The author analyzes a classic novella using reader/response theory and explores whether coming out narratives have a broader literary application as meta-narrative.

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Preface 

I first read The Awakening---Kate Chopin’s masterpiece---four years ago in 1996. I recall now that what made my reading of The Awakening a different experience from the reading of other texts was in the response it elicited: that is, there are those texts one reads and understands and, then, there are those texts---like Chopin’s novella---that one reads, understands, and yet beyond that knowledge, somehow feels very powerfully. Indeed, the magic and mystery of The Awakening is that it reads as much like poetry as it does as narrative. And, poets attempt to explain the unexplainable, the silence, the voicelessness, the disconnectedness, and the displacement that seeks to erase so very much of the story of our literary past.

There is, of course, the need for intellectual and literary understanding. Human experience teaches us that literature, like life, is not vacuous: diverse texts are connected much more than they may seem in a literary community of difference. Diverse literature exists in society for better or worse. Moreover, interpretation of texts must acknowledge differences in the universal condition that particular texts possess a uniqueness and individuality that enriches literature. 

But the struggle by marginalized authors, like Kate Chopin, to come out of the closet, to give voice to the silent, to empower the disconnected and displaced readers and writers alike, requires that any author anywhere who suffers from the oppression cast upon their texts by the dominant literary slant must necessarily move beyond mere literary understanding. Those writers who seek freedom and authenticity in literature cannot hide behind a façade of intellectual quietism and conservative reaction in their refusal to recognize the diversity of voices that together comprise the literary bulwark of western civilization. Rather, progressive thinkers of the sort Kate Chopin represents must embrace literary understanding while adopting an analytic attitude of liberal acceptance and deviant interpretation that makes possible a literary environment free of taboo, discrimination, and reaction.

In spite of the reaction of conservative authors against, as well as the extremist intellectual violence directed towards, so-called minority, or regional, texts, progressive authors need to challenge the homogenization of the literary establishment by actively reading and writing to change the “facts” of the literary landscape. By deploying new texts and creating more diverse literary spaces within which marginalized voices may flourish, diverse texts can make a difference where dominant texts cannot free their discourse to do likewise.

Introduction

 

The purpose of this essay is to perform a deviant analysis of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening within an analytical framework of existential character analysis and social scientific/behavioral research on the “coming out” process as it traditionally has been applied only to gay men and lesbians. Narrowly, the goal of the paper is twofold: first, to scrutinize Chopin’s heroine, Edna Pontellier, from an existential perspective to determine whether or not she is an authentic, believable, self-directed character. The second objective is to assess whether or not Chopin’s narrative fits the developmental model of the coming out process and, therefore, may be considered an archetypal coming out story that applies to women who are not gay or lesbian. This will be accomplished by explicating the developmental stages of the coming out process and then looking for textual evidence from The Awakening that will either confirm or dismiss Chopin’s work as some type of coming out story.

The idea of coming out as a form of storytelling has been strictly viewed as a discourse nearly exclusively associated with and belonging to gay men and lesbians. The coming out process involves the acquisition of a homosexual, or minority, self- and social-identity. But what if coming out were to be more broadly defined as not just applicable to gay men and lesbians, but to other sexual minorities, perhaps women, or even all marginalized people, as well? That is, does the coming out process as a form of storytelling cut across gender, sexual, and other marginalized categories in a way that points to a more universal application? Although the question of universality is beyond the limited scope of this essay, the implications seem clear: such an interpretation deviates from the norm and destabilizes dominant modes of analyzing texts. Consequently, coming out as storytelling represents a subversive discourse that undercuts the established methods of textual analysis.

I

 

Textual and interpretive domination and hegemony occur within a broader cultural context that is defined by the dominant social group that constructs and controls the literary canon and literary criticism within any civilization. The western literary establishment forms a power structure perhaps best described as WHITE - MALE - HETEROSEXUAL. The literary establishment, its adherents, and henchmen, have normalized texts and their interpretation through the construction of cultural institutions that stigmatize and devalue literature that fails to conform, or is perceived as threatening, to the dominant, traditional western social equation for literary power: white + male + heterosexual = literary canon. As Audre Lorde writes in Sister Outsider, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex”:

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows “that is not me.” In america, this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within this society. Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference some of which we ourselves may be practising…There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience…that does not in fact exist. (Lorde, 116) 

Or, as Ann Kaplan notes in “Is the Gaze Male?”:

Feminist…critics were the first to object to this prevailing critical approach, largely because of the general developments taking place in…theory at the beginning of the 1970s. They noted the lack of awareness about the way images are constructed through the mechanism of whatever artistic practise is involved: representations, they pointed out, are mediations, embedded through the art form in the dominant ideology….In patriarchal structures, thus, woman is located as other [enigma, mystery], and is thereby viewed as outside of [male] language. (Kaplan, 230)

Unfortunately, the danger of producing a text that, as Kaplan would say, projects a gaze that is not male, or that is otherwise juxtaposed against the dominant literary power structure as sketched by Lorde, is the violent suppression and silencing of such deviant discourse. It is precisely such violent suppression that greeted the publication of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and marked the first half century of the history of that book. As Per Seyersted records in his acclaimed critical biography of Chopin, not insignificantly published in 1969, nearly seventy years after The Awakening was first written:

Mrs. Chopin had the vision, the originality and independence, and the sense of artistic form which are needed to give us the great novel. She also had remarkable courage. She hid her ambition and her goal somewhat, knowing that men do not readily accept…“superiority” in a progressive woman. But she was unable to keep her inclinations in check, and the tensions she felt…and the urges of the female artist, resulted in unheard of illustrations of woman’s spiritual and sensuous self-assertion. No wonder she was shipwrecked…with her cargo of iconoclastic views.

II

 

Caged voices are suppressed exactly because they challenge and deviate from the established norm. Marginal texts can surface and effuse the literary world only when individual texts join together with other diverse discourse in a community of difference. Although bravery is surely not the same as wisdom, and in some cases perhaps not even desirable as wisdom, Chopin’s authorial courage exemplifies the type of deviant discourse---about female sensuality and self-fulfillment---that creates new textual spaces while simultaneously redefining and redrawing the boundaries of literary acceptance and aesthetic sensibility. It is true that Chopin sacrificed her life and work for publishing The Awakening in 1899, but her defiant discourse expanded the community of difference, rupturing the dominant discourse, and opening new literary spaces unimaginable at the turn of the century.

As Ruth Iskin remarks in “Through the Peephole: Toward a Lesbian Sensibility in Art”: 

The transition we see in…artists’ environments is not from no context to context, but rather from a private to a public context.  The 19th century painter Rosa Bonheur, for example, created a private context for herself….The private rather than the public context has not only been the prevailing tradition of…[a marginalized] lifestyle, for obvious reasons, but also the lot of women’s culture and a tradition of women’s communication in general. (Raven and Iskin, 258-259)

In America, literary space has been dehumanized by dividing it into two supposedly distinct spheres: public and private. These literary binarisms, as expressed, for example, by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in relation to homophobic discourse, may be further abstracted to apply to the dominant literary establishment, on the one hand, and to deviant literary groups, on the other. The implications of this literary divide results in a deep fissure of no small consequence. Certain authors and texts are “allowed” in public discourse, other voices are relegated to the closet of private literary space. Invisibility and silence, thus, become weapons to banish specific writers and texts into the proverbial closet. Indeed, as Haig Bosmajian has observed:

While names, words, and language can be used to inspire us, to motivate us to humane acts, to liberate us, they can also be used to dehumanize human beings and to “justify” their suppression and even their extermination. It is not a great step from coercive suppression…to…extermination…nor is it a large step from defining a people as non-human or sub-human to their subjugation or annihilation. One of the first acts of an oppressor is to redefine the “enemy” so they will be looked upon as creatures warranting separation, suppression, and even eradication. (Bosmajian, Introduction)

Chopin’s discourse on female sensuality and independence violated the literary norm and subverted dominant literary discourse. She was what Arlene Raven would call “…an exemplary symbol---the woman who takes risks, who dares to be a creator in new territory, who does not follow rules, who declares herself the source of her artistic creation.” (Raven and Iskin, 258) But even more importantly, Chopin “…likewise prefigure[s] what many women would wish to become…strong, powerfully creative, and effective in the world.” (Raven and Iskin, 258) Moreover, and even more subversive to dominant literary norms, was The Awakening’s role as “…an active manifestation of the transformation of personal identity, social relations, political analysis, and creative thought which has long been among the aspirations of revolutionary thinkers.” (Raven and Iskin, 258) Subsequently, Chopin’s masterpiece as deviant manifesto signified “…the possibility of acknowledging radical transformation of self through revolutionary social practice” (Raven and Iskin, 258)

Sensuous and self-assertive women, or authors who write about such women, particularly in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries, were silenced because they deviated from the established literary norms. Banishment of marginalized texts, like The Awakening, to the closet of literary oblivion bolsters the hegemonic discourse that seeks to oppress diverse voices. Haig Bosmajian notes that:

…sexist language has allowed men to define who and what a woman [and man] is and must be. Labels like… ‘queers’ and ‘obscene degenerates’ were applied indiscriminately to students who protested the war in Vietnam or denounced injustices in the United States. Are such people to be listened to? Consulted? Argued with? Obviously not! One does not listen to, much less talk to…sensualists and queers. One only punishes them or, as Spiro Agnew said in one of his 1970 speeches, there are some dissenters who should be separated ‘from our society with no more regret than we should feel over discarding rotten apples.’ (Bosmajian, 7)

In order to liberate literature from the oppression of the dominant discourse, marginalized authors need necessarily write deviant texts that challenge the cultural barriers that reinforce literary marginalization. The characters they create and the aesthetic they express must pass existential muster and offer literary models who have come out of the literary closet.

III

 

General existential principles can be used to analyze the authenticity, believability, and freedom of Edna Pontellier. This analysis is important because if Edna is not genuine, if she is an unbelievable character, and if she is not free, then the subsequent analysis of The Awakening as coming out story would appear to be fruitless and insignificant. If, however, Edna Pontellier is a fully human heroine, then the novella’ development as a coming out story becomes a more compelling deviant, and subversive analysis. If coming out as storytelling is only applicable to gay and lesbian literature, it would seem to offer no link to other marginalized literary groups.  But if coming out as storytelling provides a more widely applicable analytic model, then it may very well link gay and lesbian literature to feminist, African American, Latina/o, and other deviant texts, and provide a bridge that unifies voices separated and suppressed by the dominant literary establishment. When joined in a community of literary differences, coming out as storytelling may break loose from, or at least wear (stare?) down, the dominant hierarchical literary gaze and unify deviant texts in an equality of deviant gazes. By coming out of discursive closets, marginalized texts may displace dominant literary norms and free themselves from the existentially questionable ontological category of other. 

What…has to happen is that we move beyond long-held cultural and linguistic patterns of oppositions: male/female (as these terms currently signify); dominant/submissive; active/passive; nature/civilization; order/chaos; matriarchal/patriarchal. If rigidly defined…differences have been constructed around fear of the other, we need to think about ways of transcending a polarity that has only brought us all pain. (Kaplan, 240)

In the late nineteenth-century, Edna Pontellier was confronted by a world where traditional values and moral codes were abandoned or called into question. In 1800, for example, American women had no right to sue for divorce. By 1900, two-thirds of American divorce actions were brought by women. In 1860, the average woman in the United States bore six to eight children in her lifetime to sustain what was still a largely agrarian economy. By 1900, with the near completion of American industrialization, bringing with it a consumer economy, the number of children (3.5) women bore on average had dropped in at least half. In 1880, one in twenty-one U.S. marriages ended in divorce. Just two decades later, in 1900, the American divorce ratio was up to a staggering one in twelve. (Carson, 2000)

Sexuality and gender roles experienced vast change as well. Before roughly 1875, the modern categories of sex, gender, and sexual orientation did not exist as they signify today. The commodification, medicalization, criminalization, and categorization of sex, gender, and sexual orientation, however, was very nearly complete by 1900. With the onslaught of industrial capitalism, the human body was transformed into a sexual commodity that was to be used, and in some cases sold, for pleasure as much as for pro-creation. But even as the institution of marriage, with its inherent power structures and control mechanisms, was disintegrating, the patriarchal establishment would not allow its power to be undercut. The problem of modernism could be solved by extending male dominance and oppression into new economic institutions and relationships: the professionalization of traditionally female roles (e.g. midwifery replaced by the medical profession) forced work previously performed by women to evolve into masculine jobs that produced new means of coercion and control. (Carson,  2000)

With the professionalization of the legal system, men would, significantly, control and define the legal vocabulary that privileged certain forms of sex and sexual orientation over others, while criminalizing those sexual forms that deviated from the new legal standards. The normalization of male pro-creative heterosexuality and female submissiveness was now fait accompli. (Carson, 2000)

The existential crisis facing Edna Pontellier was how to behave and cope in a society where traditional values were in disarray, where the individual is burdened and threatened by indifferent technologies, impersonal bureaucracies, and feelings of alienation and anxiety manufactured by alien industries? If there is no meaning in the universe, if God is dead, and truths are relevant, then what meaning was Edna Pontellier to give to her life? (Chase, et. al., 813-814; Gilbert, 1-176)

Edna chose to define her own existence because the institution of marriage, as represented in the opening of the novel by the caged ornamental bird, was empty of meaning and feeling. Mr. Pontellier was more absorbed in the latest stock quotes than he was with the spiritual, sensual aspects of his convenient marriage to Edna. Her role was to consume, not create, to display, not discover, to obey, not rebel. But the moral and spiritual values that would condemn a woman to such a colorless fate were devoid of meaning: they could not define Mrs. Pontellier’s essence. (Chase, et. al., 813-814; Gilbert 1-176)

Although rationalism would suggest that the appropriate and comfortable role for women is to be their husband’s wife, reason alone is an inadequate guide for living. Edna needed to participate fully in life and experience existence actively, directly, and passionately. Indeed, if reason were to have any bearing on individual lives, thought must not be simply abstract speculation. Rather, thinking and creating and discovering must have some bearing on life: it must be translated into actions, deeds, experiences, and human behavior. When swimming in the Gulf off Grand Isle, Edna Pontellier experienced the general condition that ultimately people are alone in a universe that is indifferent to human desires, expectations, needs, and passions. Edna’s awareness of this elementary fact of existence while breaking the surface of the deep water on a moonlit night evoked an overwhelming sense of freedom. (Chase, et. al, 813-814; Gilbert, 1-176)

It is absurd for Edna to imagine that her life is confined within the musty, long forgotten vows of a loveless marriage. There was no longer any purpose for her presence in the marriage. Mr. Pontellier was either unwilling to fulfill her need for sensuality or incapable of quenching her desire for passion. In reflecting on the larger scheme of things, compared with the long duration of time that preceded and will follow Edna Pontellier’s marriage, liberation, and death, the infinitesimal duration of her own existence must surely have seemed trivial and inexplicable. (Chase, et. al, 813-814; Gilbert, 1-176) 

The realization of her radical freedom to create her own essence and meaning amidst the chaos of this world afforded Edna the opportunity, however short, of squarely facing the brute conditions of human existence: that death is inevitable and existence is purposeless and absurd. In doing so, Mrs. Pontellier---for one brief moment---came out of the closet and gave meaning to her life. It was in the act of freely choosing to leave her marriage that Chopin’s heroine shaped an authentic, genuine existence. In doing so Mrs. Pontellier demonstrated that she had the potential to become more than she had been. (Chase, et. al., 813-814; Gilbert, 1-176)

IV

 

Eli Coleman in “Developmental Stages of the Coming Out Process” surveys current social scientific and behavioral research and proposes a five stage model of the coming out process (Coleman, 32-39). He identifies the following stages of the coming out process: Pre-coming Out; Coming Out; Exploration; First Relationships; and, Identity Integration.  (Coleman, 32-39) The pre-coming out stage is associated with feelings of alienation, being alone and different, and low self-esteem. Moreover, as Coleman notes, individuals in the pre-coming out stage often employ the psychological defense mechanisms of denial, repression, reaction formation, sublimation, and rationalization to prevent the existential crisis that may occur when the individual, family, and society confronts a deviant sexual orientation. (Coleman, 32-39)  

Clearly, in the first several chapters of The Awakening, Edna Pontellier appears to be in the pre-coming out phase of self-identity development. In a broken marriage burdened with the responsibility of children she may not have chose, but was expected to bear, Mrs. Pontellier experiences an existential, pre-conscious crisis:

Mrs. Pontellier sprang out of bed and went into the next room. She soon came back and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning her head against the pillow. She said nothing, and refused to answer her husband when he questioned her. When his cigar was smoked out he went to bed, and in half a minute he was fast asleep. (Gilbert, 48)

Here, the very thought of another night in bed with her husband induces anxiety in Edna as “…by that time she was thoroughly awake. She began to cry a little, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir.” Although late at night and after a full day in the sun at the beach, Edna is full of dread at the idea of laying in bed with a symbol and instrument of the patriarchy that stifled her fulfillment. (Gilbert, 48)

The tears came so fast to Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes that the damp sleeve of her peignoir no longer served to dry them…Turning, she thrust her face, steaming and wet, into the bend of her arm, and she went on crying there, not caring any longer to dry her face, her eyes, her arms. She could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life. They seemed never before to have weighed so much against the abundance of her husband’s kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit and self-understood. (Gilbert, 49)

She goes on to express feelings of “indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, [and] filled her whole being with a vague anguish.” (Gilbert, 49) This “strange and unfamiliar” longing to be free of the constraints of marriage “was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her [soul]” (Gilbert, 49) Unknown, pre-conscious, like a dawning perception, a queer feeling that something, alas, is wrong. Here, Mrs. Pontellier is in the pre-coming out stage.

Coleman writes that the individual in the coming out stage is signified by conscious and semi-conscious perceptions of oneself as something other than what they are assumed to be or labeled as being. In the case of Edna Pontellier, this dawning perception is that she is an autonomous, self-defining agent; more than just the significations that married life has cast upon her as mother, spouse, and wife. Although she may not, perhaps, have a clear understanding of this new authenticity as a self- directed human being, there is awareness, acknowledgement, and the rudiments of a more genuine self-identification. (Coleman, 33-34)

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,--- The light which, showing the way, forbids it. 

At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It  moved her to dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome her the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight---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 beginning! 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 abysses 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. (Gilbert, 57)

Conscious and semi-conscious thoughts of the absurdity of existence, of radical human freedom, and the possibility of creating one’s own essence are not the only signs characteristic of the coming out stage. Coleman also observes that telling others, or self-disclosure, and the need for external  validation is vital to coming out and healthy self-acceptance. (Coleman, 34) This critical need is accomplished by Edna Pontellier in her coming out party, where she commences to abandon her marriage and create her own world of possibility and self-fulfillment.

Coleman notes that self-disclosure involves risk taking in that the individual can never definitively know prior to the act of disclosure the reaction of those to whom one comes out. These risks---of rejection, ridicule, and hurt---are balanced against the need for external validation. (Coleman, 34) If the reactions to self-disclosure are positive, internalized oppression may evaporate, self-esteem may improve, and the existential crisis may begin to successfully resolve itself. If the reactions are negative, however, oppressive notions may be reinforced, sealing stereotypes in the mind, and planting the seeds of self-loathing and self-hatred. (Coleman, 34-35)

Though Edna had spoken of the dinner as a very grand affair, it was in truth a very small affair and very select, in so much as the guests invited were few and were selected with discrimination. (Gilbert, 142)

Perhaps realizing her own vulnerability, the risks of such an announcement, and the fragility of her self-concept, Edna is very careful in who she invites to her party. In spite of her careful preparations and select invitations, the irony of Mrs. Pontellier’s coming out party is that in the very moment she announces her freedom to those closest to her, their presence only reminds her of the oppressive social conditions that suppressed women during the fin de siecle.

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, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.

But as she sat that there amid her guests, 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 breath that seemed to issue from some vast cavern wherein discords wailed. 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. (Gilbert, 145)

Coleman’s third stage, the exploration phase, is characterized by experimenting with one’s new identity. This stage provides an opportunity to honestly and openly interact with others within the context of one’s new identity. Coleman describes the events of this stage as a sort of “crashing out”: the individual may exhibit signs of awkwardness during the intensity of the exploration phase. Individuals in this stage are occupied with developing interpersonal skills, a sense of personal attractiveness; and sensual, sexual, and spiritual competence to support their newly created self-identity. (Coleman, 35-37)

The exploration stage of Edna’s coming out process is best exemplified in her relationship to Mademoiselle Reisz. Herself a symbol of self-creation as musician, Reisz, who is not married, and no less the wise for her singleness, becomes the knowing confidante who advises as well as warns Edna of the perils of her self-discovery and personal fulfillment.  

“Do you know Mademoiselle Reisz?” she asked irreverently.

“The pianist? I know her by sight. I’ve heard her play.”

“She says queer things sometimes in a bantering way that you

don’t notice at the time and you find yourself thinking about

afterward.”

“For instance?”

“Well, for instance, when I left her to-day, 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.’”

“Whither would you soar?”  (Gilbert, 138)

Aware of Edna’s inclinations and journey, Mademoiselle Reisz serves as a “refuge” for Edna’s restless soul, meandering over the possibilities and absurdities of existence. (Gilbert, 154) But, alas even Mademoiselle Reisz cannot be responsible for Mrs. Pontellier’s choices and paths on her spiritual quest for self-fulfillment.

The last two stages of Coleman’s model, first relationships and identity integration, are perhaps the least developed in The Awakening as Edna Pontellier’s coming out story. First relationships represent the need for intimacy which is often developed within the context of long-term committed relationships. From a social learning perspective, the goal of first relationships is to understand how one may develop intimate relationships---that combine both emotional depth and sexual desire---in a patriarchal society where the norm is opposite-sex only marriages that are based on the distribution of wealth, the commodification of sexuality, and the disregard of emotive needs. (Coleman, 38) 

Edna’s attempts at relationships with men are at best unrequited and at worst superficial. Mr. Pontellier and his marriage to Edna signifies the uncaring, selfish patriarchal dominance of the society in which they lived: 

When Mr. Pontellier learned of his wife’s intention to abandon

her home and take up her residence elsewhere, he immediately wrote her a letter of unqualified disapproval and remonstrance. She had given reasons which he was unwilling to acknowledge as adequate. He hoped she had not acted upon her rash impulse; and he begged her to consider first, foremost, and above all else, what people would say. (Gilbert, 150)

Nor were Edna’s relationships with Robert Lebrun or Alcee Arobin any more fulfilling. These failures to find a satisfying, authentic relationship with another, however, were less a reflection on Edna as creative agent, than they were a sign of Victorian society’s inability or unwillingness to dispose of its own puritanical rigidity. The deeply embedded nature of Victorian gender roles and sexual expectations sublimated and doomed genuine, fulfilling relationships based on mutual love, affection, and spiritual solidarity. 

What is more important than Edna’s ability or inability to succeed in social relations, however, is her potential to become more than what Victorian society allowed or cared for her to be defined. (Chase, et. al., 814) Coleman asserts that the final stage of coming out, identity integration, incorporates the private, or hidden, self into the public, or role-bound, self. This synthesis facilitates the emergence of a solid, aesthetic, creative, self-defined identity and self-image characterized by non-possessiveness, mutual trust, and freedom. (Coleman, 39)

Coleman, however, also notes that the resolution of the conflict between the public face one allows others to see and the hidden truth of one’s self-identity, as manifested in the pre-coming out stage, ultimately requires resolution. The choices he offers for the resolution of this existential dilemma are these: suicide; hiding one’s true feelings and desires; or, bravely squaring off with the existential crisis of being different and deviating from the prefabricated roles that society demands human beings assume. By acknowledging the universal condition that individual human beings possess differences that enrich being human, individuals challenge the cultural barriers that prevent them from realizing their own authenticity and freedom. (Coleman, 39) 

Conclusion

 

Some would argue that Edna Pontellier, in the final analysis, is a weak and inauthentic character because (1.) she presumably commits suicide, and (2.) she faails to create an authentic existence for herself. This conclusion, it seems, is mistaken. Although she does presumably swim to her death in the last scene of The Awakening, and although she does not find authenticity in her relationships with men, these two conclusions perhaps miss the point. Edna Pontellier succeeds in coming out of a meaningless marriage and, as an artist of individuality, asserts her freedom to be something other than she is despite the absurdity of human existence. In doing so she displays an aesthetic of self and personhood that makes her much more genuine and believable than less artfully constructed characters. In the end, Edna is free of the societal restraints that characterized Victorian culture: “She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again.”

For Each of You

Be who you are and will be
learn to cherish
that boisterous Black Angel that drives you
up one day and down another
protecting the place where your power rises
running like hot blood
from the same source
as your pain.

When you are hungry
learn to eat
whatever sustains you
until morning
but do not be mislead by the details
simply because you live them.

Do not let your head deny
your hands
any memory of what passes through them
nor your eyes nor your heart
everything can be used
except what is wasteful
(you will need to remember this
when you are accused of destruction).
Even when they are dangerous
examine the heart of those machines
which you hate
before you discard them
but do not mourn their lack of power
lest you be condemned
to relive them.

If you do not hate
you will never be lonely
enough to love easily
nor will you always be brave
although it does not grow any easier.

Do not pretend to convenient beliefs
even when they are righteous
you will never be able to defend your city
while shouting.

Remember our sun
is not the most noteworthy star
only the nearest.

Respect whatever pain you bring back
from your dreaming
but do not look for new gods
in the sea
nor in any part of a rainbow.

Each time you love
love as deeply
as if it were
forever
only nothing is
eternal.

Speak proudly to your children
where ever you may find them
tell them
you are the offspring of slaves
and your mother was
a princess
in darkness.  

(1970) (Lorde, 1970/1992, 80-82)

Authors Website: http://www.blogger.com/profile/4236373

Authors Bio:
Constance Lavender is an HIV-Positive pseudonymous freelance e-journalist from a little isle off the coast of Jersey; New Jersey, that is...

In the Best spirit of Silence Dogood and Benj. Franklin, Ms. Lavender believes that a free country is premised on a free press.