The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

 It's hard to believe that I somehow made it this far without having read this book. I've always heard it described as a classic, as important, as formative, and just generally soooo great, so I was delighted when a student who is writing an Honors thesis with me wanted to write about it, because it forced me to finally read it. 

So, the big thing that it made me realize is just how little I know about American literature and its history, because I was kind of bewildered by the apparent scandalousness of it. Weren't European writers, especially French ones, writing stories like this for a good 30 years or so already? The Awakening is published in 1899. Madame Bovary is 1856. A Doll's House is 1879. Was this stuff not translated until much later? Was it a big deal because it was an American woman who was articulating these ideas?

And also, OMG IT IS SO RACIST. Maybe if I read more 19th/20th century American lit, I would be more accustomed to this, but WOW. And nobody ever mentioned that, in all the things I've heard about the book! Is it because the racism is not the kind where there is lots of explicit discussion of people of color as lesser (though, ahem, Mariequita's "broad and coarse" feet might give you pause), but is rather the kind where the book is full of Black characters and none of them have a name? My student wants to write about the institution of motherhood as oppressive to the protagonist and I'm like, ok, sure, but you're gonna need to get into the fact that the vast majority of the actual work of caring for her children is done by "the Quadroon". The shit is blowing my mind. I bought myself a copy of a newer edition with an intro by Carmen Maria Machado, thinking that surely she would have something to say about this, but nope, not a word! And then I found this truly unfortunate NYTimes essay (no, I'm not gonna link to it), where a white women suggests — with only the slightest of disclaimers — the the summer of 2020 and the rise of "wokeness" can lead us back to The Awakening and the idea of pleasure as freedom. What the holy hell?

But ok. Calm down. I'm not saying that we have to cancel Kate Chopin. I just think that it is deeply wrong to talk about how this book can be seen as liberatory, inspiring, etc, without also AT LEAST acknowledging, but preferably reckoning with, the fact that Edna's pursuit of freedom is deeply entangled with her racial and class privilege. I mean, this woman up and decides to move out of her house into her own little apartment, and she actually does it, and it's FINE. Her husband isn't delighted but he works it out, her kids are with their grandmother, who is absolutely thrilled to keep them at her place — she not only hasn't taken anyone else into account, but even when this obliviousness becomes clear, there are no negative consequences. One of the most telling moments in the book, to me, is when her kids ask her where they are to sleep, in this new home of hers, and she tells them that the fairies will figure it out. Like, ooops, totally forgot that you existed for a minute there, but, uh, *throws a pile of glitter into the air* I mean, at this point, you really have to wonder, what else does this woman need to be free?

And this, of course, is actually a really interesting question, and one very much worth exploring. There's a great essay by Molly Hildebrand that really lambasts the protagonist as a negative example of solipsism (but also, maybe, a proto-vision of the female artist?), but I think it might be a bit too quick to dismiss some of the difficulties of these issues, I don't know. 

I will say, though, that this is a book that richly rewards close reading and re-reading — it's wonderfully opaque and ambivalent in a lot of ways. I'm having a terrific time wrestling with it with my student. But at the same time, I'm...kind of glad that I didn't read it at a more impressionable moment in my life.