The Awakening and The Failure of The Psyche

The Awakening and the Failure of Psyche
Author(s): Rosemary F. Franklin

Source: American Literature, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Dec., 1984), pp. 510-526
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2926153
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The Awakening and the Failure of Psyche
ROSEMARY F. FRANKLIN
University of Georgia
ESPITE the intense critical attention Kate Chopin's The Awak-

JLJ} ening has received in the last fifteen years, it is still not clea
whether Edna Pontellier is a hero or a victim. One recent reader
sees her suicide as a "defiant act of will" and another as a result
of "maternal longing."' A reading of the novel is possible which
mediates the extremes of Edna as either tragic or pathetic. The
Eros and Psyche myth is a useful pattern to illuminate the labor
toward self of the female hero with the accompanying inner and
outer threats to the attainment of selfhood.
Several commentators have noted the irony of the title. Edna
sleeps and lives in a world of romantic fantasy far more than she
seems to awaken to self or reality. The magnetic Gulf of Mexico
beckons her to a world of dreams and then destruction. Freudian
and other psychological critics have helpfully detailed the infantile
and regressive traits in Edna,2 but this line of interpretation tends
to view Edna's struggle as narrowly pathological rather than uni-
versally human. If, however, we view Edna as a Psyche figure, it
is more clear that heroism is necessary for the nascent self to resist
the lure and power of the unconscious.
1 Eleanor B. Wymard, "Kate Chopin: Her Existential Imagination," Southern Stud-

ies, I9 (I980), 375; Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Kate Chopin's Awakening," Southern
Studies, i8 (I9 79), 272.
2 Cynthia Griffin Wolff, "Thanatos and Eros: Kate Chopin's The Awakening,"
American Quarterly, 25 (I973), 449-7I; Peggy Skaggs, "Three Tragic Figures in Kate
Chopin's The Awakening," Louisiana Studies, I3 (974), 345-64; James H. Justus,
"The Unawakening of Edna Pontellier," Southern Literary Journal, 10 (I978), I07-
2 2; Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Kate Chopin's Awakening," Southern Studies, i 8 (I 979),
26 I-90.
American Literature, Volume 56, Number 4, December I984

the Duke University Press. CCC 0002-983I/84/$I.50
The Awakening and Psyche 5 I I
Psyche's story is that recurring one of the mortal who arouses

the antagonism of the gods. Aphrodite is jealous that her subjects
have turned from her to worship the beautiful Psyche. The goddess
condemns the girl to marriage with a monster, but her son Eros
has conceived a passion for the mortal and spirits her away to a
palace where she is provided with all luxuries and he visits her
anonymously. Aroused by her jealous step-sisters to suspect her
lover is truly a monster, Psyche aggressively decides to see him
and kill him. As she holds a lamp over him, however, she sees
Eros, the beautiful god, and startled by this knowledge, she burns
him with lamp oil; simultaneously she is wounded by one of his
arrows. Eros then flees because she has broken her promise to love
him unseen. When Aphrodite hears of this liaison, she retaliates
with a series of labors for Psyche: a chaotic pile of seeds to sort,
golden wool to be stolen from raging rams, water to be fetched
from high mountain springs. The tasks seem so impossible to Psyche
that, during the course of these labors, she has two impulses to
commit suicide. But emissaries from nature help her in the work
she cannot finish alone.
In her last and most hazardous task, she is instructed by Aphro-
dite to confront death itself by going to Hades to fetch a beauty
ointment from Persephone. Again, Psyche thinks of suicide, be-
lieving it the only way to the underworld, but a speaking tower
tells her a shortcut and warns her not to weaken in her resolve by
stopping along the way to show pity to those who ask her aid. On
her way home, however, Psyche succumbs to her desire to use some
of the ointment to attract Eros. Its application brings on a deep
and death-like sleep. Moved by her act to please him, Eros forgets
his mother's prohibition and rushes to save her by removing the
ointment. In the happy conclusion, Psyche is elevated to the realm
of the immortals, they marry, and the child Joy is born.
Most commentators view this ancient tale as a myth of psychic
growth. In recent years Erich Neumann has led historically with
his Jungian analysis of I952.3 With other approaches follow Bruno
Bettelheim, Lee Edwards, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Mary Ann
3Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine: A Commentary

on the Tale by Apuleius, trans. from the German by Ralph Manheim (New York:
Pantheon, I956).
5I 2 American Literature
Ferguson, some with controversy over whether this myth is only

about feminine development, as Neumann asserts.4 All of these
critics agree, however, that Psyche's struggle with unconscious pow-
ers is the core of the tale. The jealous Aphrodite, appearing in the
myth as the Terrible Mother, fears the threatening growth of mortal
consciousness. The collective, here occurring as a matriarchy, can
manifest itself either as social pressure or as the seductive lure of
the unconscious. The emerging self must set itself against both.
Psyche's passive life in the dark palace with Eros is not possible
after she lights her lamp, sees him, and wounds him and herself.
Separation and solitude test her resolve for individuation and,
along with the difficulty of the tasks, threaten to overwhelm her.
Psyche's attempts at suicide mark these impulses to return to un-
conscious passivity. Edna Pontellier experiences all of Psyche's
difficulties and more as she makes her way through both sexual
and self awakenings. The paradigm of the myth illuminates the
significant action, characters, and symbols of her complex, psycho-
logical struggle.
II
In her exposition of The Awakening, Kate Chopin clearly es-

tablishes that Edna is surrounded by the collective. In the resort
life of Grand Isle, the men are only weekend guests, and the
matriarchs dominate: "The mother-women seemed to prevail that
summer at Grand Isle.... They were women who idolized their
children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege
to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering
angels."' Though Edna has been married several years and has
two children, she is different, almost virginal, as though she is
being initiated into the mores of a society she is only now awakening
to. The goddess of this world, Adele Ratignolle, is portrayed as a
4Bettelheim. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy

Tales (New York: Knopf, I976), pp. 29I -95; Lee R. Edwards, "The Labors of Psyche:
Toward a Theory of Female Heroism," Critical Inquiry, 6 (I979), 45; Rachel Blau
DuPlessis, "Psyche, or Wholeness," Massachusetts Re-view, 20 (1979), 92; Mary Anne
Ferguson, "The Female Novel of Development and the Myth of Psyche" in The Voyage
In: Fictions of Female De-velopment, ed. Elizabeth Abel, et al. (Hanover, N. H.: Univ.
Press of New England, I983), pp. 228-43.
S The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, ed. Per Seyersted (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State Univ. Press, I969), p. 888. All subsequent quotations of Chopin's works are from
this edition and are cited parenthetically.
The Awakening and Psyche 5 I 3
"sensuous Madonna," walking "with the grace and majesty which

queens are sometimes supposed to possess" (p. 892). Like Aphro-
dite, her sensuality is patent: "There was nothing subtle or hidden
about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and appar-
ent. . ." (p. 888). Adele's being is devoted entirely to procreation
and nurture; manipulation of men through flirtation and depen-
dency exists for the sake of her role as mother-woman. Her warning
to Robert to "let Mrs. Pontellier alone" is her recognition of the
threat to matriarchal solidarity that one who "is not one of us"
presents.
Though one assumes this society is patriarchal because marriage
and motherhood bestow on the women their sole power, Pontellier
and Ratignolle are unassertive. Adele's beloved husband is, in the
novel, virtually a non-person, described in the most general terms:
"the salt of the earth" and a man of "charity" and "common
sense" (p. 938). And though Pontellier seems to attempt domi-
nation with petty criticism of Edna for neglect of the children, he
withdraws from open combat over her abandonment of days at
home and her move to the Pigeon House. The Creole women
exercise great social and psychological force on their sisters to
conform to the narrow roles prescribed by the patriarchs. Their
relations among themselves are emotionally intense; those with
their husbands are unquestioning and submissive. As Psyche lives
passively with Eros in the darkness, so Adele lives in "blind con-
tentment" with Ratignolle, fused into one being (p. 938). Some-
times, however, a protest arises from the depth of this beautiful
enslavement, for Psyche is a slave, though she lives in a palace,
and Edna too is provided for beautifully, though with insubstantial
psychic nourishment, as Pontellier's gifts of bon-bons imply.
The strength of the Creole matriarchy is particularly evident in
the characters Robert, Victor, and Alcee. These three are satellites
of the female society, and each presents to the reader one of the
personae of the mythical Eros. Alcee, the most malignant of the
three, is an opportunist without motive other than conquest for his
seduction of women, Eros' cruel and promiscuous face. He bears
a scar, not the mark of Psyche but an ugly cicatrice from a duel,
ironically, the violence produced by "love." As he says, he was "a
wicked, ill-disciplined boy" (p. 959). Victor Lebrun serves to em-
body the youthful and high-spirited mask of Eros, perhaps a more
514 American Literature
innocent Alcee.6 He is the servant of his mother at Grand Isle

and seems to spend the time he is not working for her flirting with
women. He shows his face more apparently at Edna's dinner party.
There Mrs. Highcamp dresses him as Cupid: she lays a garland
of yellow and red roses on his black curls and drapes a white silken
scarf around his shoulders (p. 973). Gouvernail quotes Swinburne
to finish the effect: "There was a graven image of Desire/Painted
with red blood on a ground of gold."
Robert is the most individual, least archetypal Eros figure, and
thus more highly evolved and worthy of Edna's love. But he too
is clearly a creature of the matriarchal Creole society. Every summer
for eleven years he has been the "devoted attendant of some fair
dame or damsel" at Grand Isle (p. 890), but in this world, where
jealousy and adultery are nearly unthinkable because of the essential
"chastity" of the Creole women, his flirtations are not taken seri-
ously. As Adele tells him, he is a "gentleman"; if, of course, he
did not abide by the code (established by the patriarchs), he would
be cast out, as Alcee has been. So Robert initially assumes toward
Edna his usual role as chivalric lover. Earlier, he had been the
adorer of Adele, an episode over which they laugh with the good
humor of a couple that knows how to play the courtly love game.
Adele teasingly calls him a "jokester" and a "great beast" (in
French), the very traits of Eros, but an Eros who serves as a kind
of eunuch. In him the collective has so far succeeded in keeping
passion under control.
The entry of Edna, however, marks the intrusion of the "mortal"
whose need for consciousness threatens to thwart the comfortable
status quo of unconsciousness. Edna stirs up in Robert a part of
his nature which has been suppressed, leading him to initiate the
moonlight swim, the beginning of her awakening, and to suggest
the excursion to Cheniere Caminada, an intensification of the first
awakening.
Robert, however, serves mainly a passive role as the reflector
back to Edna of her erotic drives. When the reader is introduced
to Robert, his physical characteristics are bland and open- a
"clean-shaved face" which "was not unlike" Edna's, "no shadow
6 Anne-Lise Stromness Paulsen in "The Masculine Dilemma in Kate Chopin's The

Awakening," Southern Studies, I8 (I 979), 4I2, suggests that Victor "represents patriar-
chal society's expectations and attitudes to women in general" and may be related to
"devouring male sexuality" (p. 4I4).
of care upon his open countenance. His eyes gathered in and

reflected the light and languor of the summer day." He is described
as a "very young" man, who talks "a good deal about himself,"
as does Edna (p. 884). The two of them are portrayed in a
narcissistic stage of development; neither has suffered nor lived
without the security of his culture.7 Edna sees in the bland, good-
natured Robert, then, a vision of a man who does not exist, a
powerful Eros, who is actually in herself and not in Robert. Chopin
makes this clear by labelling Edna's emotions "infatuation." As
Edna tries to forget Robert when she returns to New Orleans, she
finds "the thought of him was like an obsession, ever pressing itself
upon her. It was not that she dwelt upon details of their acquaint-
ance, or recalled in any special or peculiar way his personality; it
was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought. .. ." (p.
936). She has projected her awakening animus upon him and thus
is unable to know him as an individual. Mlle. Reisz recognizes
this process as she questions critically Edna's falling in love with
the undistinguished Robert. Edna carelessly turns these queries
aside with the response, "do you suppose a woman knows why she
loves? Does she select?" Of course, in one sense Edna is right:
Eros, in the form of the unconscious, assaults the woman. But
Mlle. Reisz counters wisely: "You are purposely misunderstanding
me, ma reine. Are you in love with Robert?" (p. 965) Edna does
not love the individual, only what she has projected upon him.
Edna's infatuation intensifies when Robert, like Eros, flees from
her because of his attachment to the conventional world. Her
rebellion against the collective is beyond the pale of a creature of
this culture, so he retreats quickly. Later he tells her that he was
"wounded" by their intimacy.
Edna's idealism lends to her a virginal and innocent quality.
Though she has experienced sexual initiation through being a
mother, she has psychically extended her girlhood into her third
decade.8 Presented to us as a woman virtually without an adult
past, her most vivid memory is of walking as a little girl through
the high meadow grass of Kentucky: "I felt as if I must walk on
forever, without coming to the end of it" (p. 896).
7 Wolff, p. 455, says Edna does not conceive of Robert as an individuated being.
8 Bettelheim, p. 227, recounts the tale of Talia, a version of "The Sleeping Beauty."
Talia sleeps through defloration, gestation, childbirth, and a portion of her infant's
suckling.
5 I 6 American Literature
Her early erotic fantasies tell us even more about her habit of
longing for the unattainable and her later refusal to learn from
these experiences. They center on three unreachable men: a cavalry
officer, who appears when she is too young to love; a young man
engaged to her neighbor; and a "great tragedian," whose picture
she keeps. All go "the way of dreams." The omniscient narrator
describes these as "infatuations," whose "hopelessness" colors them
"with the lofty tones of a great passion" (p. 898).
On the other hand, her marriage partakes of none of these
feelings. Edna even perversely enjoys an "unaccountable satisfac-
tion that no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth
colored her affection [for her husband], thereby threatening its
dissolution" (p. 898). But those who take pride in scorning Eros
have an ironic fate. Almost as one possessed, Edna recognizes in
her feelings for Robert "the symptoms of infatuation which she
had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her earliest teens, and
later as a young woman," but she refuses the implied warning:
"The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was
willing to heed.... The present alone was significant, was hers,
to torture her as it was doing then with the biting which her
impassioned, newly awakened being demanded" (p. 927). The
masochistic quality of romantic love as portrayed in the Swinburne
poem quoted at the dinner party is implied here in Edna's spiri-
tualized lust. The only difference between Edna's girlhood infat-
uations and this episode with Robert appears to be the latter's link
with the more serious awakening to selfhood.
Prerequisite to Psyche's struggle for individuation, of course, is
the sensual marriage to darkness in the palace, reflected in the
novel by the magnetic sea, which invites Edna, like the meadow
of her childhood, to explore its vastness. Chapter six is totally
devoted to an extended metaphor comparing the dark sea and light
to the unconscious and the emerging ego. Edna's light of con-
sciousness and introversion leads her into the maze of the unex-
plored self: "At that early period [the light] 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" (p. 893). Edna's indulgence in reverie,
sleep, and ennui is ironically the necessary way to consciousness.
Her earlier repression of the unconscious has to be lifted before
growth can occur. Chopin, however, makes plain the dangers of
this psychic release: "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! " In referring to "us," the narrator
establishes Edna's spiritual exploit as both universal and heroic.
However, Chopin indicates that this is a particularly difficult jour-
ney for a woman: "In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to
realize her position in the universe as a human being.... This
may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom 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."
Edna's encounter with the unconscious is dramatized in her
effortless "learning" how to swim. Robert has been trying to teach
her for some time, but she has looked on the water with "ungov-
ernable dread" (p. 908). Now on this portentous Saturday, the
twenty-eighth of August, on the night of a perfectly full moon,
Edna-twenty-eight years of age-first is captivated by the music
of Mlle. Reisz.9 As Edna listens to the woman's rendition of
Chopin, she recalls a waking vision she once had of the figure of
a naked man at the seashore: "His attitude was one of hopeless
resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight
away from him" (p. 906). Edna is warned here of the very weak-
ness-loss of resolve-which may prevent her soul's transcen-
dence of the unconscious. This warning is disregarded now,
however, as Mlle. Reisz plays the music to arouse her soul, "swaying
it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body." At
this moment of naked vulnerability, Robert thinks "of a bath at
that mystic hour and under that mystic moon." Swimming, which
Edna had tried to will for so long, now seems to come without
effort, exactly as music has just now affected her deeply for the
first time. Chopin says, "Perhaps it was the first time she was ready,
perhaps the first time her being was tempered to take an impress
of the abiding truth." But as the narrator implies, the process of
individuation is gradual and dangerous. As Edna swims alone and
farther out, she experiences an inflation of her power, and again
9 Several critics have noted Chopin's debt to Whitman, but Elizabeth House was the
first to mention this pattern of 28 and its connection with Whitman's 28-year-old woman
and the 28 young men in "Song of Myself." "The Awakening: Kate Chopin's 'Endlessly
Rocking' Cycle," Ball State University Forum, 20 (I979), 56.
5 I 8 American Literature
the impulse "to lose herself" seems to undermine her control. At

this moment, "A quick vision of death smote her soul."
After the swim, as she describes to Robert her dream-like emo-
tions, he suggests the fantasy of a spirit that on moonlight nights
seeks "some one mortal worthy to hold his company, worthy of
being exalted for a few hours into realms of the semicelestials."
Following this archetypal suggestion, Edna transfers to Robert the
fantasy of the Eros figure who will come to seek her out.
Edna's erotic awakening becomes more intense during the ex-
cursion with Robert to Cheniere Caminada. On the boat trip to
the island, Robert prompts Edna to a considerably more sensual
fantasy than that of the roaming spirit: he proposes a trip to Grande
Terre to "Climb up the hill to the old fort and look at the little
wriggling gold snakes, and watch the lizards sun themselves"
(p. 9I5). Edna's thoughts vary this primitive image in a significant
way: "she would like to be alone there with Robert, in the sun,
listening to the ocean's roar and watching the slimy lizards writhe
in and out among the ruins of the old fort." The attack on the
rigid super ego (the ruined old fort) by primal forces is symbolized
here and reflected again as Edna finds she must leave the "stifling
atmosphere" of the church at Cheniere Caminada for the "open
air.""0 She is refreshed by the archetypal "voice of the sea whis-
pering through the reeds that grew in the salt-water pools" and
the cool water from a cistern.
A long and dreamless sleep in the "snow-white" four poster bed
of Madame Antoine is another mark of her initiation into the
erotic, and the drinking of the wine and ravenous eating of the
brown bread, "tearing it with her strong, white teeth," complete
a picture of communion." As she awakens to an admiration of her
body, Edna indulges herself narcissistically. Robert is only her
faithful servant, "childishly gratified to discover her appetite." Just
as Psyche luxuriates in life in the palace, Edna avoids the sun and
enjoys a sensuous lack of care she has never before allowed herself.
10 This movement from indoors to outside is reminiscent of that in the early lines of
"Song of Myself" as the persona leaves perfumed rooms behind for the natural air.
11 Bettelheim (p. 208) notes that Snow White is able (more than Edna) to control
her oral cravings. She eats just a little from the seven dwarfs' plates. Wolff comments
on the fairy-tale like quality of this scene in the novel and centers much of her discussion
on Edna's oral appetites (pp. 460-65).
The Awakening and Psyche 5I9
As Edna's sensuous awakening nears its zenith, Robert precip-

itately leaves for Mexico. Eros flees from Psyche because of his
fear of the matriarchy's taboo. Robert's anxiety is similar. Now, if
Edna traces Psyche's path of growth, she will suffer the pain of
separation, engage in labors which will help her gain integrity, and
then achieve union with the passional part of her nature. The
attainment of the beloved, however, is not necessary to gain self-
hood. Every passion is symbolic, containing a love object on which
is projected the goal the hero seeks.
III
As she returns to New Orleans, Edna must differentiate between

her sexual awakening and her awakening to self, a difficulty because
both are occurring simultaneously."2 Possibly Chopin wanted to
demonstrate in adding a second awakening to her version of the
myth the plight of the nineteenth-century woman, cut off from
passion as well as self-expression and doomed to remain the Sleeping
Beauty. Here is The Awakening's most serious indictment of con-
temporary social life. The woman is often destroyed who would
attempt at once both processes because they are so psychologically
difficult to discriminate. Elsewhere, in her story "Wiser Than a
God," Chopin portrays a woman who is wise because she does not
try both a career and marriage. Psyche was given the task of
separating the seeds, but even she was unable to perform this labor
without help. Much more harrowing is such a task for the "Solitary
Soul" (Chopin's original title for the novel).
The first chords of Edna's awakening to self are sounded right
after Robert leaves. She had told Adele: "I would give my life
for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more
clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend,
which is revealing itself to me" (p. 929).13 On Edna's return to
New Orleans, her confrontation with conventional society more
clearly begins, as demonstrated in her abandonment of reception
days. This is the moment at which her individuation must move
12 Hester Prynne, who follows a similar pattern of growth, experiences these initiations
separately. Hester's sexual awakening, as she throws off the old patriarchal world of her
marriage to Chillingworth, occurs before the novel opens. Her labors to define self
compose the action of the romance.
13 This conversation occurs earlier, but, significantly, Chopin refers to it only after
Robert leaves.
into the conscious level of the will. The pain of separation from
Robert initiates her version of Psyche's quest and labors. Her search
in New Orleans is simultaneously for news of Robert and for
information about herself, virtually the same since Robert is a
reflection of her emerging self. As a signal of her growth, she
assumes a more critical stance on her earlier attempts at sketching
and decides to seek out opinion from her friends.
The first encounter in her quest is with Adele, but Edna really
knows it is a "valueless" one even as the two women converse.
Edna's recognition that Adele can be of no use to her occurs
simultaneously with the feeling of "depression" aroused by the
"glimpse of domestic harmony," the Ratignolles' "fusion" of two
into one. She rejects this kind of union as she sees in it only "an
appalling and hopeless ennui" (p. 938). Edna's awareness, how-
ever, is incomplete since she does not perceive that what she rejects
in them is the very symbiosis she craves with Robert.
Because Edna is beginning to face greater difficulties with the
differentiation of awakenings in this portion of the novel, Chopin's
narrative point of view is more complex, a blend of sympathy and
criticism. The omniscient narrator approves the search for self: the
narrative voice criticizes Pontellier because "he could not see that
[Edna] was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious
self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before
the world" (p. 939). But when Edna pities Adele "for that colorless
existence which never uplifted its possessor before the region of
blind contentment," Chopin immediately injects through indirect
discourse an implied question about Edna's realism: Edna thinks
to herself that Adele "would never have the taste of life's delirium.
Edna vaguely wondered what she meant by 'life's delirium.' It
had crossed her thought like some unsought, extraneous impres-
sion." And only two pages later, Edna sees life as "a grotesque
pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward
inevitable annihilation." Her moody indulgences are, of course,
not only ludicrous but dangerous. The "ennui" Edna criticizes in
Adele is her own demon. With great detachment, Chopin portrays
how far from individuation Edna is: as she reads Emerson, she
falls asleep.
Although Edna has no personal liking for Mlle. Reisz, she
nevertheless goes on "her quest for the pianist" early one afternoon
with the instinct that she may find some help Adele was not able
The Awakening and Psyche 52 I
to give. In the disagreeable spinster is another solitary soul who

has defied les convenances. The major obstacle in her quest is a
stop at Mme. Lebrun's home. Though on the realistic surface of
the narrative, this scene appears to be harmless and pleasant-a
visit with Robert's unintimidating mother and frivolous brother,
Victor-on the psychological and mythic level it presents a threat
to Edna's determination. The facade of the Lebrun's home looks
"like a prison," and here Edna is tempted to rest and not go on
to Mlle. Reisz's. Also, she nearly succumbs, like Psyche, to another
mood of despondency when she learns she is not mentioned in
Robert's letters to his mother.
Mlle. Reisz does have a letter which includes her, but Edna
does not know this fact as she searches for the pianist's apartment.
Edna and Mlle. Reisz's opening conversation is marked by candor
as the young woman admits she cannot determine whether or not
she likes the pianist. Throughout this scene and the one later with
the spinster, the reader is also moved to a similar ambivalent
reaction. An early reviewer of the book called the pianist "a
witch,"14 and I am inclined to agree if she is compared to one of
those ambiguous guardian figures of mythology. Her "divine art"
of music "seemed to reach Edna's spirit and set it free," but it is
an art which lures her into those dangerous emotions of love and
death typified by the Liebestod aria from Wagner's Tristan und
Isolde. The worn lace of Mlle. Reisz's collar and the artificial,
shriveled violets in her hair indicate her damaged feminity: her
independence alienates her from the role the matriarchy offers and
yet she has no escape from that world. Mlle. Reisz appears to offer
Edna no better model than did Adele. Mindful of her own failure,
Mlle. Reisz warns and challenges her in her desire to be an artist:
Edna must "possess the courageous soul.... The brave soul. The
soul that dares and defies" (p. 946), says the pianist. Later, she
introduces to Edna's imagination the symbol of individuation, the
bird, as she again warns: "The bird that would soar above the
level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings"
(p. 966).
Mlle's Reisz's music opens to Edna the dangerous realm she
must negotiate. As the woman plays Chopin and Wagner, "The
14 Anonymous review, in the Norton Critical Edition of The Awakening, ed. Margaret
Culley (New York: Norton, I976), p. I48.
5 22 American Literature
shadows deepened in the little room. The music grew strange and
fantastic-turbulent, insistent, plaintive and soft with entreaty."
Moved to passionate tears by the city's version of the sea, Edna
asks "at the threshold" if she may come again. Mlle. Reisz as
threshold guardian answers, "Be careful; the stairs and landings
are dark; don't stumble" (p. 946). According to Joseph Campbell,
these parental figures may aid but must also let the hero go alone
through the threshold into a "zone of magnified power," a realm
of "darkness, the unknown, and danger.""5
Another guardian, who may be a type of the objective observer,
capable of perceiving Edna accurately, is Dr. Mandelet. At dinner
one evening he observes the positive change in Edna: "Her speech
was warm and energetic. There was no repression in her glance or
gesture. She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking
up in the sun" (p. 952). He tells a story meant to be cautionary
to Edna about "the waning of a woman's love, seeking strange,
new channels." She, of course, is not ready to listen to realism and
responds with a tale of a "woman who paddled away with her
lover one night in a pirogue and never came back." Now convinced
she is in love, Mandelet, in the last pages of the novel, comments
realistically on the natural reason for romantic love: "youth is given
up to illusions. It seems to be a provision of Nature, a decoy to
secure mothers for the race" (p. 996). As Edna takes her last walk
into the water, she thinks Dr. Mandelet might have aided her.
The reader thinks so too, but the pull of the regressive unconscious
overwhelms the guardians' voices.
Edna is a solitary psyche as she gropes for individuation, and
her efforts at painting, the apparent medium she has for expressing
self, seem feeble. When she throws herself feverishly into sketching,
she especially seems a dilettante. Her work is erratic and controlled
by her moods; she needs sunny days to paint, but her dark moods
are dragging her down. As she begins to sell her sketches, she
becomes more confident of their gathering force, but Chopin places
all this development so far into the background that the reader
intuits Edna's struggle to become an artist will not be her major
battle, for the more rudimentary one of developing self comes first.
The relationship with Alcee seems the most problematical one
in the novel for the critic. The superficial reader may feel it proves
15 The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: World, I956), p. 77.
The Awakening and Psyche 523
Edna promiscuous since she permits Alcee to make love to her

even as she knows Robert is returning from Mexico. Edna's han-
dling of this episode, however, recalls Psyche's first trial in which
she encounters the emblem of masculine promiscuity in the chaotic
pile of seeds. That Edna seems so unaffected by her physical union
with Alcee would indicate that she has survived this trial. She
discovers, as does the reader, that her infatuation with Robert does
not have a basis solely in sexuality. Her physical needs are satisfied
by Alcee, but she continues to long for Robert: "There was a dull
pang of regret . .. because it was not love which had held this cup
of life to her lips" (p. 967).
Chopin shrewdly designs the Alcee episode to present what will
be Edna's greatest challenge: to understand that romantic love is
born of the erotic longing within oneself for transcendence that
cannot be fullfilled by union with another human being. As Edna
earlier recognized the symptoms of infatuation in her longing for
Robert, she achieves a partial insight into the limitations of romantic
love when she sees Robert for the first time after he returns from
Mexico:
A hundred times Edna had pictured Robert's return and imagined their
first meeting. It was usually at her home, whither he had sought her out
at once. She always fancied him expressing or betraying in some way his
love for her. And here, the reality was that they sat ten feet apart, she
at the window, crushing geranium leaves in her hand and smelling them,
he twirling around on the piano stool, saying:
"I was very much surprised to hear of Mr. Pontellier's absence; it's
a wonder Mademoiselle Reisz did not tell me; and your moving...
(p. 982).
Another episode which should warn Edna about her fantasies is
her birthday party. Her sexuality has fully flowered with Alcee,
and now, as she celebrates her coming of age at twenty-nine, she
anticipates her move to the Pigeon House, a symbol to her of
individuation and of her new freedom to choose. In terms of the
Psyche and Eros myth, this moment may mark the awakening
from the palace of darkness to a life of growth and suffering. But
as Edna sits in pride among her guests, "the regal woman, the
one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone," the subconscious
mood of despair descends on her: "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, over-
powering her at once with a sense of the unattainable" (p. 972).
Edna has garbed and girded herself, like Psyche, for a journey to
the underworld, though she is not aware of the magnitude of the
ordeal ahead of her: the "wails" from the dark cavern are hints
only. The challenge of this labor is to face the reality that the
"longing" she feels for the "unattainable" beloved is the source
of her hopelessness and depression as well as the motivation of her
life to this point. Chopin now wishes us to see that Edna has a
crucial choice to make: either to accept the fantastic nature of
romantic love and continue on her solitary journey to self, or to
refuse to acknowledge romantic love's transient nature and embrace
death.
Chopin's mythic language in the dinner party scene-the de-
scription of "a chill breath that seemed to issue from some vast
cavern wherein discords wailed"-signals the beginning of Edna's
mortal combat with the darker forces, which had earlier been
described as producing only lethargy or a pleasant laziness. Now
it is "ennui" that "assails" her, a "hopelessness," an "obsession."
Like the Fates of ancient Greece, these gods of Edna's unconscious
exact a price for her daring to rebel, and after Robert's return they
seem to be gaining in power. Alone, she sits in "a kind of reverie-
a sort of stupor" as she reviews the moments of her conversation
with Robert; ominously, she feels "she had abandoned herself to
Fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference" (p. 988).
This passivity is so predictive of Edna's suicide that the reader
coming to the text for the second time perceives uncomfortably
just how close Edna is to being dragged down by her depression.
In the last chapters the only time Edna seems to assume an
assertive attitude is with Robert. Like the uninitiated Eros, Robert
is a "foolish boy," she says, if he considers her a possession that
Pontellier can "dispose of or not." He is appalled at her open
rebellion against the collective: "His face grew a little white. 'What
do you mean?' he asked." At this crucial moment, a servant comes,
summoning Edna to Adele's labor. Edna then leaves in great haste,
refusing even to permit Robert to accompany her. Both are avoiding
confrontation with the rebellion Edna has implied they must stage
The Awakening and Psyche 525
if they want one another. Edna seems fearful of facing Robert's

anxieties. In a way similar to her earlier indulgences in fantasy,
she wants to leap over the difficulties, the labors of Psyche, and
achieve immediate fulfillment: as she leaves for Adele's, she says
confidently to Robert: "We shall be everything to each other.
Nothing else in the world is of any consequence" (p. 993). Because
she avoids confronting the problems presented by reality, she leaves
Robert alone to contend with his fears. He desperately pleads with
her as she leaves, "Don't go, don't go! Oh! Edna, Stay with
me....
As the reader sees shortly, Robert is too fearful to join w
Though he claims he leaves her because he loves her (his note is
appropriately placed in lamplight, marking Edna's second and last
separation from Eros and her last and most bitter awakening), it
is clear that he is afraid their love cannot stand up under the glare
of reality and the anger of society. No chivalric lover rescues the
maiden here; no Eros marries Psyche. Also, that Edna answers so
precipitately Adele's summons signals again the power the mother-
realm exerts over Edna and calls to mind that one of Psyche's
greatest temptations was to lose her resolution by feeling pity.
Adele's physical labor distracts Edna from the spiritual labor in
which she is engaged. Adele's "Think of the children" reminds
Edna of her "duty" and may suggest, at least subconsciously to
her, the reality that, if she lives as a fully sexual woman, a state
to which she has now awakened, she will likely have to think of
some future children, a horrid idea to one struggling so desperately
for her independence."6 Mandelet's talk with her on the way home
after witnessing Adele's "scene of torture" pursues the idea that
Nature uses our emotions to "secure mothers for the race"
(p. 996). At this moment, Edna seems to awaken to the illusory
nature of romantic love: agreeing with Mandelet, Edna sighs, "oh!
well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather
than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.""7 This assent,
however, seems so easy as to be superficial and perhaps merely
16 Priscilla Allen is, to my knowledge, the only critic who has noted this. "Old Critics
and New: The Treatment of Chopin's The Awakening" in The Authority of Experience:
Essays in Feminist Criticism, ed. Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards (Amherst: Univ.
of Massachusetts Press, I977), p. 236.
17 The following critics have discussed Edna's unrealistic expectations about romantic
love: James Justus, "The Unawakening of Edna Pontellier"; Otis B. Wheeler, "The
Five Awakenings of Edna Pontellier," Southern Review, I (I975), II8-28; Per
Seyersted, Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ.
Press, I969), p. I47.
intellectual. Only after Robert leaves her does she absorb emo-
tionally this new idea: " 'To-day it is Arobin; to-morrow it will be
someone else.'. . . There was no human being whom she wanted
near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would
come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of
her existence, leaving her alone." Once aroused to consciousness,
one cannot return to the palace of night where perfect union with
the beloved is imaginable. But alone, Edna is prey, as Psyche
repeatedly was, to suicidal thoughts, the voices which distort the
victim's choices and exaggerate her plight. Edna's idea in these
last moments that her children are "antagonists" whom she must
"elude" is patently irrational, for her progeny have given her little
obvious trouble and seem her happiest links to life. But for her at
this moment, they represent the powers arrayed against her.
Chopin has led us to sympathize with Edna's rejection of con-
ventional illusions of fulfillment: children, marriage, even lovers.
But she is left to confront solitude, presented throughout as mag-
netic and destructive. Unconscious contents of her psyche, not
sufficiently examined and integrated, are still a powerful "other"
which she does not have the strength to endure as she seeks avenues
for individuation.
The paradigm of Psyche reveals Edna's exploit as heroic, but it
also shows where she fails to finish her task and is dragged down
by fear of a long and lonely period of change. The final scene of
the novel recalls Psyche's despair at trying to steal the golden wool
from the rams, symbol of the dangerous masculine forces. Edna
stands naked "at the mercy of the sun," exposing herself for the
first time and the last time to the brunt of this power (before, she
bathed at shadier times of day). She watches a bird with a broken
wing fall down into the water. Psyche's element is earth and air;
Aphrodite's is sea and sun. Edna is obviously overcome by nu-
minous forces, and it is only ironic that she feels like "some new-
born creature, opening its eyes" (p. i,ooo). She goes down to
darkness, absorbed in a regressive illusion-that she is wading into
the bluegrass meadow of her childhood.

The Awakening and The Failure of The Psyche

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The Awakening and the Failure of Psyche

Author(s): Rosemary F. Franklin

ESPITE the intense critical attention Kate Chopin's The Awak-

1 Eleanor B. Wymard, "Kate Chopin: Her Existential Imagination," Southern Stud-

American Literature, Volume 56, Number 4, December I984

Psyche's story is that recurring one of the mortal who arouses

3Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine: A Commentary

Ferguson, some with controversy over whether this myth is only

In her exposition of The Awakening, Kate Chopin clearly es-

4Bettelheim. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy

"sensuous Madonna," walking "with the grace and majesty which

innocent Alcee.6 He is the servant of his mother at Grand Isle

6 Anne-Lise Stromness Paulsen in "The Masculine Dilemma in Kate Chopin's The

of care upon his open countenance. His eyes gathered in and

this psychic release: "But the beginning of things, of a world

the impulse "to lose herself" seems to undermine her control. At

As Edna's sensuous awakening nears its zenith, Robert precip-

As she returns to New Orleans, Edna must differentiate between

to give. In the disagreeable spinster is another solitary soul who

Edna promiscuous since she permits Alcee to make love to her

her like an obsession, like something extraneous, independent of

if they want one another. Edna seems fearful of facing Robert's

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