Awakening Sinsuality in Kate Chopin & Elizabethan England

Gloria Steele

3/13/06

AP Lit/Comp

The Awakening Analysis

Gloria Steele

3/13/06

AP Lit/Comp

The Awakening Analysis

Edna Pontellier as another Virgin Queen

In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, protagonist Edna Pontellier is the endearing portrait of a woman refusing to conform. She invokes the archetypical Unclaimed Woman, sensual and uncompromising-- she is Mary Magdalene, she is Marilyn Monroe, she is Queen Elizabeth I. She frees herself, like the bird in the gilded cage (Chopin, 1), from the confines of soceital conventions. Once awakened, she submits only to her own passions and desires, she finds herself stripped of all stifling illusions and mindsets forced upon her from birth-- by religion, by family, by community. Like Queen Elizabeth I, Edna Pontellier is a woman who will submit to no man, who will not lay down and, although she is highly sensual, will not be degraded and demonized.

Edna Pontellier's journey in the novella begins with heavy symbolism and foreshadowing. The bird in the cage representing Edna, locked in the torment of inner division. In her Piece by Piece, the often brutally honest feminist singer-songwriter Tori Amos often uses the Mary Magdalene archetype to delienate the state most women-- particularly Christian-- are in, objectified and torn apart by the hands of the patriarchy. She explains how Christian women are taught to repress natural sexual passions and cut out their own voices to follow the example of the pious Virgin Mary, while the Magdalene is horribly distorted, turned into a whore, as many "strong women" are. How can we be divided? Tori asks, using her own signature colorful metaphors. How can we suffer "the ultimate pain-- division within the self, the soul from the body, the mind from the heart...the two Marys divided?" (Amos, 71) She uses the term "marrying the two Marys" to illustrate how women can bcome whole, how they can be both honorable and sensual without giving up their souls:

Traditional Christianity...gave us two characters: the Virgin Mary and the Magdalene. Of course, within the psyche they must be joined, not polarized for a Christian woman to feel whole. The Virgin Mary has been stripped of her sexuality but has retained her spirituality; the Magdalene has been stripped of her spirituality but has retained her sexuality. Each must have her wholeness...(64)

Edna is constantly surrounded by these polarized, divided beings who remind her of either one Mary or the other-- The Farival Twins, two young girls, "always clad in blue and white, the Virgin's colors, having been dedicated to the Blessed Virgin at their baptism"(Chopin, 23); the mournful lady in black, counting her beads, an impending shadow reminding or foretelling Edna of her sad future as a woman, alone, her husband dead, now free of being his possession though left without the youthful passions that burned before; the Spanish girl, Marqueita represents a form of sensuality, but it is a farce: she is fiery, tempestuous, a coquette thing passing from man to man, still objectified by them. Edna knows she does not aspire to end up like any of these women, she aspires that wholeness, that fulfillment of self-discovery.

Queen Elizabeth I, too, was a woman struggling for autonomy and sexual freedom in a man's world. She resolved from the beginning of her life, after discovering the truth about her mother, Anne Boelyn, having been murdered by her father. It is said that she promised herself and her childhood friends that she would never marry and, though they did not believe her at that time, she held that resolve her whole life. Although she later went on to become the Virgin Queen, this was in no way a circumcision of her full womahood-- this was not an acquiescence; she was not giving up her freedom or accepting the convention that being sexual was being less than a woman, nor was she saying her decision to set herself aside was making her more of a woman. Instead, her decision never to take a man, never to marry-- except to England itself-- and never to produce a child was the decision to make it universally understood that she was no one's object. She was still whole, she was still a sexual woman, a devestatingly powerful woman, however, she had an enormous strength of will to resist the temptation to even appear to, in sex or love, become a man's possession. She wanted no misunderstandings.

The parallels of Edna Pontellier and Queen Elizabeth go beyond the attitude or the rebellion. It is evident in the social circle they are both placed in. Edna Pontellier married, quite by accident, into high Creole soceity-- the world of unwavering, rigid morals and unquestionable female chastity. Pontellier has no illusions about someday becoming like the Creole women, she knows her passions are not theirs and she can never be content as a "mother-woman" (8) like Adele Ratignolle or the others. Creole soceity is a highly religious, highly Catholic world in which Edna readily admits, at least to herself, that she does not belong. She hides her feelings well; she "apprehended instinctively the dual life-- that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions" (13). This Catholic soceity mirrors the Catholic state Elizabeth grew up in, the Catholics-- including her half-sister Mary-- who sought her life to keep her, a Protestant, from taking the throne. It is arguable that Catholicism is the most rigid of Christian systems, which makes sense that the limitations implemented on its women would cause those like Edna and Queen Elizabeth to rebel as forcibly as they have.

Another interesting parallel between the two women is in the men they love-- Edna's Robert Lebrun and Elizabeth's beloved Lord Robert Dudley of Leicester. Besides the names, the two men are extremely devoted, though still conscious of the women's unattainablility. Robert, torn apart by his longing for Edna and his duty to the Creole code of honor never to covet a married man's wife, leaves Louisiana, leaves Edna, for Mexico in hopes that the distance will cure him and, in her absense, the love will somehow subside. Lord Robert, Elizabeth's close friend and fiery lover, held a decorative position in her court as Master of the Horse, only as a ploy to keep him by her side without suspicion, though many knew of the affair. Although he shared her bed many a night, and Elizabeth loved him immensely, she knew she could never marry him. She would not share her power, would not become his wife. It is reputed that she famously told him in court, "I will have one mistress here, and NO master!" which is echoed somewhat by Edna Pontellier to her Robert when they reunite in Madame Reisz's house:

You have been...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. (108)

It is here that, although the love of her life is there in her arms, professing his love for her, she asserts her power and the fact that she will not pass from being her husband's possession to being his. Her affair with Alcee Arobin is another indication of this-- she is comfortable with him, knowing that he has no expectations or obligations to her and neither she of him. She knows that what they have is a simple understanding that, whatever transpires, it is not of love; there are no strings attatched. For a moment, after her first indiscretion, after their first kiss, Edna regrets that it is not love becuase, perhaps, it would be more justifiable. If she had the affair, had essentially left her husband for the love of another man, not just lust, it would be more honorable, nobler in a sense. She regrets that it "was not the kiss of love that brought this cup of life to her lips" (84) because some part of her would be more forgiving-- the conscience, the nobility in her, as defined by previous Creole Christian standards; the Virgin Mary part-- and perhaps soceity would too be more forgiving if this act had been out of love. But it wasn't. And in the end she knows it is better this way, for to love a man would be a sacrifice, would be handing herself over, would be laying down under his feet. So she is satisfied that she doesn't have to be anything to Alcee, that she is nothing of his and keeps her own identity. Just as Elizabeth, could never bring herself to marry her Robert of Leicester because she would not have him make a whore of her, or a wife because either title would reduce her to a Thing, a single Ideal, a being seperated like the two Marys.

During her Christ-like Last Supper, Edna Pontellier pulls out all the stops, turning her humble "pigeon house" into a grand dining hall, decked with all her husband's money could offer. She herself appears, like a goddess, like a queen, in all her glory, ascending to an almost divine state, her most regal before her death:

The golden shimmer of Edna's satin gown spread in rich folds on either side of her...There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone. (89)

To compare this heightened moment with either Elizabeth's coronation or her transformation, after the executions of those that threatened her throne and after her symbolic purification to Virgin status, would be equally appropriate.

Queen Elizabeth's coronation was indubitably a joyous event-- after all, she had narrowly escaped her own beheading at the hands of her sister for supposed treason against the Catholic church and allegated attempts to seixe the throne. She herself knew it was not mere luck or a sudden compassionate chage of heart in her sister, as she famously cried, "this is the Lord's doing; and it is marvelous in Our eyes." Edna's lover, Alcee Arobin calls the dinner a "coup d'etat" (85), which is fitting since, in a way, Edna's has overthrown a system-- the system of female subjegation; she has freed herself of the chains, the guilt and shame that too often accompanies women of confidence and sensuality.

Elizabeth thwarted her many enemies once again a few years later in successfully executing conspirators against her crown with her loyal advisor Walsingham. "I have rid England of her enemies," she tells him. "What do I do now?" It is here that she makes her transformation, giving her people something close to divinity, standing alone at her throne, set apart, as Edna stood at the head of her immaculate dinner table.

Edna's joining with the sea at the end is not a shameful condescension, it is not the act of her lying down to accept what the world tells her she is. It is neither a selfish act, leaving her children to suffer in her absence under her now tainted name. She gives her body to the sea, her only true home, just as Elizabeth gives her body to England and her people. Just as Elizabeth set her body aside, essentially letting it die to prove her ultimate feminine sovereignty, Edna Pontellier sacrifices her body to prove that she will be glorious and magnificent in herself, not allowing the world and it's constrained, limited views make her to be a base, corrupt thing. She is proving her merit-- by giving up her body she is letting the world know that she, too, is sovereign and only belongs to herself, and the waters, the Great Mother, honoring the Source. She is reborn in those waters, returning to the Womb, becoming a Virgin again.

Pilar and Two Marys

Gloria “Dani” Steele

Hispanic Lit

Why Can’t It be Beautiful: Pilar’s Seduction and the marriage of the Marys

Spring 2007

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvois writes, “First we must ask: what is woman? ‘tota mulier in utero,’ says one, ‘woman is a womb.’ But in speaking of certain women, connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are equipped with a uterus like the rest…and yet femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it a platonic essence, a product of philosophic imagination?” She continues, quoting Aristotle:

“The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities, said Aristotle; “we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.”…Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being…Benda is most positive in his Rapport d’ Uriel: “The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of woman, whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself…Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.” And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called “the sex,” by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex-- absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her…He is the Subject, he is the Absolute-- she is the Other.

And, indeed, in a patriarchal society as we are placed, women are given separate roles to follow-- that of a man’s mother, his conquest (as a virgin expected to succumb to him), and the whore (a mysterious being, unattainable, whom he never marries, but who awakens him sexually and whom he can never claim). Simone de Beauvois’ acquiescent claims echo Octavio Paz’s Freudian analysis of the Mexican identity in The Labyrinth of Solitude:

In a world made in man’s image, woman is only a reflection of masculine will and desire. When passive, she becomes a goddess, a beloved one, a being who embodies the ancient, stable elements of the universe: the earth, motherhood, a receptacle and a channel. When active, she is always function and means, a receptacle and a channel. Womanhood, unlike manhood, is never an end in itself.

But, instinctively rejecting these theories that maintain woman can only be defined relative to men, the question must be put forth: what makes a woman? What is a woman? Simply a series of (different) physical attributes-- ovaries holding unborn seed, uterus to protect growing fetus, something between two thighs from which life, a being, is expelled, and breasts tools for feeding and nurturing? Yes, but one also knows that womb in which that child grows, had to have first been filled, in an act of love[-making], by a man. That vagina from which the child is pulled had to have been first penetrated by a man-- that same mother was once a virgin, was also once someone’s woman, someone’s love, something warm and inviting, something a man fever-dreamed about, shivering. The problem is most people never see the wife or mother as capable of sexuality, or in possession of sexuality. People seem to forget that the same woman at the alter in white, or rocking a cradle, was once sexual. Where, in the western patriarchy, can we find a whole woman?

Singer/songwriter Tori Amos, herself a minister’s daughter, extensively explores the division of Christian women and the consequences in her raw, honest, and cathertic music. As quoted in Dazed and Confused magazine, she makes her frustration with this system plain-- “There’s this denial that the Magdalene was as divine as the Virgin Mary.” Likewise, in an interview in Aquarian Weekly magazine, she confronts the limits of the Biblical archetypes western women, in one way or another, seem doomed to follow:

I looked inward for answers - and to find the female. I was looking for the blueprint of women that wasn’t in Christianity. You see, the Magdalene’s blueprint wasn’t passed down. The blueprint of the Virgin Mary-- and the Mother Mary-- was passed down, but not woman as independent prophet/priestess on her own. Strike the word prophet-- woman/priestess, passion, compassion-- that’s how I view the Magdalene, not the whore who wiped Jesus’ feet. ...Naturally, I think there’s a fragmentation in the Christian myth-- there is no myth of the woman without being associated through the man-- or through the sex-- whether she’s a virgin or a mother. She’s a virgin before the son of God is born and then she’s a mother after he’s born. Whether Mary Magdalene was the wife of the son - to me, Mary was truly the female representation of God.

In our western Christian partiarchial society, we've been given sexless archetypes to follow-- a supposedly sexless Jesus, and a Virgin Mary who becomes his mother, the story goes, without physical union with a man. We have the eternal son, Jesus, (we assume never reaching manhood or fatherhood as he is portrayed as having never touched a woman), it seems, and the eternal suffering mother. like la llorona, Mary the mother has watched her son die....but what about the weeping Magdalene at her side? This woman, demonized for her sexuality and passion-- who is she and why is she perceived as less legitimate than the mother Mary, the virgin Mary? why can she not have claim to Jesus's love?

In his One Hundred years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez seems to accomplish the unification of the two Mary archetypes in the character of fortune teller Pilar Ternera. Prostitute, priestess, prophetess, witch…these terms, applied in different circles to the Magdalene certainly apply to Marquez’s Pilar Ternera. But Pilar and the Magdalene, uncompromisingly sensual and shamelessly sexual, why can’t they be teachers, nurturers, mothers, claiming their shadow side without the shame? Why is the Magdalene representative of the dark, evil, base, corrupt side of love and why is the virgin and mother confined to a love without passion?

...and then he lost his memory, as during times of forgetfulness, and he recovered it on a strange dawn and in a room that was completely foreign, where Pilar Ternera stood in her slip, barefoot, her hair down, holding a lamp over him, startled with disbelief.
"Aureliano!"
Aureliano checked his feet and raised his head. he did not know how he had come there, but he knew what his aim was, because he had carried it hidden since infancy in an inviolable backwater of his heart.
"I've come to sleep with you," he said.
His clothes were covered with mud and vomit. Pilar...did not ask any questions. She took him to the bed. She cleaned his face with a damp cloth, took off his clothes, and then got completely undressed and lowered the mosquito netting so that her children would not see them if they woke up. She had become tired of waiting for the man who would stay, of the men who had left, of the countless men who missed the road to her house, confused by the uncertainty of the card. During the wait her skin had become wrinkled, her breasts had withered, the coals of her heart had gone out. She felt for Aureliano in the darkness, put her hand on his stomach and kissed him on the neck with maternal tenderness. "My poor child," she murmured. Aureliano shuddered. With a calm skill, without the slightest misstep, he left his accumulated grief behind and found Remedios changed into a swamp without horizons, smelling of a raw animal and recently ironed clothes.

Enchanted by Pilar, young Jose Arcadio Buedia certainly sees a nurturing part of her that exists as an inseperable part of and, perhaps, strengthens the sexual attreaction between them. Indeed, he wantes her to be his mother and, even while making love, he confuses her face with that of Ursula. The passages describing Pilar’s seduction of Jose Arcadio and his brother Aureliano are undeniably beautiful. Most importantly, however, they reveal the natural coexistence of the motherly, nurturing qualities of women and those of the so-called “sacred prostitute”, her sexual guidance an invaluable service. Pilar is her own woman, undivided, uncircumcised of either her sexuality of her divinity. That she exists, even as a fictional character, proves that it is possible for a woman to embody all female roles but the question then remains: how can one function safely as bother mother and lover without any conflict of interest, as Pilar does? But that, if it ever can be concretely answered, will not be answered here.