The article I chose to read was Katherine Kearns essay,
“The Nullification of Edna Pontellier.” Frankly, I didn’t really understand
what Ms. Kearns was trying to prove in this essay, because the majority of the
essay was larger words, which confused me to no end, and her writing seemed all
over the place. It didn’t seem like she stayed on topic very well, because the
whole purpose for her writing this essay, as stated in the italicized summary,
was to show how the ocean symbolized birth and death.
Throughout the entire essay, Kearns only mentions
the ocean a few times. For most of the essay, she writes about the effects of
language and of what characters in The Awakening are representative.
Kearns whole essay focuses on the effect of the “mastery of the ‘I’” has on
Edna. Basically, she states that Edna transcends during her first swimming
scene from a female perspective of just simple obedience to a male perspective
of taking control. However, she argues that Edna takes an immediate descent
because she doesn’t have what is required to “stay afloat,” and that Edna makes
the conscience decision to drown rather than swim. She uses this quote from
Treichler about the novel, “to be alive is to sleep and dream,” but “to awaken…is
to die.”
Kearns also makes the argument that Chopin is like a
mother to Edna, contradicting and limiting her throughout the entire novel. I
think that this was a pretty neat way to look at the content. To Kearns, Chopin
gave Edna no other option but to make the decision to drown. And in returning
to the sea, Edna was trying relive her initial ascension.
In my opinion, I think that the argument could have
been presented a little clearer, maybe using simpler words. However, I do like
some of the ideas that were presented, the ones that I could understand that
is. It’s neat to think that Chopin could be the overall mother-figure to Edna, always
contradicting her ways and eventually forcing her to her death. I guess it’s
rare to place the author affecting the characters in a story because most of us
just write the authors off as simply stringing words together and creating the
story.
Though I like this perspective, I don’t necessarily
agree with Kearns on this idea. However, agree with the idea of the ocean being
a place of birth and death. That argument makes complete and total sense. The
ocean is where Edna found her ascension, but also where she made her decision
to drown since she was ascending to nothing.
Overall, the essay was interesting, yet quite
difficult, to read. If I had to do it over again, I don’t know if I would pick
the same essay.
