The Landscapes of Edna Pontellier’s Awakening by Kathryn Dunleavy 3rd Place Winner, Gunard Carlson Contest “I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads. It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.” --Anthony Doerr, All the Lights We Cannot See
This scene represents what Edna Pontellier is feeling as she walks out into the sea at the end of Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening. Freed of the chains of land and the men who rule it, Edna can finally be her true self. Through Edna’s journey from the cottage on Grand Isle and the house in New Orleans, to the pigeon house, to staying with Robert on the island, and finally into the sea itself, she progressively displays more of her inner self. Moving from the land, which is ruled by men, to the sea, which is ruled by God, shows Edna’s desire to be independent and allows her to find her voice. As Edna moves from the land to the sea, the controlling voices of men fade while the voice of God echoes within and allows her to reveal her true self. Edna’s journey of self-discovery begins, as does the story, on Grand Isle, then moves to New Orleans, where she lives with her husband and children. This section of the story is told from the man’s perspective, almost as if Edna is a secondary character in her own story. There is dialogue from Mr. Pontellier intermittently throughout the first part of the novella, yet Edna hardly speaks. Furthermore, when she does speak, it is only in regard to her husband’s needs: “Here, take the umbrella” and “Coming back to dinner?” (1650). This is due to the fact that Edna is living on a land that is completely ruled by what men want and what men allow. According to Patricia Yaeger, Edna’s “very absence of speech works productively, in which [her] silence offers a new dialogic ground from which we can measure the systematic distortions of her old ground” (435). Simply stated, the deficiency of dialogue from the main character, Edna Pontellier, shows how the system by which the land operates—using man’s rule—is completely distorted. The first landscape that Edna encounters is the land. On the land, it is apparent that Edna is struggling with her burdens of being a wife and mother. The reader meets Mrs. Pontellier at the summer cottage on Grand Isle with her husband and children. Grand Isle is referred to as an island yet is connected by a bridge to the land mass that is Louisiana. Grand Isle is made up of women who adore their domestic duties to be good wives to their 26
