Our Favorite Books: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about influential books that have changed my life or have deeply touched me in some way. It was in my third year of college when I read one of the most thought provoking books that has had deep significance for me as a woman, Kate Chopin’s masterpiece The Awakening.

I haven’t read the book in years, but I can still remember it like it was yesterday. Throughout my life since I read the book years ago I have tried to explain why the book is so important to me to other people and it always seemed that people reacted negatively to what I was saying about the book, so I just eventually stopped telling people. But now I am at a certain stage in my life where I feel that it is time that I reclaim the book for myself again.

The storyline is simple and is highly influenced by the the era in which it was written, 1899. The book opens up with the main character, Edna, who belongs to a “high society” circle of people on vacation. Edna is married with children and her husband treats her as if she is a delicate and helpless child. During her time on vacation she meets a young man who she begins to fall for and who eventually decides to leave for Mexico.

As the story progresses, Edna becomes more and more independent and her husband as well as the family doctor become worried about her “melancholy” mood. Edna begins to paint, go out and do things for herself, begins to refuse visitors and return calls, and neglects household duties. She grows tired of being treated as an invalid and becomes disillusioned with the societal conventions of being a mother and wife that have been thrust upon her. Eventually she moves out of her house and into her own place.

One day her young lover returns from Mexico, only to leave unexpectedly after leaving her a note professing his love for her. Edna becomes seriously depressed, and the next day after thinking about her children she walks straight into the ocean- walking and walking and walking towards the horizon.

Throughout the years as I have told this story to people, many people have had so many violent reactions to my retelling of the story. It has been almost seven years since the last time that I told someone about this story when one of my former friends chastised me for loving a book where a woman killed herself over a man and left her children behind. People have had so many violent reactions to this book when I have told them about it, often getting upset that a woman killed herself because a man left her and quite frequently over the fact that the woman decided that she did not want to be a mother anymore and moved out of the house, leaving her family and children.

I feel that many people have missed the whole point of the book, being that many woman in the present and still to this day are forced into roles that society expects us to conform to. Sometimes we even believe that we may want something or that we like or need something merely because it is all we know and how society has influenced us to be often without our even realizing it. And then one day many of us just wake up and realize that we have lost a part of ourselves, or perhaps that we never even knew ourselves because we were too busy living up to society’s expectations as to who we want to be. The fact that I seem to not be able to retell this story to many women without someone treating me as if I am a freak for loving a book where a woman would rather kill herself than be trapped in the role of mother and wife is proof alone that society’s expectations for the role of women are powerful indeed.

It was when I first read this book and also later when I read Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, that I finally accepted the fact that perhaps I am a woman who never wants to be married or have children. It was a hard and confusing conclusion to come to, because I was so unsure as to if I really wanted children or if I only wanted children because that is what “we are supposed to do”. For many of us women who choose to be childless, every once in a while the “oh, you will eventually want them” begins to get under your skin and you sometimes begin to wonder what it is that you really want versus what society expects of you. The act of reading about a woman who came to the conclusion that she no longer wanted to be a mother or a wife and would rather kill herself than return to such a life was one of the most liberating experiences that I have ever experienced in my life.

As I sometimes sit and listen to women talk about their husbands and children, I am reminded of The Awakening every time that I hear women talk about how they have no time for themselves or how they have to do most of the work at home and take care of the children. I don’t want to sound judgmental, but I often ask myself how many of the women are secretly frustrated with their lives or perhaps can’t imagine any other alternative.

I’m pretty sure that I am still the same woman who doesn’t want to get married or have children, but who knows what the future will bring as I get closer to the age of 40. Perhaps one day I will decide to have children, or perhaps will continue to remain childless. Two things are for certain: first, if I don’t decide to have children, The Awakening taught me a valuable lesson to embrace my nonconformity; and second, that if I ever do decide to have children that I need to be careful that my role as a mother, wife or lover doesn’t consume every aspect of myself that I effectively kill off any sense of my former self and the woman who I used to be.