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Record: 1

Title:
Depression and Chopin's The Awakening.
Authors:
Ryan, Steven T.
Source:
Mississippi Quarterly. Spring98, Vol. 51 Issue 2, p253. 21p. 1 Black and White Photograph.
Document Type:
Literary Criticism
Subject Terms:
*DEPRESSED persons
Reviews & Products:
AWAKENING, The (Book : Chopin)
Abstract:
Focuses on the book `The Awakening,' by Kate Chopin, with reference to the suicide of Edna Pontellier, one of the characters in the book, due to her
depression. Portrayal of Pontellier's father; Examination of the `pervasive voice of `motherlessness' in the novel; Details on the paradoxical nature of the
novel; Association between sexuality and intimacy.
Full Text Word Count:
8810
ISSN:
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 0026-637X
Accession Number:
990029
Persistent link to this record (Permalink):
https://buap.bethlehem.edu/index.php?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=990029&site=eds-live
Cut and Paste:
<A href="https://buap.bethlehem.edu/index.php?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=990029&site=eds-
live">Depression and Chopin's The Awakening.</A>
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DEPRESSION AND CHOPIN'S THE AWAKENING

A SELDOM DISCUSSED MOMENT IN KATE CHOPIN'S THE AWAKENING occurs when Edna Pontellier's father arrives for a visit and is sketched by his
daughter:

Before her pencil he sat rigid and unflinching, as he had faced the cannon's mouth in days gone by. He resented the intrusion of the children, who gaped with
wondering eyes at him, sitting so stiff up there in their mother's bright atelier. When they drew near he motioned them away with an expressive action of the
foot, loath to disturb the fixed lines of his countenance, his arms, or his rigid shoulders.[1]

The image agrees with the general portrayal of Edna's father--a striking man but vain and cold. Although Edna initially enjoys the new adult sensation that "for
the first time in her life she felt as if she were thoroughly acquainted" with her father and is only "amused" that "he kept her busy serving him and ministering to
his wants" (p. 66), in time they argue over "her lack of filial kindness and respect" and she is glad to see him leave "with his padded shoulders, his Bible
reading, his 'toddies' and ponderous oaths" (p. 68). Edna's father is a study of narcissism, and the image of him shooing his grandsons while trying to maintain
his perfect pose is a telling clue to Edna's childhood and the forming of her personality.

Except for Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's fine study of the "pervasive voice of `motherlessness'" in the novel[2] and Cynthia Griffin Wolff's interpretation of Edna
as a woman with a schizoid personality disorder,[3] we have paid too little attention to the making of Edna's personality. While we debate the feminism,
Darwinism, and existentialism of the novel, we tend to miss Chopin's insight into Edna's psychological state. Unfortunately, this means that we have typically
ignored the possibility that Edna's suicide derives from depression and that she is a woman haunted by the attachment deprivation of her childhood. Admittedly
Kate Chopin was fascinated by Darwinism and presents Edna's sexual awakening as a product of a biological imperative. Likewise, Chopin's interest in
feminism is apparent in the model of Mademoiselle Reitz and in Edna's struggle to define herself outside the social codes of marriage and motherhood. The
novel's prefiguring of existentialism is also apparent. Edna sees herself, much like Camus's Janine in "The Adulterous Woman," as an isolated individual
caressed by nature's force and both isolated and freed by her self-realization.

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All of the -isms together create within the novel an odd tension between freedom and determinism; even the suicide is both a release from sexual and social
repression and an enslavement to erotic self-destruction. The paradoxical nature of the novel may be better understood if we take into account that Chopin
carefully shaped a human being whose needs were not met in her childhood and that the denial of her early needs for intimacy left her with a lifelong struggle
both to break from her own neediness and to achieve a human attachment that would not smother her emerging sense of an authentic self. As Fox-Genovese has
so aptly argued, "Edna's immature emotional neediness cannot easily be exaggerated . . ." (p. 272). Such confusion of the self frequently results in depression,
and suicide may occur as the depressive's response to rejection and isolation.

Consider, for example, how in her final moment Edna's mind returns to her childhood:

Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry
officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. (p. 109)

The keen sensory reactions carry her back to her childhood and define her early needs and desires. These memories are paired with her reaction to Robert who
she believes has rejected her. She recalls his note in which he wrote, "Good-by--because I love you" and she realizes that "He would never understand" (p. 109).
This pairing of recent rejection and early childhood is logical if we accept that Edna's longing for love and understanding was first frustrated in childhood.
Edna's awakened sexuality in both her childhood and her adult state is inseparable from her longing for intimacy.

The link between sexuality and intimacy is central within the novel, and Wolff's essay is useful in its investigation of Edna's intimacy problems. I am in full
agreement with Wolff's argument that Edna's identity has been dangerously "predicated on the conscious process of concealment" (p. 235) and that there is an
"apparent terror which genuine emotional involvement inspires in Edna" (p. 236). However, Wolff's essay is based upon her application of R. D. Laing's very
broad interpretation of the schizoid personality in The Divided Self[4] Edna's personality does not conform to this disorder, at least not as it is currently defined
within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (DSM-IV).[5] According to the "Diagnostic Features" this disorder is primarily
characterized by "a pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings" (p. 638).
Accordingly, one must have at least four of the following characteristics: (1) neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family, (2)
almost always chooses solitary activities, (3) has little, if any, interest in having sexual experiences with another person, (4) takes pleasure in few, if any,
activities, (5) lacks close friends or confidants other than first-degree relations, (6) appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others, (7) shows emotional
coldness, detachment, and flattened affectivity. Certainly, within the early action of the novel, such as her touching and talking with Madame Ratignolle or her
ecstatic reaction to the performance of Mademoiselle Reitz, Edna manifests too much need for intimacy and too much affectation to conform to this description.

Even within Laing's broad application.of schizoid, key statements do not conform to the characterization of Edna. For example, Laing writes that "no one feels
more 'vulnerable', more liable to be exposed by the look of another person than the schizoid individual" (p. 79). Later he writes that "if there is anything the
schizoid individual is likely to believe in, it is his own destructiveness. He is unable to believe that he can fill his own emptiness without reducing what is there
to nothing. He regards his own love and that of others as being as destructive as hatred" (p. 99).[6] Such characteristics are consistent with Millon's description
of schizoid individuals as "unfeeling, then, not by intention or for self-protective reasons, but because they possess an intrinsic emotional blandness and
interpersonal imperceptiveness. They lack spontaneity, resonance, and color, are clumsy, unresponsive, and boring in relationships, and appear to lead dull, if
not bleak, and stolid lives."[7] This description conflicts with Edna's vivid imagination and hunger for romance. To follow Laing's reasoning one would have to
see Edna's "awakening" as a descent into schizophrenic psychosis, but here again the characteristics do not conform to the DSM-IV (since there is an absence of
delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior).

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Similarly, Edna's condition is not as severe as what is now called Bipolar I Disorder (previously defined as Manic Depression). Chopin's description of Edna's
change in behavior does not conform to a psychotic manic episode, but it does conform to what is called a hypomanic episode and, combined with the hints of
major depressive episodes, this would justify considering Edna under the DSM-IV category of Bipolar II Disorder. A hypomanic episode may include the
following symptoms that seem relevant in Edna's case: (1) inflated self-esteem or grandiosity, (2) an urge to be more talkative than usual or a sense of pressure
to keep talking, (3) the flight of ideas or a subjective experience that thoughts are racing, (4) an increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or
school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation, (5) excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., the
person engages in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments). If one combines Edna's sudden drive to become an artist
(despite what Chopin describes as her lack of true artistic dedication and genius), the troubled observations of Edna by Dr. Mandelet at Edna's dinner party
(when she ignores his cautionary clinical case and counters with her captivating romantic fantasy), and her affair with Alcee Arobin, one can see application of
possibly all five of these symptoms (only three are required).

This behavior is a sharp contrast to what appears to be the depressive behavior that is more characteristic of Edna's previous life, although the novel's focus on
Edna's movement into a hypomanic episode means that we have limited detail to help us understand Edna before her "awakening." The contrast between Edna's
former and present behavior is most objectively presented through the observations of Dr. Mandelet:

He observed his hostess attentively from under his shaggy brows, and noted a subtle change which had transformed her from the listless woman he had known
into a being who, for the moment, seemed palpitant with the forces of life. Her speech was warm and energetic. There was no repression in her glance or
gesture. (p. 67)

A clue to Dr. Mandelet's suspicion that Edna is experiencing a phase that could quickly and easily swing in an opposite direction is the qualifter "for the
moment." Primary evidence of a depressive state that underlies Edna's exhilaration occurs with her tearful night in the wicker chair in the beginning of the novel
and her suicide in the end. Between the beginning and end, Edna experiences lethargic and despondent dips that suggest her previous depressive tendencies.
During her melancholic phases, Edna appears to have the following five symptoms of Major Depression as described in the DSM-IV. (1) a depressed mood
most of the day, nearly every day, (2) a markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day, (3) insomnia or
hyposomnia nearly every day, (4) fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day, (5) recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan,
or a -suicidal attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide(p. 327). Again such identification is difficult because Chopin's primary action begins with Edna's
awakening; however, the quick changes in Edna's mood seem to characterize what David B. Cohen calls "rapid cycling bipolar disorder," which according to
Cohen "carries a relatively high risk for suicide. "[8] Cohen explains the deceptive nature of the highs within bipolar depression: "The well-being of manic
disorder is mostly illusory and misleading, in that it is often mixed with dysphoric feelings, it is fundamentally selfish, egocentric and destructive, and it is a
signal of a liability to depression and suicide" (p. 134). Another category that may apply to Edna's condition is "cyclothymia," which involves "cyclic shifts
between dysthymic and hypomanic mood from barely noticed to dramatically evident" (p.146).

Edna is not destroyed because her sensuality is awakened but rather because the awareness of her sensuality emotionally resurrects her frustrated need for
intimacy. Edna knows that the life of sensuality will not be denied her. In the moment of "despondency," the night before her suicide, she realizes that her future
could provide her with endless sexual exploration when she thinks, "Today it is Arobin; tomorrow it will be some one else" (p. 108). Arobin is the novel's guide
into sexual adventure, but Edna is led to despair by her assumption that she can attain no true attachment and retain her true identity. Earlier when she accepted
Arobin as her lover, she was also left with "a dull pang of regret because it was not the kiss of love which had inflamed her, because it was not love winch had
held this cup of life to her lips" (p. 80). Edna's final despair derives from a paradoxical fear of entrapment (with her children as the primary source of
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entrapment) and a fear that she will be left alone, without authentic intimacy. This reaction to engulfment-estrangement is frequently interpreted as Edna's
heroic struggle against social roles and expectations, but the terror of engulfmentestrangement is a common effect of depression, one often understood as
resulting from the depressive's early frustration of dependency and intimacy needs.

Dana Jack's "Silencing the Self: The Power of Social Imperatives in Female Depression" describes many relevant characteristics of women in depression[9]
Several of them apply to Edna and suggest how Chopin's interest in feminism logically connects with recent theories on depression. First of all Edna at age 28-
29 is within the peak range (25-44) for women with depression. She has two of the most common characteristics of depressive women: the "lack of a
supportive, confiding relationship with a parmer" and the death of a mother before age eleven (p. 161). Jack emphasizes the problem of self-concept in
depression and recognizes the importance of early life experience based on the findings of Heinz Kohut, Alice Miller, and D. W. Winnicott, who "agree that
depression results from an early environment where the child learned that his/her actual self was unacceptable, and developed a false self to present to the
world, becoming self-alienated and cut off from emotions in the process" (p. 163). Jack extends these theories to include the acculturation of women to explain
the high ratio of women with depression: "My work reveals that when women try to fit their relational capacities and needs into the roles of 'wife' and 'good
woman,' defined by society as-self-sacrificing and oriented to the needs of others, they run the risk of self-alienation and inauthenticity" (p. 164). Chopin's focus
on Edna's struggle to discover an authentic self is closely aligned with Jack's analysis of the struggle of women who are vulnerable to depression. Like Jack's
contemporary cases, Edna begins at age twenty-eight to realize that she is alien to herself, and she is like Jack's cases who "experienced a loss of self within
their roles of wife and mother" (p. 164). Just as Jack discusses the danger of the feminine ideal of "selflessness" which is often passed down from depressive
mother to depressive daughter, Edna seems to have initially modeled her external behavior after a mother who was "coerced" into her grave by her husband (p.
68). Similarly, according to Jack, "the depressed women also described that, as girls, they did not have a warm affectionate relationship with their fathers" (p.
172). In Jack's interviews with twelve women, she discovered that eleven of the twelve "described their mother as the submissive one in a clearly
dominant/submissive relationship with the husband" (p. 171). Although Mr. Pontellier is not a patriarchal dictator like his father-in-law, he is described as "a
rather courteous husband so long as he met a certain tacit submissiveness in his wife" (p. 55). Jack observes that the "critical variable" for depression in women
is "the quality of the woman's relationship with her parmer" (p. 165) and that lack of intimacy characterizes the depressive. Edna's relationship with Mr.
Pontellier is observed by the society as an appropriate marital relationship, but Chopin emphasizes that it lacks the intimacy of the Ratignolles'. Edna is left with
destructive models of selflessness and barriers to intimacy that leave her in a state of confusion and isolation.

Jack describes two important characteristics of depressive women which are strikingly applicable to Edna. One is the division within the woman vulnerable to
depression between an external appearance and an internal reality. According to Jack, "Living out the model of goodness, the woman begins to experience two
opposing selves: an outwardly conforming compliant self, and an inner, secret self who is angry and resentful" (p. 177). Compare this to Chopin's early
description of Edna: "Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a characteristic hitherto contrary to her nature. Even as a child she had lived her
own small life all within herself At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life--that outward existence which conforms, the inward life
which questions" (p. 14). Edna's anger is palpable, yet she carefully protects the internal voice from exposure. Jack explains that "the authentic self becomes
silent to protect the integrity of its own vision from judgment. What is paralyzing and leads to the sense of not being heard, not being recognized or loved for
the self one 'really' is, and the belief that if one were heard, one would not be understood but rather be called immoral, selfish, and be abandoned" (p. 178). This
fear becomes a reality for Edna after her rebellion. When she breaks her silence, openly rebels, and declares her love for Robert, she must then deal with his
moral shock. When she says to Robert, "I give myself where I choose" (p. 102), Robert turns white, shocked by her lack of conventional morality. After the
rejection, she is indeed left alone and gives up in despair because she concludes that she has not been and will never be understood: "He [Robert] did not know;

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he did not understand. He will never understand" (p. 109). Edna progresses from the depressive division between the conforming external and the rebellious
internal to a final release of an authentic self that leaves her with a sense of debasement, abandonment, and isolation.

The second applicable characteristic discussed by Jack is the way in which women vulnerable to depression have an "either/or" mindset that leaves them with
no sense of choice. Basically, "these women describe seeing no way to care for themselves--to attend to their needs and feelings without severing connection;
and no way to care for another person without losing themselves. They perceive two visions of relationships: either isolation or subordination" (p. 175).
According to Jack, this thought pattern "does not allow the person to integrate self and other" (p. 175). The depressive feels caught between two untenable
positions with no chance for fulfillment:

When a woman is living out the 'selfless' side of the equation, her depression appears to be the overdependent type: she focuses on the important other, fears the
loss of the relationship but experiences a loss of self. When she had decided to care for herself first, her depression often looks hostile, angry, and defiant: she
fears the loss of self if she cares for another, yet she feels isolated. (p. 175)

These reversals are apparent from the early stages of The Awakening and reflect on the general depressive fears of estrangement and engulfment.

On the surface, Edna's battle is with her innate sensuality and social conventions. Her sexual nature is unleashed, and she wishes to escape the enslavement of
marriage. However, neither her affair with Arobin nor her romantic dream of a life with Robert Lebrun are adequately explained as lust and love. To Fox-
Genovese, "They are loves that partake of, even as they mask, the longing for the lost mother" (p. 280). With Arobin, Edna does unleash her sexuality, but she is
consistently ambivalent in her reaction to the superficial charm of Arobin. The pleasure Arobin offers is only an illusion of intimacy. From the beginning she
seems to realize that Arobin plays a game and is incapable of intimacy. On the other hand, with Robert there is only the dream of an unattached attachment. She
is shocked when he mentions marriage and insists that she will never again be so conventionally fettered, yet before she leaves him with her declaration of love,
she speaks in terms of an all-consuming attachment: "We shall be everything to each other. Nothing else in the world is of any consequence" (p. 103). The love
she imagines is a dream state in which she would no longer suffer from either estrangement br engulfment. She is up against much more than the social
conventions of marriage and the conformity of Robert. More important, she is caught between her own desire to overcome her loneliness by merging with
Robert and to end her isolation and her desire to remain absolutely free, unhindered in her quest for an individual identity. In the end, she knows that she desires
only Robert, but she also "realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone" (p. 108).
The realization is the dissolving of the last dream, of the untenable vision that Robert can somehow end her sense of estrangement and will not thwart her in her
desire for intimacy. One can see in Edna's dream of loving Robert a desire to resolve the pull between selflessness (to lose herself in her relationship with
Robert) and selfishness (to define herself as a separate entity). The fact that the dream cannot be realized has as much to do with Edna as with her immediate
environment (the cultural views of marriage and Robert's conformity). Edna's reaction to Robert demonstrates how torn she remains between the either/or of
selflessness and selfishness, and how easily she resigns herself to a sense of hopelessness (that lasting intimacy with human growth is impossible).

Chopin's description of the "seductive" power of the sea is sexual. As Edna disrobes and walks into the wavelets that "coiled like serpents about her ankles," her
association of the sea with her sensual awakening and fulfillment encourages us to imagine the sea as lover. But the sensuality of Edna in her nude state and the
sea that was "enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace" (p. 109) also carries Edna back to her childhood, to "the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed
when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end" (p. 109). The final dream of Edna Pontellier is not only of the-lover's embrace but also of the
mother's embrace--the longing to attain an intimacy denied by her vision of an isolated future and by her memory of loss and rejection. According to

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FoxGenovese, "Various psychoanalytic schools concur in recognizing the ocean as a maternal symbol. It is, accordingly, relatively non-controversial to suggest
that Edna returns, at the novel's close, to the maternal womb for the repose and nurture she cannot find in the human world" (p. 272).

Edna was the middle of three girls. We are told that their mother died "when they were quite young" (p. 17)--an interesting parallel to the death of Kate Chopin's
father when she was almost five years old. The death of the mother is a quiet core in the story as Edna refers to early memories of her father but apparently has
.no memory of her mother. Fox-Genovese writes that the death "remains a simple fact in contradistinction to the emotion invoked elsewhere" (p. 279). 'Such
researchers as John Bowlby have discovered that the death of a parent in early childhood will increase the likelihood of depression later in life.[10] Margaret,
with the death of her mother, became "matronly and dignified," took over "housewifely responsibilities" as a child, and became "practical" rather than "effusive"
(p. 17). We see not only the oldest child filling the mother's role too early in life but also the child's imitation of her father's rigidity and domination. At one
point, the Colonel, Edna's father, lectures Mr. Pontellier on how to manage a wife: "Authority, coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down good and hard;
the only way to manage a wife" (p. 68). Then we are told that the Colonel is "unaware that he had coerced his own wife into her grave" (p. 68). We may assume
that Edna observed no model for nurturing and received very little fulfillment of her needs for intimacy from either her older sister or her father. Her
relationship with her younger sister, Janet, was rivalrous as they "quarreled a good deal through force of unfortunate habit" (p. 17). Mr. Pontellier says that Janet
is now "something of a vixen" (p. 63). The legacy of conflict continues when the father accuses Edna of lacking "filial kindness and respect" because she
refuses to attend Janet's wedding (p. 68).

The life of the lost child, often a numb and dreamy isolation, defines Edna's character from her early years. Her dominant childhood self-image is of being alone
in the meadow: "The very little girl walking through the grass, which was higher than her waist" (p. 17). This image, which is superimposed with Edna's
learning to swim in the ocean, is coupled with early rebellion as Edna suspects that the image derives from running away from her father's prayer session: "I was
running away from prayers, from the Presbyterian service, read in a spirit of gloom by the father that chills me yet to think of" (p. 17). The childhood memory
reinforces the description of Edna's father shooing her sons. The father's coldness would not have permitted Edna an opportunity to recover from the loss of her
mother. The child is described as reserved, and she associated with childhood playmates who were also "self-contained" (p. 17). The passion within her nature is
secretly expressed through her three romantic infatuations: the sad-eyed cavalry officer, a young engaged man, and the tragedian.

But the passion is repressed when Edna becomes the young bride of an older man, Leonce Pontellier. She did not love him, but her need for love is apparent as
she married him because "he pleased her; his absolute devotion flattered her" (p. 18). Also, the marriage was a rebellion from her father and older sister, who
disapproved of it. Her marriage is a rebellion from her past and a denial of her passion. She seeks a caregiver, associating security with the absence of emotion.
She wishes to close "the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams" and takes "some unaccountable satisfaction that no trace of passion
or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby threatening its dissolution" (p. 19). Chopin creates a character who links her affective self with
a disruption of her security. Edna is essentially seeking a sanctuary not just from the world but also from herself. From Leonce she receives a degree of intimacy
in the form of his "absolute devotion"; this is a predictable priority given her early loss and isolation. In addition she reacts to passion as a threat to her security
and treasures her numbed state as a protection from disruptive feelings. The child who experiences early trauma and who is not encouraged to share her
spontaneous emotions will often retreat into a protective shell and will see her needs for intimacy and her emotional reactions as threatening because they are
associated with rejection and pain.

In addition, Edna is ill-prepared to become a mother. Her psychic energy is directed toward hiding her own need for intimacy, and she has had no model to
imitate. The relationship between the absence of parental feeling and her own needs is apparent when Chopin describes Edna's reaction to her children leaving
her to visit their grandmother: "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
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she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her" (p. 19). Then in the next paragraph, Chopin describes Edna sitting with Madame Ratignolle, the
epitome of nurturing motherhood: "She had put her head down on Madame Ratignolle's shoulder. She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her
own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine, or like a first breath of freedom" (p. 19). While Edna cannot respond parentally to
her children, she reacts as though she were a blossoming adolescent to the affectionate, nurturing presence of Madame Ratignolle. Again the unconscious need
is paramount, and Edna's intoxication in Madame Ratignolle's presence opens her senses to the flirtations of Robert Lebrun. Madame Ratignolle is fulfilled
through her mothering, but Edna, we are told, is "not a mother-woman" (p. 9). Indeed, how could she be when she is still in the grips of her own unrealized
childhood needs. Again in reference to women who have been separated from a parent before age eleven, Bowlby recounts research which indicates that they
"tend to engage in less interaction with their infants than do mothers with happier childhoods" (p. 16). According to Fox-Genovese, "Edna never received that
nurture from her own mother that would have permitted her to nurture others and then move on. She remains tied to an unsatisfied maternal longing that forces
her either to subordinate herself to, or to divorce herself from, her own children" (p. 284).

The contrast between Madame Ratignolle and Edna is sharp and clear, both in terms of their relationship with their children and with their husbands. Essentially,
Madame Ratignolle has none of Edna's fear of engulfment. When they go to the beach together, "Edna had prevailed upon Madame Ratignolle to leave the
children behind..." (p. 15). Edna responds to her children in an "uneven, impulsive way" (p. 19) and if her children are out of sight they are also likely to be out
of mind. In contrast, Madame Ratignolle's parental attachment to her children seems to be a consistent, natural reflection of her character. Her final plea for
Edna to "think of the children; think of them" (p. 106) is her expression of an affirmative life principle, but for Edna it suggests suffering and entrapment.

Likewise, the two women contrast sharply in their levels of marital intimacy. Madame Ratignolle sees the distance between Edna and her husband as unnatural
and complains to Edna that Mr. Pontellier should not spend so much time at his club: "It's a pity Mr. Pontellier doesn't stay home more in the evening. I think
you would be more--well, if you don't mind my saying it--more united, if he did" (p. 66). Edna responds, "Oh! dear no! ... What should I do if he stayed home?
We wouldn't have anything to say to each other" (p. 66). Edna cannot be fulfilled by imitating Madame Ratignolle's marriage, but her other relationships suggest
that this is not only because she married to be loved rather than to love. Although she longs for intimacy, she also feels threatened by the kind of unity that
Madame Ratignolle finds so fulfilling. According to Chopin, "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" (p. 54). Yet, after Edna spends an evening in their company, her reaction is a central
revelation of an emotional repulsion now become a romantic principle:

Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing.
It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it an appalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame
Ratignolle,--a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever
visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium. (p. 54)

At this moment (after Robert has left for Mexico and before the affair with Arobin), Edna begins with an emotional response (a repulsion for"domestic
harmony") and turns it into a doctrine for extreme emotive expression which becomes increasingly important as Edna swings from "anguish" to "delirium" as an
expression of life force and dismisses Madame Ratignolle's contentment as pitiable. Yet Chopin does not use irony to undercut the Ratignolle relationship; she
simply gives first the domestic intimacy, then Edna's repulsion. We can only conclude that Edna accurately assesses that she is not well "fitted" for such
closeness either as a mother or as a wife, but caution would seem warranted before one accepts Edna's conclusion on the emptiness of life without "delirium."
"Edna's reaction to this domestic bliss resembles that of the Romantics to bourgeois culture, or even that of an adolescent to mature, adult pleasure" (Fox-
Genovese, p. 281). James H. Justus has also addressed most eloquently what he calls "the pathology of romanticism"[11] in The Awakening.
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Chopin's use of the words "despondency" and "delirium" is quite consistent with twentieth-century theories on the mood swings of many depressives. The
"despondent moods" (p. 100) are noted after Robert's return from Mexico, and Edna explains to Doctor Mandelet that "there are periods of despondency and
suffering which take possession of me" (p. 105). It is again this "despondency" that sets in on the decisive night before the suicide (p. 108). The mood swings
are discussed after Mr. Pontellier wonders if his wife is "a little unbalanced mentally" (p. 55). As Edna becomes more herself, "casting aside that fictitious selF'
(p. 55), she gives up the false self but does so with extreme mood swings and with increased impulsiveness. Chopin describes Edna's periods of elation as "days
when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color,
the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day" (p. 56), but such days were followed by others "when she was unhappy, she did not know why,--
when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms
struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation" (p. 56). One extreme mood swing occurs during Edna's birthday dinner party as "she felt the old ennui
overtaking her; the hopelessness which so often assailed her, which came upon her like an obsession, like something extraneous, independent of volition. It was
something which announced itself; a chill breathing that seemed to issue from some vast cavern wherein discords wailed" (pp. 84-85). Then Chopin describes
this sudden, extreme melancholic state as the effect of a feeling of loss: "There came over her the acute longing which always summoned into her spiritual
vision the presence of the beloved one overpowering her at once with a sense of the unattainable" (p. 85). Although we assume her feelings for Robert Lebrun
as the referent, "the loved one" is hazy, suggesting an emotional response to the "unattainable" that goes deeper into the psyche. Edna's lows are typically
responses to an eerie isolation and express a need for love. Her flights are escapes from such sensation and conform to Lewin's description in his seminal work,
The Psychoanalysis of Elation, of an affective leap which permits the depressive to deny neediness.[12] In fact, Chopin uses psychologically suggestive
language in describing Edna's response. "Obsession" is used earlier to describe her reaction to Robert: "an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her" (Chopin, p.
52). Similarly, Chopin chooses to identify Edna's reaction to Robert as "her infatuation" (p. 52), responses to Robert that were a reawakening of her youthful
sexual fantasies: "she recognized anew the symptoms of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her earliest teens, and later as a young
woman" (p. 44).

These references to "obsession" and "infatuation" are not intended to trivialize Edna's romantic longing. These reactions denote an authentic awakening of her
sensuality. However, they also suggest elated,, sensory responses, derived more from pleasure principles than reality principles. As such, they are indeed
regressive and have little relationship to mature love or intimacy. They are part of what Fox-Genovese sees as the general "theme of longing and regression" (p.
288). Justus concurs and offers the following analysis of Edna's regression: "... Edna Pontellier is in actuality a reawakening; it is not an advance toward a new
definition of self but a return to the protective, self-evident identity of childhood" (p. 112). Justus characterizes this pleasure-oriented, childhood state as "a
period of suspended self-fulfillment when satisfactions are gained at the expense of others, when desires are unanchored and the imagination is free to attach
these desires to whatever shapes and forms the fancy dictates, above all, a time--perhaps the only time in human life--when self-indulgence has no costs to
threaten its pleasure" (p. 113).

Conforming to this tenor of elation, Edna's reactions are frequently equated to impulsiveness. Early she is described as "blindly following whatever impulse
moved her, as if she has placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility" (p. 32). When she breaks from her conventional role of
wife and accepts Arobin as her lover, "A quick impulse that was somewhat spasmodic impelled her fingers to close in a sort of clutch upon his hand. He felt the
pressure of her pointed nails in the flesh of his palms" (p. 73). The reminder is again of her memory of childhood when she fled her father's Presbyterian
service, "just following a misleading impulse without question" (p. 17). Throughout the novel we discover a woman who is restrained and self-contained, yet is
subject to impulsiveness. She is, in a sense, a woman-child who has been hurt and repressed so early in life that she will inevitably swing from experiencing the
pain and loss, denying her child-like grandiosity, to a denial of the pain and loss, experiencing an elation that frees her momentarily from all restraint.

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Even the novel's central motif, sleep and waking, has clear connections with depressive behavior. Aside from the symbolic intent, the literal sleep in the novel
suggests again Edna's depressive characteristics. Lewin has described the importance of both diminished and excessive sleep in relationship to depression.
According to Lewin, sleep is related to elation in the depressive's regressive denial (p. 101). Sleep has a tangible force in The Awakening as a form of retreat.
For example, after Edna refuses to leave her hammock and join her husband, she eases into a deep slumber: "the physical need for sleep began to overtake her,
the exuberance which had sustained and exalted her spirit left her helpless and yielding to the condition which crowded her in" (p. 31). This prepares us for the
strange drowsiness that overtakes her during the service when she is with Robert at the Grande Terre. When she is taken to the home of Madame Antoine, she
falls into a deep sleep and when she awakens, she asks Robert, "How many years have I slept?" (p. 37). As with Robert, her rebellion with Arobin emphasizes
the easy shifts from elation to sleep: 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" (p. 74). Chopin wants to use the sleep to associate with Edna's eventual
awakening to the forces of nature and to self-realization, but the sleep has a more immediate poignancy that associates with Edna's mood swings and her
escapes into oblivion. Understandably, Edna reminds Doctor Mandelet "of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun" (p. 67).

Chopin saw Edna as strong enough to rebel but too weak to survive her rebellion. However, the source of this weakness is much more difficult to define. The
focus on the weakness is achieved by Mademoiselle Reisz who insists that Edna must have "the courageous soul" (p. 61) to dare her independent artist's life and
tests Edna wings to see if they are strong enough to "soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice" for "it is a sad spectacle to see the weakling bruised,
exhausted, fluttering back to earth" (p. 79). In the end, Edna is equated to the bird with the broken wing that plummets into the sea just before her suicide(p.
108). But is Edna's weakness her lack of courage? I suspect that Chopin saw the weakness in Darwinian terms as a woman hungry for life, strong enough to
rebel, but too weak to sustain herself against the forces of nature and society. The Darwinian view is suggested by Doctor Mandelet who says "that youth is
given up to illusions. It seems to be a provision of Nature; a decoy to secure mothers for the race. And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of
arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obligated to maintain at any cost" (p. 105). Accepting this view, the procreative instinct is central to all
of Edna's illusions, from her earliest infatuations to her final longing for Robert. Sexuality wars against social restriction and will win out even if the individual
must be destroyed as a consequence. Both the early dream of a passionless security with Leonce and the final dream of an impassioned romance with Robert are
the tricks of nature that are necessary to insure the continuation of the species. The brief sexual burst with Arobin comes closest to defining the natural reality
which permits momentary pleasure but has no lasting value.

The nineteenth-century Darwinian perception ignores the complexity of attachment within the natural scheme, but this complexity is not ignored by the
twentieth-century evolutionists. Bowlby's attachment theories of psychology are based on the biological studies of the last fifty years which have placed as
much emphasis on patterns of attachment to interpret animal and human behavior as on sexual drive. Kate Chopin's Darwinian model would justify an emphasis
upon Freud and drive psychology; however, since Chopin's writing derives more from the artistic urge to be faithful to the full complexity of sensory human
experience rather than fidelity to a theoretical paradigm, Chopin's actual portrayal of Edna's life comes closer to supporting the theories of Bowlby than the
theories of Freud. Through Edna, we are forced to recognize the power of the needs .for attachment within human beings and the crippling effects of
abandonment and emotional isolation.

In conclusion, I would like to speculate on the relationship between Kate Chopin's life and what she was able to accomplish in The Awakening. I suspect that
Madame Ratignolle, Edna Pontellier, and Mademoiselle Reisz are all projections of Chopin's personal experience, derived from stages in her life. Fox-Genovese
introduces this idea when she writes that all three are "important bits of Chopin herself' (p. 288). No one of these characters is Kate Chopin, but each is
imagined as an extension of: (1) her years of marriage to Oscar Chopin, (2) her brief period of widowhood in Cloutierville following the death of Oscar Chopin,
and (3) her years as a writer in St. Louis. The first and last are distinct periods of creative vigor, while the middle phase is a difficult transition necessary for
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Kate Chopin's growth. It is a troubled, unstable period with new freedom but also emotional turmoil. In her biography, Kate Chopin, Emily Toth discusses the
marriage of Oscar and Kate Chopin from 1870 to 1882 and quotes observers who saw the marriage as an ideal union which led a previous biographer, Daniel
Rankin, to conclude that the Ratignolles were modelled after the Chopins.[13] Toth, intent on her equation between Edna and Kate Chopin, attempts to refute
this comparison but can only do so on her speculative contention that Chopin's affair with Albert Sampite began before Oscar's death. She offers no biographical
support except that "at least one of Albert's descendants heard that he and Kate were lovers while she was still married..." (p. 168). Are we to assume from this
statement that Toth had more than one source for this rumor? Beyond this unnamed descendant, Toth relies on Chopin's fiction to show that she "knew how to
arrange a clandestine affair" and she "had a particular love for the warm dark country nights, which could conceal a multitude of mysteries" (p. 168). It is highly
unlikely that Chopin's fiction, which had never been particularly confessional, would dwell on her infidelity to her lost and apparently loved husband. However,
Toth offers a much stronger, less sensational argument that a love affair between Kate Chopin and Albert Sampite did occur after Oscar's death.

In many ways, Toth offers more support for Daniel Rankin's position that Kate and Oscar Chopin are used as the models for the Rafiguolles. Her description of
Chopin's relationship with her children suggests that Chopin was a "mother woman" like Madame Rafignolle and that Kate was much more intimate with Oscar
than Edna was with Mr. Pontellier. Unlike Edna, Kate married a man near her own age, had six children by him, and seems to have enjoyed much freedom and
comraderie within her marriage.

Although this period of Chopin's life was seventeen years behind her at the time that she published The Awakening, she could look back on that time and create
Madame Ratignolle to express much of her marital and maternal fulfillment.

However, Chopin at age thirty-two lost her husband to swamp fever and to understand her reaction we should keep in mind that she had lost her father before
her fifth birthday. It was probably more than necessity that threw Chopin into a flurry of activity after Oscar's death. Within a year she quickly took control of
her husband's finances and became an aggressive business woman. Kate Chopin was apparently close to her father before his tragic death,[14] and with his
death she joined the ranks of prominent American writers who lost their fathers during childhood and were prone to depression (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman
Melville, Mark Twain). Toth's quick movement from the father's death to the reactions of the fictional wife in Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" misses the
emotional significance of childhood trauma (Toth, p. 32). A four-year-old child's reaction would have very little in common with the momentarily freed wife in
"The Story of an Hour." Whatever Kate Chopin experienced at age four would have predictable repercussions when she lost her husband at age thirty-two.
Psychologists often explain that the characteristics of grief are indistinguishable from those of depression. In fact, grief reaction is sometimes categorized as
"acute situational depression,"[15] and the research of E. Lindemann emphasizes that "grief and depression are phenomenalogically identical."[16] Certainly, it
would be likely that Chopin would have been thrust back to the abandonment depression she would have experienced as a small child. When Toth states that
Chopin had "no time for long grieving," but rather threw herself into vigorous activity, her description ignores a common but dangerous pattern of an individual
avoiding pain through frenetic activity. Toth's description appears to portray a woman instantly recovered:

It was challenging work, requiring a dear head, firm hand, and organizational ability. She worked in the store; she corresponded with New Orleans cotton
factors, she met with'local planters, farmers and sharecroppers and drew up contracts. She stocked the store; she convinced many of Oscar's debtors to pay their
bills,: and she kept careful financial records .... She became an accomplished entrepreneur. (pp. 163-164)

This period of intense "entrepreneurship" lasted less than two years and coincided with her high-risk affair with a married man. Albert Sampite was notorious as
a womanizer, gambler, and drinker. He was handsome, hot tempered, and known to beat his wife. Although we are more familiar with the emotional retreat of
grieving, Chopin's behavior after the death of her husband is not extraordinary. Cohen writes that".., manic episodes can be precipitated by just about anything,

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even acute loss where grief would be expected" (p. 133). Especially considering the recall of childhood loss, abandonment depression would be likely, and a
common reaction is to deny the pain of grieving through hypomanic activity. What Kate Chopin experienced during the two years following her husband's death
may well have introduced her to a flooding and numbing of emotions which led to behavior which in turn resulted in much uncertainty and confusion about her
own identity. Edna Pontellier is most likely the brilliant, honest creation of a woman now older, looking back and attempting to understand the strengths and
weaknesses of that person she briefly became. She could objectively see the energy and the exhilaration, but also the fearsome release of conflicting sensations
and emotions.

However, Kate Chopin did not self-destruct; rather she left Cloutierville and reestablished a life in St. Louis. She wrote and published an impressive canon of
work from 1888 until the publication of her masterpiece, The Awakening, in 1899. Per Seyersted credits Dr. Kolberheyer (after whom Dr. Mandelet is closely
modeled) as being the one person "who seems to have been able to help her in her grief" after experiencing both the death of her husband and her mother (p.
48). He explains that it was Dr. Kolberheyer who encouraged Chopin to write and that the "main reason for encouraging her to take up writing was probably that
he hoped it would give her some relief from the emptiness and deep despair to which her -losses had reduced her and from her longing for the Louisiana that
was so intimately connected with Oscar" (p. 49). Chopin's art may be directly linked to her attempt to overcome the grief and depression she experienced. When
Edna speaks just before her suicide of whether it would have helped to talk to Dr. Mandelet, she decides that it is simply "too late" (p. 109). This may be a clue
as to Chopin's own feelings of needing the right person at a moment that otherwise could have been fatal.

Chopin was able to move on with her life and discover through her experience the awakening that permitted her to become an artist. The outspoken and
independent artist, Mademoiselle Reisz, is a clear, though rather comical, projection of the writer Chopin became. She portrays Mademoiselle Riesz as an older
woman now able to look back on romance with some detachment, a woman who is contemptuous of public taste and is devoted to unhampered artistic
expression. Kate Chopin had a personal knowledge of Edna Pontellier and understood her vulnerability, but through Madame Ratignolle, she could observe
Ednawith the tolerance and awareness of the "mother woman" and through M. Reisz she could observe Edna with the awareness and tolerance of the "artist
woman." As a true artist, Chopin knew all three women intimately.

[1] Kate Chopin, The Awakening, ed. Margo Culley, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 65.

[2] Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Kate Chopin's Awakening," Southern Studies, 18 (Fall 1979), 272.

[3] Cynthia Griffin Wolff, "Thanatos and Eros: Kate Chopin's The Awakening," in The Awakening: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, ed. Nancy A.
Walker (Boston: Bedford, 1995), pp. 233-258.

[4] R. D. Laing, The Dirtied Self (New York: Pantheon, 1969).

[5] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1994).

[6] For another view of the schizoid phenomenon contemporaneous with Laing's, Harry Guntrip's Schizoid Phenomena, Object-Relations and the Self(London:
Hogarth Press, 1968) is an excellent source. Guntrip more clearly than Laing reveals the extent to which the 1960 analysis of the "schizoid phenomena" was
encompassing vast areas in the disruption of self formation, quite similar to the 1990 analysis of the borderline personality. Again, it is within Guntrip's
fundamental description of the schizoid personality that the unsuitability in applying it to Edna becomes apparent: 'The schizoid condition consists in the first

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place in an attempt to cancel external object relations and live in a detached and withdrawn way" (p. 19). To contrast with depression, Guntrip argues that
'depression is object-relational. The schizoid person has renounced objects, even though he still.needs them' (pp. 17-18). Still much of what Guntrip describes as
schizoid does apply to Edna, particularly his key interrelational point that "however much the schizoid person tries to make contact he is always withdrawing"
(p. 61). Wolff focuses on this problem, and my essay will later discuss it as the depressive fear of estrangement and engulfment.

[7] Theodore Millon, Disorders of Personality: DSM-III: Axis II (New York:John Wiley & Sons, 1981), p. 274.

[8] David B. Cohen, Outside of the Blue: Depression and Human Nature (New York: Norton, 1994), p. 137.

[9] Dana Jack, "Silencing the Self: The Power of Social Imperatives in Female Depression," in Women and Depression: A Lifespan Perspective, ed. Ruth
Formanek and Anita Gurian (New York: Springer Press, 1987), pp. 161-181.

[10] John Bowlby, A Secure Base (New York: Basic Books, 1988).

[11] James H. Justus, "The Unawakening of Edna Pontellier," Southern Literary Journal, 10 (1978), 107.

[12] Bertxam David Lewin, The Psychoanalysis of Elation (New York: Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc., 1961).

[13] Emily Toth, Kate Chopin (New York: Morrow, 1990); Daniel Rankin, Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1932).

[14] Per Seyersted, Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), pp. 15-16.

[15] Garfield Tourney, "The Severely Depressed Patient in Medical Practice," in Depression in Medical Practice, ed. Allen J. Enelow (West Point, Pennsylvania:
Merck Sharp & Dohme, 1970), p. 171.

[16] Allen J. Enelow, "Depression: Recognition and Management," in Depression in Medical Practice, p. 194.

ILLUSTRATION

~~~~~~~~

By STEVEN T. RYAN; Austin Peay State University

Copyright of Mississippi Quarterly is the property of Mississippi State University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a
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