When authors use symbolism effectively, readers can begin to understand a work of literature on both the surface level and in an illustrative context, attributing significance to ideas, actions, or even characters themselves beyond what is initially described. In her novella The Awakening, Kate Chopin employs symbolism through a variety of images to reveal particular details about the protagonist, Edna Pontellier. One such symbol is the sea, an essential figurative element. Ivy Schweitzer’s scholarly essay, entitled Maternal Discourse and the Romance of Self-Possession in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, asserts that the sea is a motherly figure lacking in Edna’s life. Though in her critical analysis of The Awakening Schweitzer asserts that the sea is a “maternal space” (Schweitzer 184), I will argue that the sea represents a metaphorical romantic partner for Edna, and that it really is the symbol of an idealized lover that was an impossible reality in Edna …show more content…
Pontellier’s Victorian culture.
Schweitzer asserts that the sea is a matronly figure for Edna, and that her connection with the sea “is presented as a progression backwards through a series of memories to a sensuously maternal space, the space in which she can recapture her mother and her own ‘far away, unreal, and only half remembered’ motherhood” (Schweitzer 184).
Schweitzer claims that the sea is a motherly realm; however, like a lover, “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” (Chopin 18). Though Schweitzer and Chopin allude to the sea as possessing competing metaphorical implications, the former makes the intriguing claim that the sea possesses two internal contradictions: a voice which guides one to solitude through a language without words, and a touch which surrounds one in a gentle, loving embrace (Schweitzer
182).
With this assertion, Schweitzer claims that the sea is a motherly figure; however, Chopin’s use of language and her description of one of Edna’s first encounters with the sea invoke the ___ of the sea as the lover. When Edna first accompanies Robert to the beach, she begins to discover her place in the universe as a human, the first of other “awakening” moments throughout the novel, and it is the result of Robert’s affections that “a certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her…” (Chopin 17). If the sea is indeed a representation of the lover, both leading Edna to discovering her selfhood and igniting a need for physical affection, then it is in this scene that the reader first encounters the symbolic reference of the sea to this idea of the romantic partner. She is enveloped in the touch of the sea, which Chopin describes as “sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace” (Chopin 18). The author’s use of vocabulary immediately summons the idea of a lover, less of that of a mother as Schweitzer keenly asserts.
The enticing nature of the sea, and one’s ability to be in utter solitude there, references what the lover that Edna desires should provide: an environment in which she can, at her own choosing, fully submit or take hold of her selfhood. This choice, a choice of submission or self-possession, is comforting for Edna. She chooses to go to the sea of her own free will (something she feels she lacks in the opening of the novel due to marital and maternal restraints) and it is in the sea that Edna can be herself and reflect on her personhood without judgment from her outer community, whether that be her immediate family or the Creole society at large. Schweitzer forgoes this interpretation of the sea as a lover, further instilling the idea that the sea entices Edna with a maternal, seductive voice when she proposes that Edna’s reunion with the maternal body is something “achieved when [Edna] swims into the gulf” (Schweitzer 175). This analysis seems a little forced and out of place on Schweitzer’s part, for in the preceding page, she discusses Edna’s shedding of her maternal responsibilities and merging with the beloved (rather than assuming her maternal duties) as the culmination of Edna’s fantasy or dream, as well as the image of the childbirth “splitting” the mother, an incoherent and disunified subject. The impression of these images is not one of maternal harmony through an engagement with the sea, rather a disconnect with the truth of motherhood through a realization of selfhood and individuality as provoked by the autonomizing nature of the sea.
Edna Pontellier recognizes the dual life she leads – “that outwards existence which conforms, the inward life which questions” (Chopin 18). The sea is a place that Edna can go to act on this questioning inner life, a place where she discovers her subjectivity, that is, her selfhood and personality. Gradually, Edna learns to not give voice to her desires, but she recognizes they belong to her and that she has all the right in the world to them. The sea is a recurring symbol that Chopin engages with this inner-awakening that Edna begins to encounter. When Edna enters the sea as a recipient of this self-awareness, she is able to be herself and explore her personality; when she decides to leave the water, she remains the same as she was outwardly, though her inner consciousness may be reshaped by her reflections. As Edna continues on her inward journey of self-possession and discovery, the sea entices and speaks to her soul, as a lover would. The symbolism of the sea as the lover, rather than a maternal figure, that both beckons Edna with the promise of a peaceful solitude, along with the enveloping embrace of physical affection, coaxes Edna into her innermost thoughts on her transformational quest for autonomy.