a dialect of French that sounds different than the French from France or Quebec, but it's still French and French speakers can understand what they are saying even if it sounds different than the way they might pronounce things.  That's different. Creole is French-based, but has African influences and is literally its own language and French speakers cannot understand it.  Today it's an endangered language, only about 10,000 people speak it, but it is still alive.       Yeah, that wasn't something I understood as a teenager living in Louisiana. I thought Cajun- Creole all meant Lousianan.  Since we lived in North Louisiana, I never met anyone personally who spoke Lousiana Creole.  All the Creole's I came into contact, including Mrs. Devereaux, my French teacher spoke traditional French, which is what they do in Chopin's book too, btw.       Of course, Cajuns and Creole people have a lot in common in terms of religion and even in taste in cuisine, but where they differ tremendously is in ethnicity and also in social class.  The Cajuns are white and from Canada but often rural and historically lower-middle class.  The Creole's are not white, but culturally a part of the urban elite, the ruling class.  They are the first multi-cultural people group on the American continent and deserve a special status for that reason.    Explain that, because that's really interesting.  Today, to be multi-cultural is cool, but 100 years ago when ethnic groups did not intermingle, and being a multi-cultural group that was upper class seems like a huge anomaly.  Although I will say the word “creole” tips you off to the multi-cultural element.  It actually comes from the Portuguese word “crioulo” and the word itself means people who were created.     And again, I do want to point out that this is kind of a very big simplification of a couple of hundred years of history, but in short, the criolos were people who were born in the new World- but mostly of mixed heritage.  Gentlemen farmers, primarily French and Spanish came over to the new world.  A lot of them came  by way of the Caribbean after the slave revolt in Haiti.   They had relationships and often even second families with local people here. Many were Black slaves, others were native Americans, lots were mulattos who also came from the Caribbean.  Unlike mixed raced people from Mississippi or Alabama, Creoles were not slaves.  They were free people.  They were educated.  They spoke French and many rose to high positions of politics, arts and culture. They were the elite, many were slaveholders.  Now, I will say, that most chose to speak Colonial French over Louisiana Creole as they got more educated, also over time as we got closer to the Civil War era being mixed race in and of itself got pretty complicated with the black/white caste-system of the South, which is another story in and of itself.   And as a result, you had creoles who were identifying as white and others who didn't- Chopin's family were white creoles.  But regardless of all that, but in the 1850s and through the life of Chopin, until today, Creoles are a separate people group that identify themselves as such.  They are a proud group of people who worship together, connect socially together, and often build communities around each other. They have societal behaviors and customs that set them apart, and we learn by looking at life through Edna Pontellier's eyes, have a culture that can difficult for an outsider to penetrate, if you marry an insider.    And so enters, Mrs. Kate Chopin, born in 1851 to a mother who was Creole and a father who was a Irish, both Catholic. She was not born in Louisisana, but in the great midwestern city of St. Louis.  St Louis, at the time had a rather large Creole population by virtue of being a city on the Mississippi river- which runs from New Orleans miles north. Her mom's family was old, distinguished and part of what has been termed the “Creole Aristocracy”.  Kate grew up speaking French as a first language, and as many Creole women was raised to be very independent by three generations of women in the household. She received an exceptional education, was interested in what they called “the woman question”.  This will give you an indication of how progressive her family actually was, now brace yourself because this is scandalous….on a trip to New Orleans at the ripe age of 18, Kate learned to smoke.    Oh my, did she smoke behind the high school gym or in the bathroom stalls?    Ha!  Who even knows, but we do know that at age 19 she married the love of her life, another Creole, Oscar Chopin.  Kate and Oscar were very compatible and the years she was married to him have been described as nothing but really happy by all of her biographers that I'm familiar with.  They lived in New Orleans at first and then to Natchitoches parish in the central Louisiana where he owned and operated a general store.  They were married for 12 years, and- this small fact wipes me out- they had five sons and two daughters.    Ha!  That confirms all the Catholic stereotypes of large families.      I know right, that's just a lot…and their lives were, by all accounts, going well until…there's always an until… Oscar suffered the fate of a lot of people around the world even to this day, who live in hot climates.  He caught malaria, and suddenly died.  And there Kate was, alone in the middle of the interior of Louisiana,  with this store and all these kids.  She ran it herself for over a year, but then decided to do what lots of us would do in that situation…she moved back to the hometown of her childhood, St. Louis so she could be near her mother- I didn't mention it before but her father had died in a terrible railroad accident when she was a young child and her brother had died in the Civil War- so basically all of the men that had meant anything to her at all, had all died.  One of Kate's daughters had this to say about that later on when she was an adult talking about her mom, “When I speak of my mother's keen sense of humor and of her habit of looking on the amusing side of everything, I don't want to give the impression of her being joyous, for she was on the contrary rather a sad nature…I think the tragic death of her father early in her life, of her much beloved brothers, the loss of her young husband and her mother, left a stamp of sadness on her which was never lost.”      Goodness, that Is a lot of sadness.    Well, it is and it took a toll.  When she got back to St. Louis, Dr. Kolbenheyer, their obgyn and a family friend talked her into studying some French writers for the sake of  mental health, specifically Maupassant and Zola and take up writing.  She took that advice ..…so at age 38 a widow with six living children, Chopin began her writing career.  A career, sadly that was only going to last five years.  It started great, and she was super popular, but then….she wrote a scandalous book and was cancelled, and I mean totally cancelled.  Five years after the publication of  this candalous book that today we call The Awakening, she had a stroke and died.  At the time of her death, Kate Chopin as a writer, was virtually unknown and uncelebrated.      What do you mean by cancelled? That sounds like a crazy story for a mommy writer.    True, and it is.  When she started  writing, she was super popular.  This kind of reminds me a little of Shirley Jackson, honestly.  She wrote short things for magazines for money.  What made her work popular, at least in part, was because writing about a subculture of America that people found interesting.  Although she was living in St. Louis, her stories were set in Louisiana amongst the Creole people- and people loved it.  This movement in American literature where authors focus on a specific region or people group  has been called “Local Color”, and her ability to showcase the local color of the Creole people led her to success.        Subcultures are so fascinating to me and I'm always amazed at how many different subcultures there are- and I'm not talking about just ethnically. There are endless subcultures on this earth, and most of the time we don't even know what we're looking at.    Oh, for sure.  I think of guitar players as their own subculture- they speak their own language, have their own passions, I wouldn't be surprised if they have their own foods.     HA!  Do I sense a bit of mockery?  But you are right, we do have a little bit of a subculture, but if you think guitarists are a subculture, what do you think of my cousin Sherry who is neck deep into Harley Davidson culture and goes to Sturgis, South Dakota every year.     True, and there are hundreds of thousands of people who participate in that subculture all over the world   And of course, we're talking about hobbies which are not the same as actual ethnic subcultures in any location, understanding and just seeing behind the fence of someone else' experience is the fun.  The idea of living life vicariously through the stories, so to speak, of people who are so radically differently is one of the things I most love about reading.  In the real sense of the term “local color” though, this was an actual movement after the Civil War.  Authors were using settings from different parts of the country and it made the writing feel romantic for people unfamiliar with the setting while actually being fundamentally realistic- I know that's a paradox, but if you think about it it makes sense.  They were works that could only be written from inside the culture by someone who was a part of it- that's what made them realistic.   Chopin was considered a local color author because she was Creole writing about the world of Louisiana Creoles.      Well, apparently it was well received.  She got stories printed first in regional publications but then in national publications.  “The Story of an Hour” which was the only story I had ever read of hers, and I didn't know this, was published in Vogue in 1894.      Very impressive, Houghton Mifflin, the publisher that to this day publishes quite a bit of high school literature textbooks actually published a collection of her stories, titled it Bayou Folk.  So, just in the title, you can tell they are playing up her Louisiana connection.  And that book was a success.  Chopin, who kept notes on how well all of her works were doing, wrote that she had seen 100 press notices about the book.  It was written up in both The Atlantic and the New York Times.  People loved how she used local dialects. They found the stories and I quote “charning and pleasant.”  She was even asked to write an essay on writing for the literary journal Critic- which I found really insightful.     Well, of course, all of these things sound like a woman bound for monetary and critical success- stardom of her day.       And so her trajectory kept ascending.  She was published in the Saturday Evening Post.  Of course that was a big deal.  Everything was moving in the right direction….until.. The Awakening.  The Awakening was too much and she crashed immediately and hard.     You know, when I read these reviews from 1899, it's so interesting how strongly they reacted.  Let me read a few, her local paper, The St Louis Daily Globe-Democrat wrote this, “It is not a healthy book….if it points any particular moral or teaches any lesson the fact is not apparent.” The Chicago Times Herald wrote, “It was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the over-worked field of sex-fiction.  This is not a pleasant story.”  Here's another one, “its disagreeable glimpses of sensuality are repellent.”      She was not prepared for this.  She did not expect it.  She was expecting people to see it as the American version of some of the things she had been reading in French that had been published in France.  Her treatment of sexuality is what really got her, and maybe if her protagonist had been male she could have gotten away with it.  Actually, I'm pretty sure, she would have gotten away with it, there are other authors who did.  But discussing how women felt about sexuality- and let me say- in case you haven't read the book- this is not a harlequin romance.  She doesn't talk about hot steamy passion in descriptive tones.  She is very polished and shows deference to the WAY things were expressed in her day.  The problem was not in how she was treating sexual content- the problem was that she WAS discussing how women felt about sexuality and this just was too realistic.  People weren't and maybe we still aren't, ready to be vulnerable about how we feel about intimacy.      You know, I tell students all the time that in American politics, sexual issues have always been used as a wedge issue to define people's position as good or bad people.  That has not changed in the American political scene in 200 years and is something our European and Asian friends have mocked us about for just as long.  We are a people committed to moralizing, even to this day.  For a long time, it was cloaked in religion, but now, hyperbolic moralizing, although not done in the name of a faith is still a favorite American pastime.      Well, honestly, I guess that's also been true for the arts as well.  But honestly, greatr art is never moralizing.  And Chopin knew that.  Furthermore, if anyone had read that essay Chopin printed about her writing that I referenced, they would have seen that Chopin, by design, does NOT moralize in hers.  She does not condemn or judge.  She has no interest in telling us how we should or shouldn't behave.  She sees the role of the artist, and clearly stated as much,  and the role of fiction as in demonstrating how we genuinely ARE as human beings.  It is a role of showcasing the human experience.  It is meant to help us understand ourselves.  What she does in her writing by using a culture that is unfamiliar to us, is allow us a safer space from which we can pull back the veil that IS our experience, so we can see ourselves.  Let me quote her from that essay and here she's talking about the Creole people of Louisiana,    “Among these people are to be found an earnestness in the acquirement and dissemination of book-learning, a clinging to the past and conventional standards, an almost Creolean sensitiveness to criticism and a singular ignorance of, or disregard for, the value of the highest art forms. There is a very, very big world lying not wholly in northern Indiana, nor does it lie at the antipodes, either. It is human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it.”  Well, regardless of how she wanted to come across, apparently, she struck a nerve people didn't want struck.  The Awakening unsettled America.  The book was published in April of 1899, by August critics were destroying it, and again I'll use the reviewers words,  it had been deemed “morbid and unwholesome” and was reproached on a national stage.  She was scorned publicly.  When she submitted a new short story to the Atlantic “Ti Demon” in November after the publication of The Awakening it was returned and rejected.    Her own publisher, the one who had published the controversial book decided to “shorten is list of authors”- and they dropped her.  Of course to be fair, they claimed that decision had nothing to do with the problems with the reception of The Awakening.    I'm sure that it didn't.  Chopin was obviously crushed.  She would only write seven more stories over the next five years.  In 1904 when she died of a stroke, she was basically a forgotten writer.  And likely would have remained forgotten until, ironically the French discovered the novel in 1952.  A writer by the name of Cyrille Arnavon translated it into French under the title Edna with a 22 page introduction essay called it a neglected masterpiece.  What he liked about it had nothing to do with “local color” or creole people or anything Americana.  He saw in it what we see in it today- psychological analysis.      So fascinating, this is the 1950s; this is exactly the time period psychology is shifting from Freudian interpretations of Chopin's' day into behaviorism and eventually to humanistic psychology.      Why does this matter?    With Freud everything is secret and we're ruled by unseen forces we don't understand without psychoanalysis.  Chopin's book came out when this was how we were looking at the world.  After him came Skinner's behaviorism which said everything can be reduced to rewards and punishments.   Humanistic psychology is this third way of looking at things.  It's extremely empathetic.  Names like Karl Rogers were looking at life with the idea that it's just plain difficult to be a human, and we need to understand this complexity.  They would like books that are not all black/white thinking or moralistic.  This is what's crazy to me about Chopin.  She wrote in the days of Freud, but she was so far ahead of her time psychologically; nobody would get her for another 60 years- literally two entire movements later in the field of psychology.      Well, when they did get her, they really got her.  In 1969 a Norwegian critic Per Seyersted brought her out into the open in a big way.  This is what he said, “ Chopin, and I quote “broke new ground in American literature. She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman's submerged life. She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman's urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom.”    Finally people were understanding what she was trying to do.  That's exactly what she wanted to show- the complexity of being human.  Here's another Chopin quote whole talking about the role of a writer, “Thou shalt not preach; “thou shalt not instruct thy neighbor”.  Or as her great- grandmother Carleville, who was extremely influencial in her life, used to tell her, Kate's grandmother who raised her was known for saying this “One may know a great deal about people without judging them.  God does that.”    Well, she was immediately resurrected.  Today she is considered one of America's premiere writers.    Well, it also didn't hurt her reputation that she was being discovered in Europe at the exact same time, the women's movement was taking off in the United States and finding an unsung feminist writer was very popular.     Yeah, I thought she WAS a feminist writer, but you don't see her as that.    I really don't, and that's not to say there isn't any feminism in the book, because obviously, it's about life as a woman at the turn of the century.  Virginia Wolfe famouslty argued in her essay A Room of One's Own that no one knew what women were thinking and feeling in the 17th century because they weren't writing.  Well, you can't say that about Chopin.  She was absolutely writing about what women were thinking and feeling, it just took 60 years for the world to allow her to share it.        If we want to talk the particulars about The Awakening, which of course we do, we have a female protagonist.  I'm not going to call her a hero because I don't find anything heroic about her.  But it's very very honest characterization of what women feel, and honestly, perhaps it's what a lot of people feel- both men and women when they live, as we all do, within cultures of high expectations.      Isn't writing about standing up to cultural norms and societal expectations kind of cliché?  I'm surprised you find it interesting in this situation.     Well, it for sure can be.  It's what a lot of teenage angst poetry is about.  But Chopin's book is a lot more complex than just a denouncement on social expectations of women's roles.  In some ways, that's just the setting.  This particular woman, Edna, is for sure, unhappyily objectified by a husband.  That part is obvious.  But, Chopin isn't necessarily moralizing against this or anything else.  In the opening encounter between husband and wife, we see the wife being objectified, but we also see that they have worked out some deal.  She has a very privileged life.  It's not a life between two people who have emotional intimacy, for sure.  These two clearly don't.  Edna asks if her husband plans on showing up for dinner.  He basically sayd, I don't know- I may; I may not.  It doesn't appear Edna could care less one way or another and Chopin isn't condemning them; she is observing.  This are the deals people are working out in the world.  She makes other observations in regard to Edna and her relationship with her children.  She loves her children; sort of; but it's certainly not the motherly and passionate devotion most mothers feel towards their kids.  It's definitely not the self-denying ideal, we see expressed through a different character in the book.  Again, Chopin is not endorsing nor condemning.  She's observing.  There's no doubt, Chopin herself was progressive.  She was raised in a house of dominant women.  She herself was a head of household.  She was educated.  She made money, but she had healthy relationships with the men in her life.  She is not a man-hater, that I can tell.  She never remarried but there is reason to believe she had at least one  other significant male relationship after her husband's death.  So, portraying her as a woman who influenced feminism in any kind of deliberate way, I don't think is something that she intended, nor was it something that happened.  She was cancelled.    I understand that, it's just interesting that today, we think of her first and foremost as a feminist writer in large part because she had sexual content in her books.  Although, as I think about the progressive women in the 1890s, what we know about them from history is that most were not really be fans of indiscriminate sex.     Oh my, we're getting edgy here, but I have to ask.  Why do you say that?    You have to understand this is before birth control.  Sexual relationships for women meant running the very real risk of generating children which was often a life-risking ordeal.  Kate herself had gone through that seven times in twelve years.  Women were spending half of their lives pregnant.  Many progressive women in this time period were not fighting for the freedom to have sex, they were fighting for the right to NOT have it.  They wanted the right to say no.  The goal of Self ownership was central to nineteenth century feminism.  Woman's rights were about possessing a fully realized human identity.  We think of this today in terms of sexual freedom but that's the arrogance of the presence kicking in.  Obviously human sexuality is a core part of the human experience and that's likely why it's central to Chopin's story, but there are other aspects of person hood.  Women, especially educated ones, were interested in navigating a sense of place in the community and the universe at large- and that involves all kinds of things- hard things like love, connections, maternity.    Exactly, and that's why Edna is so complicated.  Being a human is difficult.   Navigating  “the woman's sphere”, to use the expression of  the notable Chopin scholar Sandra Gilbert is complicated.  And so, we all find ourselves, one way or another in cages- some of our own making, some of the makings of our community, our religion, our culture, our own personalities- whatever it is.  And that is the opening of our story.  The Awakening starts with a woman in a cage.  This is not to say that men do not experience cages or awakenigs- they absolutely do, but Chopin is a woman and will speak from inside the world of women.  She will drop a woman named Edna, a middle child Presbyterian English speaking girl from Kentucky, into a French speaking Catholic world of elite Creole women.  Edna is flawed, but not awful.  She's flawed in the sense that we are all flawed.  This woman acts out- in the way that many of us have acted out- often as children, but for some of us, we don't experience this desire for agency until later in life.  For Edna it comes at the age of 26 and when it does- she will scandalize her world the way acting out always does.  She finds herself in a cage and decides she wants out...but then what…where do you go from there.  Let's read how Chopin sets this up in the first paragraph of her story.    A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over:  “Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!”  He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence.  Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper with any degree of comfort, arose with an expression and an exclamation of disgust.  He walked down the gallery and across the narrow “bridges” which connected the Lebrun cottages one with the other. He had been seated before the door of the main house. The parrot and the mocking-bird were the property of Madame Lebrun, and they had the right to make all the noise they wished. Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their society when they ceased to be entertaining.    Christy, does she give the entire story away in the beginning?    She's doing something.  She opens with a bird- a parrot. We will talk more about this later, but birds are a big deal in this book.  But why a parrot- what do parrots do- well they imitate.  They talk.  This parrot is in a cage repeating something an English reader may not understand.      What does that phrase mean?    It means Go away! Go away!  For God's sake!  The bird is telling everyone to go away, and Mr. Pontellier pretty much ignores the bird and does actually go away.  The bird speaks a little Spanish but also a language no one else understands.  There's a lot of intentionality here.  This book begins with a bird in a cage and the book ends with a bird, but I won't tell you how we find that bird yet.       These 19th century writers were always using symbols on purpose.       They really do.  And if this one is our protagonist- what we can see is that she's beautiful, she's in a cage, and although she can talk, she cannot articulate something that can be heard properly or understood.      And so that is our starting point.    I think it is.  Next episode, we will join Edna and explore this beautiful place, Grand Isle- the site, and if the title of the book hasn't given it away yet, I will, of her Awakening.  We will watch Edna awaken- but then, we know from our visit with Camus…that is only step one.  Now what.    Indeed…now what.  Well, thank you for spending time with us today.  We hope you have enjoyed meeting Kate Chopin and jumping into the first paragraph of her lost but rediscovered American masterpiece, The Awakening.  And if you did, please support us by sharing this episode with a firend, either by text, by twitter, Instagram or email.  That's how we grow.  Also, if you have a favorite book, you'd like us to discuss, you are always invited to connect with us, again via all the ways Modern world people do.    Peace out!                 

Tonight's sleep story is The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Published in 1899, this novel is considered by many to be a landmark work of early feminism. In this episode, Edna Pontellier starts to feel uneasy about her life while on vacation. If you like this episode, please remember to follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favourite podcast app. Also, share with any family or friends that might have trouble drifting off.Goodnight and Sweet Dreams.... We are also now on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JustSleepPod  and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justsleeppod/

Kate Chopin's absorbing 1899 novel The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a married woman in New Orleans who questions her life choices, and seeks something else. What does she want? I spoke with Professor Rafael Walker, who has written and thought deeply about Chopin's writings, to find out whether Chopin's novel fits into the narrative of unhappy-woman-seeks-liberation, - or whether Chopin is perhaps after something else altogether in this story of a woman's quest to be herself.  Professor Walker is assistant professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, and specializes in American literature, African American literature, women's literature, and the novel. He is also affiliated with  Baruch College's Black and Latino Studies Department, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis (A.B.) - where Kate Chopin also lived.   —————————   //////////////////   Follow us:   (THINK ABOUT IT PODCAST)   INSTAGRAM - https://www.instagram.com/thinkaboutit.podcast/ . (ULI BAER)   TWITTER - https://twitter.com/UliBaer   INSTAGRAM - https://www.instagram.com/uli.baer . (RAFAEL WALKER)   TWITTER - https://twitter.com/raf_walker   INSTAGRAM - https://www.instagram.com/raffie_walker   ////////////////   Listen to the Podcast on:   APPLE PODCASTS - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-about-it/id1438358902   SPOTIFY - https://open.spotify.com/show/3QDjymXla0Lt61r2OaWEtV   YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnaJi-J359remsMZ3Y2EJMQ   Thanks for listening! :)

Today Chelsey and Sara are chatting about The Awakening by Kate Chopin. This novella published in 1899 follows Edna Pontellier as she discovers her desires and her identity outside of wifehood and motherhood. Our discussion includes how this book illustrates the constraints placed on 19th century women, why we don’t seem to have any issues with the infidelity in the novel, and how Kate Chopin speaks to modern-day mom-shaming. We also dig into some of the problematic content in this book and offer suggestions on how to read it through a more modern lens. Plus, as always, we’re recommending six contemporary books to pair with our classic include a young adult novel full of evocative nature imagery and a closed door second chance romance. Today’s episode is brought to you by Libro.fm, the only audiobook company that allows you to purchase audiobooks directly from your favorite indie bookstore. You can get THREE audiobooks for $15 by clicking this link or by using code NOVELPAIRINGS at checkout. Books, Pairings, and Time Stamps Books Discussed: The Awakening Modern Library Torchbearers Edition (23:50), Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (30:36), Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (30:38) Chelsey’s Pairings: Educated by Tara Westover (39:45), Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper (44:08), We Are Okay by Nina Lacour (48:40) Sara’s Pairings: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (41:40), Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (46:02), Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes (50:20) Picks of the Week: Love is Blind (52:35) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (54:45)

Tonight, we’ll be reading from the 1899 novel by Kate Chopin, "The Awakening". Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood. It is widely seen as a landmark work of early feminism, and a precursor of American modernist literature. -- 'V'Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/snoozecast)

Edna Pontellier has an awakening one summer, but is it worth the trouble?

El despertar de Kate Chopin (1899) es una novela situada en Estados Unidos de finales del siglo XIX. En este libro conocemos a Edna Pontellier, una joven mujer, esposa de un rico empresario Creole de Lousiana, madre de dos hijos. Edna tiene lo que en opinión de muchas personas sería una vida perfecta, pero en el fondo de su corazón siente que algo le falta para ser feliz. Escucha qué tiene de bueno y de malo El despertar en este episodio de A la aventura, podcast de libros y lectura. Música de entrada: Gymnopedie No. 1 de Erik Satie Música de salida: Jeux D’eau de Maurice Ravel APP app.alaaventura.net Contacto www.alaaventura.net/contacto www.facebook.com/alaaventurapodcast Twitter: @alaaventura jboscomendoza@gmail.com Ayuda a hacer posible este podcast a través de Patreon http://wwww.patreon.com/alaaventura

This week on StoryWeb: Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening.   Kate Chopin initially made her literary name as a writer of “local color fiction.” Writers around the United States were focusing careful attention on the customs, dialects, folkways, and geography of distinct regions in the U.S. For example, Sarah Orne Jewett focused on life in coastal Maine, perhaps most famously in The Country of the Pointed Firs, and her literary heir, Willa Cather, took the local color impulse further in her fully realized novels, such as My Antonia, O Pioneers!, and The Song of the Lark.   Chopin was particularly adept at crafting local color fiction, and she published two volumes of sketches and short stories set in the Cajun bayous of Louisiana. Though she was born and raised in my hometown of St. Louis and though she would return to the Lou after her husband died, she lived with her husband first in New Orleans, then in a rural Louisiana parish. It was there in Cloutierville in Nachitoches Parish that she found the inspiration for her short fiction. You can learn about the Chopins’ home, now designated as a National Historic Landmark, and follow in the footsteps of the Literary Traveler, Linda McGovern, as she visits Cloutierville.   In 1899, she took what she had learned about local color writing and used it to create The Awakening, a novel set in New Orleans and nearby Grand Isle – a place of summer retreat for the wives and children of wealthy New Orleans businessmen. A woman’s retelling of Gustave Flaubert’s 1857 novel, Madame Bovary, Chopin’s The Awakening teeters on the edge between the nineteenth century and the twentieth.   The novel’s heroine, Edna Pontellier, has been raised to be a good New Orleans wife, with the tacit assumption that she’ll simply don her duties like the proper dresses she wears and become like her friend, Madame Ratignolle, whom Edna calls one of the “mother women.”   But Edna doesn’t assume the mantle of respectable wife and doting mother as easily as her society tells her she should. Instead, she dips a toe in the burgeoning possibilities of the twentieth century. Actually, she dips more than a toe. After tentative beginnings, she learns to swim and plunges into the Gulf of Mexico headlong.   Her twentieth-century role model is Mademoiselle Reisz, an unmarried pianist who has dedicated her life to her music.   As Edna “awakens” throughout the novel, the question is constantly posed: can she fly above convention, or is she, as Mademoiselle Reisz says, a bird with a broken wing, hampered by the expectations of her society?   The similarities between Madame Bovary and The Awakening are striking. In Chopin’s novel, the heroine Emma is renamed Edna; other character names are echoed as well. Both Emma Bovary and Edna Pontellier commit adultery, and to make matters worse, in Chopin’s novel, the heroine’s downfall – or “sin” – is that she commits adultery solely for passion, rather than for love. Each novel ends with the heroine’s demise.   But where Emma Bovary is a shallow child-woman lost in Romantic fantasies, there is more depth to Edna Pontellier. Her deepest desire is to be an artist. She recoils from the identity of the “mother-woman,” which she sees so fully realized in her friend Madame Ratignolle. Edna does not want to be bound by her children, by motherhood. At the same time, she is drawn to her asexual friend, Mademoiselle Reisz. She loves the fact that Mademoiselle Reisz has devoted her entire life to music, and she dreams that she, too, could make a life of her art, her painting.   Perhaps the most controversial aspect of The Awakening is how to read what is undeniably an ambiguous ending. It often makes me think of the ending to the film Thelma and Louise. At first, we’re cheering as Thelma and Louise drive off the cliff: they’re liberated, they’re free, they’re triumphant. But almost instantly, we’re devastated: for in that moment of triumph, they also die.   So too with the ending of The Awakening. Edna has finally learned to swim – “she wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.” She does so naked, stripped of all social conventions and mores. She is free and triumphant at last. But it’s also true that she has swum out past the point of no return: she’s dead. She is the bird with the broken wing, the woman who could not succeed in breaking free of convention.   What happened to Kate Chopin herself is telling. By any measure and at any time, The Awakening would be considered a bold novel. That it was published in 1899 is nearly unbelievable. It is no surprise, then, to learn that Chopin came in for sharp criticism. Newspaper reviews around the country were immediately and unmistakably harsh. The St. Louis Republic deemed the novel "poison" and "too strong a drink for moral babes,” and the Chicago Times Herald chastised her for entering “the overworked field of sex fiction.”   What caused the outrage about the book? Edna’s bold, unconventional choices, including an extramarital affair with someone she did not love. But worse than that was the fact that Chopin, as author, did not punish or condemn her character for the affair.   The vitriolic reviews were one thing. But what was of much more devastating to Chopin was the resounding silence she was met with immediately and permanently from upper-crust St. Louis society, of which she had been a mainstay. Chopin had hosted a famous and well-loved “salon” – Thursday afternoon soirees that gathered the literary, artistic, cultural, and intellectual luminaries of her time. She was also the first woman in St. Louis to become a professional fiction writer.   Chopin’s prominence meant nothing, however, when The Awakening was published. Quite literally, no one ever darkened her doorway again.   So strong was the response against The Awakening that it caused her publisher to pull the contract on her forthcoming collection of stories, A Vocation and a Voice (which was finally published posthumously decades later). Chopin wrote nothing further between the publishing of The Awakening in 1899 and her death after a hot August day at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.   After her death, Kate Chopin – the writer once heralded for her ability to capture the essence of Cajun culture – fell into nearly complete literary obscurity. It would take a Norwegian scholar, Per Seyersted, to rediscover her work in the 1960s and convince an American publisher to reissue her work.   Now The Awakening is taught in college classrooms across the country and is included in its entirety in the venerated Norton Anthology of American Literature.   Ready to learn more about Chopin? Of course, you’ll want to start by reading The Awakening – either in a free, online version or in an inexpensive Dover Thrift Edition. Per Seyersted edited an outstanding volume, The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, and Emily Toth has written the definitive biography, Unveiling Kate Chopin. For my take on Toth’s biography, visit the American Literature website, and for more of my thoughts on The Awakening, read the first chapter of my 1994 book, A Southern Weave of Women: Fiction of the Contemporary South. If you still haven’t had enough of Chopin’s work, you might want to take a look at Kate Chopin’s Private Papers, co-edited by Seyersted and Toth. In addition, the Kate Chopin International Society has a useful website. PBS has a transcript of its great documentary, Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening, and Literary Traveler Linda McGovern takes you to Grand Isle, the setting of The Awakening. Finally, if you want to see just how far Chopin could take her depiction of passion, read her posthumously published story “The Storm,” in which the two characters get swept away by the power of a raucous thunderstorm.   For links to all these resources, visit thestoryweb.com/chopin.   Listen now as I read the scene where Edna Pontellier learns to swim.   The people walked in little groups toward the beach. They talked and laughed; some of them sang. There was a band playing down at Klein's hotel, and the strains reached them faintly, tempered by the distance. There were strange, rare odors abroad—a tangle of the sea smell and of weeds and damp, new-plowed earth, mingled with the heavy perfume of a field of white blossoms somewhere near. But the night sat lightly upon the sea and the land. There was no weight of darkness; there were no shadows. The white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the mystery and the softness of sleep. Most of them walked into the water as though into a native element. The sea was quiet now, and swelled lazily in broad billows that melted into one another and did not break except upon the beach in little foamy crests that coiled back like slow, white serpents. Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim. She had received instructions from both the men and women; in some instances from the children. Robert had pursued a system of lessons almost daily; and he was nearly at the point of discouragement in realizing the futility of his efforts. A certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in the water, unless there was a hand near by that might reach out and reassure her. But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence. She could have shouted for joy. She did shout for joy, as with a sweeping stroke or two she lifted her body to the surface of the water. A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before. Her unlooked-for achievement was the subject of wonder, applause, and admiration. Each one congratulated himself that his special teachings had accomplished this desired end. "How easy it is!" she thought. "It is nothing," she said aloud; "why did I not discover before that it was nothing. Think of the time I have lost splashing about like a baby!" She would not join the groups in their sports and bouts, but intoxicated with her newly conquered power, she swam out alone. She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself. Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had left there. She had not gone any great distance—that is, what would have been a great distance for an experienced swimmer. But to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome. A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time appalled and enfeebled her senses. But by an effort she rallied her staggering faculties and managed to regain the land.