Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics and Identity in The Awakening

The two most prominent critical readings of Kate Chopin's The Awakening assert that Edna Pontellier's final actions represent either the mythical triumph of self over a restrictive patriarchy, or, contrarily, the tragic, inevitable defeat of a woman striving to combine motherhood with personhood. Challenging these readings, this paper argues that Edna's actions reveal the danger of withdrawing from all available social roles in favor of an identity-less, though ultimately elusive and destructive, freedom. This paper also argues that The Awakening, although traditionally aligned with realism and naturalism, implicitly questions the values associated with these modes of representation. Portraying identity as a social fiction one inhabits with a certain amount of willpower, the text complicates realism's insistence on the empirical; depicting women who wield significant power over their lives, as well as a protagonist who erroneously believes she has no say over her own, the novella undermines naturalism's tendency toward fatalism.