Lindsey Arnold

ENG 3350
10-30-2020
Round-Pegged World
Through studying The Awakening, the reader can come to an understanding of the

character of Edna Pontellier in a variety of ways. She is a vibrant, chaotic, confused outcast of a

woman whose persona has difficulty fitting into society. She is a square peg trying to forcibly fit

into a circular space. As a child continually tries to jam the ill-fitting peg into the toy, so, too,

does Edna try to force herself to fit into society. Edna’s relationships are mirrored from traits that

she wants to own but cannot. Therefore, her character is developed and fits in only by “stealing”

aspects of others’ characters and internalizing them. Her character relies on others in order to

develop itself into what she is: a square peg in a round-pegged society.

Edna Pontellier has a difficult time acting the way that a woman ‘should’ in the Creole

society that she lives in. She must develop her personality in some way in order to make it

through, so she takes some aspects of a Creole woman from her friend Adele Ratignolle. In her

eyes – and the eyes of society – Adele is the perfect woman: beautiful, motherly, and never

discussing directly the intimate life she lives yet always placing herself in conversation. Edna

needs a model to go after and relies on Adele to fill this role. We can see this reliance near the

end of the novel when Adele is giving birth and calls Edna to her bedside. Edna, while in the

middle of a scene with Robert, takes off to go to Adele’s side even though she truly is not needed

there. Her priority of developing her own persona over developing her relationship with Robert

are shown here. A key piece of who Edna crafts herself to be is shown in Margit Stange’s

criticism entitled “Personal Property: Exchange Value and the Female Self in The Awakening”,

when she discusses how Edna notices difference in herself through interaction with Adele.
Stange writes, “Adele’s selflessness is an inducement to Edna to identify a self to give” (Stange,

pg. 284). Before this interaction with her friend, Edna did not even consider that she should give

away a piece of herself for her children. She views in Adele that this is something women in her

society are expected to do. She, however, is unable to. Her inability for selflessness causes her –

and once again society as well – great angst because she cannot internalize this bit of society’s

expectation. Her skewed view tells her that if she were able to copy Adele in her action and give

herself for her children, she would be able to embody everything that she should be in this world

she lives in. Perhaps this is why she rushes to the bedside of Adele even though she is right in the

middle of figuring things out with Robert; she is trying to behave as the woman she is supposed

to be. By being present at the birth of the child of the woman she is trying to imitate, she feels

she may be able to grasp the concept of how to do so. There is a struggle here of the woman she

is, with Robert, and the woman she needs to be, with Adele. Edna goes to Adele’s bedside in

search of Adele, the woman she wants to be, and the child, mirroring her own whom she wants

to give herself for. Neither may be mirrored though, and she leaves even less like them than

when she went in. She attempts to copy their life but fails.

If we look at Elaine Showalter’s criticism entitled “Tradition and the Female Talent: The

Awakening as a Solitary Book” in relation to this idea, we can gain an understanding of how

Edna’s relationship with Adele changes her. Showalter writes, “In textual terms, it is through this

relationship [with Adele] that she becomes ‘Edna’ in the narrative rather than ‘Mrs. Pontellier’”

(Showalter, pgs. 213-214). Her relationship with Adele does change her name in the novel, but

does it change it away from ‘Mrs. Pontellier’ or change it to ‘Edna’? I would argue that it

changes it to Edna because by trying to imitate the life that she sees in Adele, she only succeeds

in becoming more herself. Yes, she moves away from simply being a wife to her husband, but
she also alienates exactly the persona she is trying to embody by doing so. She wants to be the

perfect image of a good Creole woman, just as she sees in Adele. Her character is created by

Adele in the opposite manner of what Edna hopes for. She goes into the relationship wanting to

imitate Adele but ends up becoming exactly the opposite than she is trying to be. Her

relationship shapes her into ‘Edna’, the woman who is everything that ‘Adele’ is not.

Edna is also influenced by her relationship with Robert. She looks to be like him as much

as she looks to be like Adele and falls for him in a sense because she sees herself. She is always

talking in the novel about how comfortable they are together and how it feels so much easier

than being with other people – because it is simply like being with herself. The Creole society

she lives in values certain ideas and those ideals are very strict for women. Therefore, there are

also very specific ways that women are supposed to break those rules. Edna recognizes this

perfect opportunity to break the rules in meeting Robert and takes that opportunity to try and

conform to her society. If we take a look at Patricia S. Yeager’s criticism entitled “’ A Language

Which Nobody Understood’: Emancipatory Strategies in The Awakening”, we can glean an idea

of how this relationship functions for Edna. Yeager writes, “Edna Pontellier falls in love with

Robert Lebrun precisely because this possibility is inscribed within her, because adulterous

desire is covertly regarded in her society as a path for woman’s misconduct: such desire

continues to involve an obsessional valorization of the masculine” (Yeager, pg. 312). Edna’s

relationship with Robert is twofold then in its purpose. Edna falls for him and uses the

relationship, even if subconsciously, in order to fulfill her desire to fit into society by being both

adulterous and masculine. Her society values the masculine role over the feminine and therefore

she wants to internalize Robert’s character. He is able to engage in this relationship without so
much consequence, whereas she is not. If she is to develop these masculine qualities through her

relationship with him though, she will then perhaps face less chastisement for it.

Edna wants to fit into the female role of society as well, so she ‘breaks the rules’ in an

acceptable, private manner of doing so. Her plan once again backfires though, because she only

pushes herself further into her black hole of adultery. This acceptable adultery turns itself into

more and leads her to abandon her façade of ‘wife’. She is allowed to break the role in secret but

not allowed to do so in the open air. Her relationship with Robert changes her because she too

deeply internalizes the goals she first had going into the relationship with him. Whereas in her

relationship with Adele she was unable to succeed in imitating her, with Robert she goes the

opposite way and succeeds too completely. We can see this when she moves out of her

husband’s house in order to acquire her own smaller house in which to work on her art. She

began with secret, yet the society’s acceptable, violation. She ended up taking the violation to the

public, though, in moving out and thus defacing her relationship with Mr. Pontellier and her

children. This is the unacceptable version of her previously acceptable adultery and desertion.

Making the connection between Edna’s relationship with Robert and her relationship

with Arobin is helpful in making the connection between who Edna is and who she becomes

through others. Her relationship with Arobin is one that stays within the acceptable bounds that

the community sets forth. Arobin is simply a relationship of lust rather than one of deeper

feelings and therefore is within the bounds that society sets. The relationship with Robert though

is outside of that boundary and is therefore a pitfall that drives Edna past the bound that is

required in order to be ‘Creole’. The reader may find some irony in this idea because we are led

to believe that Edna proceeds further into the relationship with Arobin, if you will, than she ever

does with Robert. The hinge here though lies in the meaning behind the action. There is no
deeper meaning behind Edna’s relations with Arobin, no true love, no feeling. This is seen as

unimportant in the eyes of Edna’s society because it can easily be brushed under the rug when

finished with. It does not affect Edna as a character playing her role in her family. Her

relationship with Robert does though. If we glance at Elizabeth Leblanc’s criticism entitled “The

Metaphorical Lesbian: Edna Pontellier in The Awakening”, we can see how Arobin fits the

society and Robert does not, leading to a difference of effect on Edna. Leblanc writes,

“Mademoiselle makes Edna think, and thinking is antithetical to the feelings Arobin is trying to

arouse” (Leblanc, pg. 248). Arobin, fitting in society as he does, tries to get Edna to break the

rules in the way that she is supposed to, drawing her away from Robert. Robert, however, tries to

get her to break the rules in a way in which she is not supposed to, creating a metaphorical tug-

of-war between the acceptable form of adultery and the unacceptable form.

This leads into discussion of Edna’s relationship with Mademoiselle Reisz. If we

consider the last quote from Leblanc, we can gain understanding not only of who Arobin is, but

also of who Mademoiselle is. Reisz acts as a sort of glance into the future of who Edna could be

and tries to draw Edna into the life she lives. If we look back to the beginning of the novel, we

see Edna seek out this relationship of her own accord by asking Mademoiselle to play a song at

her request and becoming greatly emotional at hearing the notes. One might argue based on this

scene that Edna is greatly influenced in her character development by Mademoiselle Reisz. As

Leblanc states, ‘Mademoiselle makes Edna think’, which can be seen in her intense level of

emotion when hearing Reisz play. Edna looks at Reisz as being a possible depiction of what she

could be in the future and searches out the friendship in order to sort of test out what her life

would be like. Reisz, through making Edna think and encouraging her to test out this life, pushes

Edna towards it by drawing her away from the relationship with Arobin. A relationship with him
would not draw her away from the family life, but one with Robert will. Therefore, Edna’s

relationship with Reisz is perhaps the catalyst in her trying to create a new life, thus losing hers

completely in the process.

Through these various relationships with different characters of the novel, Edna tries out

different lives and changes as a character. Chopin shows us through Edna’s character that

relationships with other people affect and change you, whether for the better or for the worse.

There is a great importance in choosing a path, as can be seen in the dichotomy between Adele

and Reisz or Arobin and Robert. Adele and Arobin represent the Creole path, the one set out as

an acceptable form of living and breaking the rules. However, Reisz and Robert represent the

unheeded path, the one with a ‘do not enter’ sign taped across the door. Edna does not, in the

end, choose either one and is therefore affected equally by all, becoming nothing and no one but

square-peg Edna, all alone in her world. She ends on a note of singularity, solidifying the idea

that others are essential in a life of happiness.

 Works Cited

LeBlanc, Elizabeth. “The Metaphorical Lesbian: Edna Pontellier in The Awakening.” Case

Studies in Contemporary Criticism, edited by Nancy A. Walker, Bedford/St. Martin’s,

2000, pp. 237-255.

Showalter, Elaine. “Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book.” Case

Studies in Contemporary Criticism, edited by Nancy A. Walker, Bedford/St. Martin’s,

2000, pp. 202-221.

Stange, Margit. “Personal Property: Exchange Value and the Female Self in The Awakening.”

Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, edited by Nancy A. Walker, Bedford/St.

Martin’s, 2000, pp. 274-290.

Yeager, Patricia S. “’A Language Which Nobody Understood’: Emancipatory Strategies in The

Awakening.” Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, edited by Nancy A. Walker,

Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000, pp. 311-336.