Internal Conflict In The Awakening

An Unorthodox Woman Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is a romance novel lacking a fairytale ending, and it is about a woman who wanted more out of life than to be someone’s wife or mother, which was a quality unheard of in the 1800s. The story commences at Grand Isle and focuses on Edna Pontellier, spouse to Leonce Pontellier and mother to two young boys, who was content with her life until one fateful summer where she became familiar with a mister Robert Lebrun, a lively entrepreneur known to fancy married women. She fell in love with him during their adventures, and in turn, fell out of love with the mediocrity of her cookie-cutter lifestyle. She compares herself to other domestic goddesses she named “mother women,” (Chopin 16) only to realize
she did not have the same dedication and passion as they did -- at least not towards being like them. The reader follows Edna on her journey of self-discovery, as her life seems less like a girl's dream come true and more like the struggle of a modern woman in an archaic world where she must break free of the chains of a society holding her back from the life she wants to live. Chopin incorporates internal conflict to show how Edna’s constant struggle within herself haunts her and begs for resolution.
Said conflict first appears early on, when Leonce accuses her of neglecting her children for supposedly not noticing one of them had a fever, because after all, “if it was not a mother’s place to look after children, whose on earth was it?” (Chopin 13) Edna proceeds to check on her son, then returns to bed, not uttering a word to her husband. Once he falls asleep, she starts to cry to herself and steps out of the room. On the next page, she denotes that events like that were a common occurrence in her marriage, but then she considers they “never before [have] weighed much against the abundance of her husband’s kindness and a uniform devotion. . .”(14) It is at this moment that she discerns her unhappiness with Leonce, but has not planned on acting upon it. The source of her internal conflict changes as the plot thickens, and its intensity accumulates to the point of her feeling so frustrated that she “tore [a handkerchief] into ribbons”,”flung [her wedding ring] upon the carpet”, then “flung [a glass vase] upon the tiles of the hearth.” (Chopin 87) Her conflict regarding her individuality diminishes near the end of the book when she and Robert are confessing their love for one another and she profoundly clarifies,” 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.” (Chopin 178) Edna’s sense of self-worth shines through the darkness of depression,caused by the oppression she faced. At last, she’s not just property, destined to be owned, as her peers have tried to drill into her head; but she is her own being, a being that can think for herself and feel a vast array of emotions. The more Edna’s issues within herself start to dissipate, the more her problems in the real world become apparent, corresponding to the evanescing limitations on her freedom. Moreover, on top of Chopin’s implication of internal conflict, she also uses diction to thoroughly portray Edna’s personal growth, as well as how others’ perception of her changes. Throughout the book, some passages are quite grim, describing Edna’s ongoing. On the other hand, some passages are elegant and beautifully worded. A little after Edna’s breakdown, she has an epiphany as she “[begins] to realize her position in the universe as a human being,and [recognizes] her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.” (Chopin 25). Most people could not comprehend such a profound thought, let alone a woman, who has the most stress of society to pretend to be something she is not, was able to process and come to terms with the indisputable truth, that she is equal to anyone else and is her own person to experience the world. The tremendous amount of depth construed in those few lines shows the reader that she already has inner peace and her quarrel is with society trying to convince her she’s wrong to think like that. The connotation reflected heavily on Edna’s ever-changing moods, and they don’t only relate to her, but also how her acquaintances express their thoughts of her to one another, like when Madame Lebrun and Victor, Robert’s mother and brother, discuss how “the city atmosphere has improved [Edna]” and “some way she doesn’t seem like the same woman.” (Chopin 102) Their conversation was perhaps one of the most direct observations any character had said aloud about Edna’s development. And of course, Doctor Mandelet, a friend of Leonce, had offered to speak to Edna only because Leonce had expressed his concern of his wife’s bewildering behavior and attitude. “We will talk of things you never have dreamt of talking about before,” he told her (Chopin 184). But her acceptance of his invitation was short-lived considering soon after, Edna had found Robert’s note left for her, implying he was leaving for the second time and never again returning. Through the diction used, it is evident that Edna is attempting to go against the current and to circumvent what society expected of her, in order to achieve what she ultimately desires -- sovereignty over her own life.
Lastly, Chopin eloquently arranged a motif to appear quite a few times throughout her novel, and that motif was Edna’s swimming escapades in the sea.
Those experiences evolve just as much as she. She was primarily hesitant to learn how to swim, but once she does, she wants to do it independently, without the watchful gaze of her husband. And so she commences to do so. In the shadow of all other events in the book, her time swimming doesn’t appear to be exceedingly important, until the final pages when she returns to Grand Isle in a fit of desperation after Robert abandons her permanently with his heart-dropping words,”Good-by, because I love you.” (Chopin 185). On her revisitation to the place where it all began, she seeks the beach, where she once walked with her vanished lover, and she undresses herself and she enters the water and takes one swim, with the heavy loss of an empty yearning and thoughts of her husband and children and her dear friend, Madame Reisz, who was the origin of her awakening. I had deduced her experiences similar to the Shmoop Editorial Team (but they came up with an addition, insinuating Edna gained empowerment via the sea), and they wrote as follows: “Did Edna get (figuratively) too drunk off empowerment and die? Or is this a deliberately circular choice by Edna, as in, she wanted her life to end where it truly began? I disagree because I solely believe she was returning to where it all originated in order to end her new life because it just
makes more sense with the whole story. The evolution of her experiences swimming symbolize her development and comfort in herself, and her suicide was the result of her knowing she would never be content because she would never live how she wanted, not in the world she was forced to live in.
All in all, there’s a lesson to be learned here: someone can ‘have it all’ and still be unhappy in life if it’s not the way they imagined it to be. It is vital to understand that one's happiness outweighs the importance of conforming to societal norms. Personal longings don't always correlate with what society deems acceptable, and the limitations others place in front of those seeking an unorthodox lifestyle hold people back if they allow them to.