#17 Kate Chopin - The Awakening (I)

Bila Lee
English 48B
March 5, 2009
Journal #17 The Awakening (I)

Quote:
“'I hardly think we need new fixtures, Leonce. Don’t let us get anything new; you are too extravagant. I don’t believe you ever think of saving or putting by.'”
“'The way to become rich is to make money, my dear Edna, not to save it,’ he said” (Chopin 576).

Summary:
The quote is excerpted from a conversation between Edna and her rich husband, and it is picked because I would like to continue the discussion on Marxism. The story is set in Grand Isle, a vacational resort popular with wealth people in New Orleans; Edna and her children are spending their summer holiday there. Edna perhaps comes from a middle class that “her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident,” (Chopin 548) in which she is neither supposed nor expected to marry a Creole. In fact, she meets Robert and enjoys the moment with him in Grand Isle; she almost establishes a romantic relationship with Robert before he leaves to Mexico. Robert is young, far less affluent as the Pontelliers and has a lower social status; yet his emergence makes Edna happier and raises the Marxism question – which social class does Edna literally connect to?

Responses:
Marxist criticism serves to disclose the existence of social class difference, and consequently a sense of alienation is developed because of the class difference. In her novella, “The Awakening,” Kate Chopin faintly creates different social statuses to each fictional character. For instance, Leonce Pontellier represents the Creoles because he is rich and successful, hence he can marry an attractive woman and rewrite her life; Edna is likely raised in a middle class family as she “lived her own small life all within herself,” (Chopin 544) and she is not fully adapted to becoming rich; last but not least, Robert is young yet possesses the passion to fit himself into a higher social class. As stated in Wikipedia, not only had the literary work challenged the social class difference but it also challenged “moral as well as literary standards” (Wikipedia) in the sense that it violated some social mores. Some critics criticize the novella as if it was encouraging open marriage, which was absolutely unacceptable in the conformist society; and hence the story was restricted for decades.

To a certain extent, Edna finds it easier to get along with Robert because she is not used to a rich living style. She is not the type of mother-woman (Chopin 538) whereas intensive maternal love is a common quality shared by upper class women (as their husbands are usually busy with their business and cannot devote themselves to the children.) Similarly, Robert is not used to the Creoles lifestyle as he saves cigars rather than consume cigars, when Edna is told that “the way to become rich is to make money, not to save it.” Thereby it sounds like Edna is connected to Robert, to the middle class which attempts to get into a higher class.

In reality, some people may explicitly demonstrate their high social status by wearing branded clothing and accessories, driving splendid car, eating luxuriously so on and so forth; they consider these extravagant spending as an investment to enter the upper class. But they usually fail because one’s mind instead of one’s body is the most important component to connect to a social class.