In the end of the nineteenth century, the motif of life of a Victorian woman often appears in literature, mainly in prose. Even though it was dominant mostly in the English literature, we can find this theme also in the works of American writers. However, this motif was slowly disappearing since the United States had become a modern, industrialized country. The Victorian attitude remained popular in the work of regional writers, often those who lived in an environment which was still closely connected through business, culture and family ties with the European continent. The European influence therefore appeared in the American regional literature.
Kate Chopin spent her life in Louisiana, a southern state with a strong French-speaking community. This fact influenced her prosaic work, in which we can often encounter a Catholic Creole environment with its old-fashioned, traditional European customs. Chopin’s major piece, The Awakening, was published at the very end of the nineteenth century (in 1899). It was an example of regional prose, in which the author did not only concentrate on ex-European customs, but also wanted to render natural, social and linguistic features of the New Orleans’ Creole community.
The main character of The Awakening, 28-year-old Edna Pontellier, plays the role of a wealthy New Orleans housewife. Even with two little children, a generous husband, and financial stability, Edna finds herself wanting more from her life and tries to search for fulfillment in her conventional 19th century life of a woman. Deeply buried within her soul, she uncovers a hunger for mental stimulation, physical love and a need for personal independence.
In the Pontellier’s summer retreat at Grand Isle, Edna befriends a handsome man named Robert Lebrun, who is two years younger than she. Robert and Edna stroll along the ocean arm in arm, or carry on conversations that last hours. They feel comfortable and at rest in the other’s presence. To Edna, it is Robert who is her equal, her partner; alike from Edna’s husband Léonce Pontellier who treats her like “a valuable piece of personal property” (The Awakening, p. 509)2. When comparing Léonce Pontellier and Robert Lebrun, it seems that Mr. Pontellier is rather a typical patriarchal figure. It has been already mentioned that he felt his wife was his property. Though the reader might have an impression that Mr.

Pontellier is deeply in love with his wife (sending her presents when away, feeling uneasy about her behaviour), it is indisputable that she is not that important to him to overcome his omnipresent fear - “what people would say” (p. 581).
Robert Lebrun, on the other hand, is a young bachelor not being tied up with family matters. He is open-minded and free, intending to go to Mexico one day and to make a fortune there. Though each summer at Grand Isle Robert used to devote his gentlemanly courtesy to a different woman from their community, it seems that this summer he has fallen in love with a woman who is different from the others. He likes to be in Edna’s presence and when having a conversation “each was interested in what the other said” (p.510). Robert’s old-fashioned gentlemanly courtesy and social grace appeals to Edna’s feminine side, igniting something inside her that causes her to look at herself in a different light. Edna Pontellier sees that she is a living, breathing human being, a woman who wants to create for herself a life guided by her own feelings and thoughts. Edna starts to awaken and reconsiders her situation.
The first signs of awakening of the main character can be traced back to the beginning of the novel, to the scene when Edna is sitting at the porch of Pontellier’s summer cottage, crying, after her husband accused her of being inattentive to and neglecting the children. In that moment “an indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish… It was strange and unfamiliar, it was a mood” (p. 512).
The fact is that Edna Pontellier is not a typical mother figure, she is not a mother-woman. She is not a woman who idolizes her two children, or worships her husband as it could be observed in the behaviour of other Creole woman who were spending their summer at Grand Isle. It is their absence of prudery and reserve which distinguishes these women from Edna. Since Edna has not always been a member of this Catholic Creole environment, we can understand her behaviour, which was at the beginning prudent and reserved. She comes from a respectable Presbyterian family living on a plantation in Kentucky. She was not accustomed to any expression of affection, nor any expression of opinion. Therefore her marriage to a young Catholic, Léonce Pontellier might also be understood as a sign of revolt in her traditional Victorian role of a woman.
Though gradually, facing the reality, Edna grows fond of her husband and of her children in an uneven and impulsive way. “She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them” (p. 522).

However, during that summer at Grand Isle, Edna Pontellier awakens, realizing that her love to Robert Lebrun is the most important matter in her life, leaving her supposed-to-be affection for Léonce and her love for Raoul and Etienne (the children) behind her back.
An important symbol in the novel, which drives Edna to self-respect and self-confidence, is the sea. Throughout the novel, it affects Edna’s life in many ways, at times acting as a comforting beacon in the night, while at others as a beckoning lover. The sea aids in her physical awakening.
In the beginning of the novel, the sea becomes a conduit through which Edna can reach Robert. The sea mysteriously calls to her, fondling her soul with its sensuous cry. Apart from Robert, it is the sea that slowly awakens. It can be observed in the scene when Edna agrees one night to swim with Robert and their friends though she has no ability to swim. Her friends tried in vain to teach her to swim, but failed. That night, however, Edna swims for the first time in her life. “She was like the little, tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence” (p. 529). She shouts for joy and is overcome with exultation.
In her state of climaxed rapture, Edna is awakened and is all at once liberated from the ties of conventional female stereotype. The physical nature of swimming is exhilarating for her, and in a sense, it is a typical example of the physical passion her life was obviously lacking. Thus, awakened to her sense of self and to the need for sexual love, she leaves the sea seeking this love in Robert Lebrun. That night after the swimming, Edna is sitting at the porch again, refusing her husband’s demand (!) to go to bed and once again she feels like who “awakens gradually out of a dream” (p. 532).
Throughout the story, Edna struggles to free herself. Her husband tries to hold Edna down, wanting her, not surprisingly, to be a mother and a housewife, though she knows she is not like that. Léonce’s oppression forces her to break free. She starts to think only about herself, while her children, her husband, her house in New Orleans, her life she had lived before, become parts of a world that is now alien to her. She does what she likes and feels what she likes. For the first time, her mind is clear and she is content. She withdraws regular tea parties at her place, forgets her acquaintances and seeks fulfillment through life’s simplicities. She is happy painting (!), or listening to classical music.
Léonce Pontellier is shocked and bewildered, and asks respectable Doctor Mandelet for help.

In those times, a woman who was demanding social, economic and political equality, or at least trying to overcome her traditional conventional role dictated by the society, was scornfully looked at. The reader gets the same impression after having read Mr. Pontellier’s consultation with Dr. Mandelet. In their conversation, they did not regard Edna (their topic) to be a respectable human being with her own rights, but a supposed-to-be Victorian woman who is just a little bit moody.
Nevertheless, Edna does not pay attention to her husband’s protests and driven by her newly gained independence, she packs her belongings and escapes from the life she used to live. This can be regarded as the most important step in her life. It must have required great courage and energy (not that typical for a woman in those times) to face the old-fashioned public opinion and rather an out-of-date but still very strong and influential conception of the traditional stereotypical female role. And Edna goes even further. She begins life of her own, moves into a smaller apartment, abandons her husband (!) and starts a love affair with a disreputable man-about-town, Alcée Arobin, even though eventually she realizes that he means little to her (alike from Robert).
Most of all, she hopes to start a fresh new life with Robert. She says to him: “I love you. It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream” (p. 593). But Robert leaves her (“because he loves her”, he explains in a letter), not understanding what she needs either. During the long, sleepless night that follows, Edna realizes that eventually she will forget her love for even Robert. She decides that her only escape/solution is the suicide. This act, therefore, might be understood as the ultimate symbol of revolt or “awakening” (Edna symbolically chooses to die in the ocean, she returns to the sea, to the place where she met Robert and where she has learned to swim).
To conclude, Edna Pontellier, having detached herself from the society’s conventions, serves as a lasting icon of women’s independence, though it would take years for the society to look at a woman like Edna with anything but a scorn and despise. Awakened Edna takes advantage of her vitality with a freedom of thought uncommon for women of her time, and her character persuades us, the readers, to reexamine our lives, to look at it from the perspective of someone who has just opened his/her eyes. Kate Chopin’s female character suggests the capacity of human beings to live independently, proudly and respectably, facing the community pressures, patriarchal power and maternal deprivation.

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The Awakening of a Victorian Woman