Kate Chopin - The Awakening - Episode 1 - Meet The Author, Discover Local Color And Feminism!

Kate Chopin - The Awakening - Episode 1 - Meet The Author, Discover Local Color And Feminism!

I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

And I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love lit Podcast.  This episode we begin a journey to a very unique American location to discuss a very American author. Kate Chopin, was born in St Louis but her heritage is more associated with Louisiana than with Missouri as she is from an originally American people group, the Louisianan Creole’s.  Christy, I know, you lived a part of your life in Louisiana, and your dad’s family is from Louisiana.  As we discuss Kate Chopin and her unusual and ill-received novel The Awakening, I think a great place to start our discussion, especially for those who may not be familiar with American geography, is with the Pelican State itself.   What makes Louisiana so unusual than the rest of the United States, and why does that matter when we read a book like The Awakening. 

Well, there are so many things that people think of when the think of Louisiana- Louisianan distinctive include Mardi Gras, crawfish bowls, jazz music, bayous, The French Quarter of New Orleans and its beignets.  The list is cultural distinctives is long.   But, just for a general reference, Louisiana is part of the American South.  Now, it might seem that the states that constitute the South are kind of all the same- and in some respects that’s true.  Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and the rest of them, … after all, they all succeeded from the Union during the Civil War, they all had slaves, they all have had to one degree or another racial tension over the last two hundred years, and, of course, to bring it to modern-day, they all are deeply entrenched in a tradition of American football, barbeque, shot guns, sweet tea, the Bible and a general admiration of good manners that include addressing each other as mr. mrs, yes mam and no sir.   

Ha!  Yes, that IS the South.  I remember moving down here and being frustrated that I could never find anywhere that served tea without sugar- and when they say sweet tea down here- I’m talking one step away from maple syrup.   

I like it!!!   

 People do and feel strongly about it.  In fact a lot of people have a lot have strong feelings about this part of the United States.  Some love the South; others hate it.  It’s a part of the United States that is historical, by American standards, although laughably young compared to other parts of the world,  and controversial- to this very day.  

Yes, yet having said that,  once you move here, it doesn’t take you long to realize that  The South is not one cohesive unit.  Every state is very different.  Florida was colonized by the Spanish- and has strong ties to places such as Cuba to this day.  Virginia was the seat of government and is still central to the heart of American politics.  The horse-racing people of Kentucky are very different from their cotton-growing neighbors in Mississippi.  There are many many cultural distinctives that are both old and deep.  Which brings us to the great state of Louisiana- Louisiana, especially South Louisiana, in some ways has more in common with the Caribbean islands than it does with other parts of the United States.  My daddy was born in Spring Hill, Louisiana and raised in Bastrop Louisiana which are in North Louisiana- far from the coast but the people of north Louisiana share many commonalities with their Cajun and Creole brothers.  I have early memories of magnolia trees, cypress trees, bayous, shrimp gumbo,  and, of my Uncle Lanny taking us in the middle of the night out with his hound dogs to go coon hunting- as in racoon hunting.   

So, for the record, these are things you don’t see in other parts of the United States.   

Indeed, they don’t have bayous and gumbo anywhere else- and although they do have racoons in other places and likely hunt and eat them, I don’t know.  The whole government of Louisiana is different and its visible.  They have parishes instead of counties.  The law is based on French law, not British law which affects everything.   It is predominantly Catholic not Protestant, hence Mardi Gras, which is what they call Carnival in Brazil but which we don’t celebrate in other part of the US.  But what interests us for this book is the ethnic origins of the people indigenous to the region.     The rural part of the state has been dominated by a group we call Cajuns.  Cajuns are Roman Catholic French Canadians, or at least their descendents were.   

They were run out of the Captured French Colony called Acadia in North Eastern Canada- it’s actually be termed “the Acadian diaspora”.  Acadia was in the maritime provinces up on the Atlantic side, near the US state of Maine. That part of Canada was very British hence the obvious antagonism.  

 Well, The word Acadians kind of morphed into Cajuns over the years.  That’s one people group.  But we also have another distinctively Louisianan people group  called the Louisiana Creoles.  This group of people ethnically are entirely different group than the Cajuns but also speak French.  Our author today, Kate Chopin was a creole, and she wrote about Lousianan Creole people.  Garry, before we introduce the Mrs. Chopin, local color and her influencial work, The Awakening, let’s learn just a little about these remarkable people.  Who are the Creoles of Louisiana? 

Well, let me preface by saying, as Kate Chopin would be the first to admit, history is always messy- people marry, intermarry, languages get confused and muddled, so when we talk about distinctives, we are talking about generalities, and if you want take to talk about Creole people the first word that must come to mind is multi-cultural.  There are creole peoples all over the Caribbean.  Haiti is the first country that comes to mind, so we need to be careful as we speak in generalities. But  the first generality you will notice of the Louisianan Creole people shows up in the first chapter of Chopin’s book, and that is that they also speak the French language, except for the Louisiana Creoles that can mean two different actual languages.  Today, and the latest stat, I saw was from May of 2020,  1,281,300 identified French as their native tongue- that would be Colonial French, standard French and the speakers of would include both people groups the Cajuns and the Louisianan Creoles.  But what is even more interesting than that is that the language Louisiana Creole is its own distinctive indigenous language, and is not the same as Haitian Creole or Hawaiian Creole or any other form of Creole where you might hear that word.  Meaning, Louisianan Creole although having origins in the French language is not French at all but its own distinct language.   This is confusing because the Cajuns speak a dialect of French that sounds different than the French from France or Quebec, but it's still French and French speakers can understand what they are saying even if it sounds different than the way they might pronounce things.  That’s different. Creole is French-based, but has African influences and is literally its own language and French speakers cannot understand it.  Today it’s an endangered language, only about 10,000 people speak it, but it is still alive.    

Yeah, that wasn’t something I understood as a teenager living in Louisiana. I thought Cajun- Creole all meant Lousianan.  Since we lived in North Louisiana, I never met anyone personally who spoke Lousiana Creole.  All the Creole’s I came into contact, including Mrs. Devereaux, my French teacher spoke traditional French, which is what they do in Chopin’s book too, btw.    

Of course, Cajuns and Creole people have a lot in common in terms of religion and even in taste in cuisine, but where they differ tremendously is in ethnicity and also in social class.  The Cajuns are white and from Canada but often rural and historically lower-middle class.  The Creole’s are not white, but culturally a part of the urban elite, the ruling class.  They are the first multi-cultural people group on the American continent and deserve a special status for that reason. 

Explain that, because that’s really interesting.  Today, to be multi-cultural is cool, but 100 years ago when ethnic groups did not intermingle, and being a multi-cultural group that was upper class seems like a huge anomaly.  Although I will say the word “creole” tips you off to the multi-cultural element.  It actually comes from the Portuguese word “crioulo” and the word itself means people who were created. 

 And again, I do want to point out that this is kind of a very big simplification of a couple of hundred years of history, but in short, the criolos were people who were born in the new World- but mostly of mixed heritage.  Gentlemen farmers, primarily French and Spanish came over to the new world.  A lot of them came  by way of the Caribbean after the slave revolt in Haiti.   They had relationships and often even second families with local people here. Many were Black slaves, others were native Americans, lots were mulattos who also came from the Caribbean.  Unlike mixed raced people from Mississippi or Alabama, Creoles were not slaves.  They were free people.  They were educated.  They spoke French and many rose to high positions of politics, arts and culture. They were the elite, many were slaveholders.  Now, I will say, that most chose to speak Colonial French over Louisiana Creole as they got more educated, also over time as we got closer to the Civil War era being mixed race in and of itself got pretty complicated with the black/white caste-system of the South, which is another story in and of itself.   And as a result, you had creoles who were identifying as white and others who didn’t- Chopin’s family were white creoles.  But regardless of all that, but in the 1850s and through the life of Chopin, until today, Creoles are a separate people group that identify themselves as such.  They are a proud group of people who worship together, connect socially together, and often build communities around each other. They have societal behaviors and customs that set them apart, and we learn by looking at life through Edna Pontellier's eyes, have a culture that can difficult for an outsider to penetrate, if you marry an insider. 

And so enters, Mrs. Kate Chopin, born in 1851 to a mother who was Creole and a father who was a Irish, both Catholic. She was not born in Louisisana, but in the great midwestern city of St. Louis.  St Louis, at the time had a rather large Creole population by virtue of being a city on the Mississippi river- which runs from New Orleans miles north. Her mom’s family was old, distinguished and part of what has been termed the “Creole Aristocracy”.  Kate grew up speaking French as a first language, and as many Creole women was raised to be very independent by three generations of women in the household. She received an exceptional education, was interested in what they called “the woman question”.  This will give you an indication of how progressive her family actually was, now brace yourself because this is scandalous….on a trip to New Orleans at the ripe age of 18, Kate learned to smoke. 

Oh my, did she smoke behind the high school gym or in the bathroom stalls? 

Ha!  Who even knows, but we do know that at age 19 she married the love of her life, another Creole, Oscar Chopin.  Kate and Oscar were very compatible and the years she was married to him have been described as nothing but really happy by all of her biographers that I’m familiar with.  They lived in New Orleans at first and then to Natchitoches parish in the central Louisiana where he owned and operated a general store.  They were married for 12 years, and- this small fact wipes me out- they had five sons and two daughters. 

Ha!  That confirms all the Catholic stereotypes of large families.   

I know right, that’s just a lot…and their lives were, by all accounts, going well until…there’s always an until… Oscar suffered the fate of a lot of people around the world even to this day, who live in hot climates.  He caught malaria, and suddenly died.  And there Kate was, alone in the middle of the interior of Louisiana,  with this store and all these kids.  She ran it herself for over a year, but then decided to do what lots of us would do in that situation…she moved back to the hometown of her childhood, St. Louis so she could be near her mother- I didn’t mention it before but her father had died in a terrible railroad accident when she was a young child and her brother had died in the Civil War- so basically all of the men that had meant anything to her at all, had all died.  One of Kate’s daughters had this to say about that later on when she was an adult talking about her mom, “When I speak of my mother’s keen sense of humor and of her habit of looking on the amusing side of everything, I don’t want to give the impression of her being joyous, for she was on the contrary rather a sad nature…I think the tragic death of her father early in her life, of her much beloved brothers, the loss of her young husband and her mother, left a stamp of sadness on her which was never lost.”   

Goodness, that Is a lot of sadness. 

Well, it is and it took a toll.  When she got back to St. Louis, Dr. Kolbenheyer, their obgyn and a family friend talked her into studying some French writers for the sake of  mental health, specifically Maupassant and Zola and take up writing.  She took that advice ..…so at age 38 a widow with six living children, Chopin began her writing career.  A career, sadly that was only going to last five years.  It started great, and she was super popular, but then….she wrote a scandalous book and was cancelled, and I mean totally cancelled.  Five years after the publication of  this candalous book that today we call The Awakening, she had a stroke and died.  At the time of her death, Kate Chopin as a writer, was virtually unknown and uncelebrated.   

What do you mean by cancelled? That sounds like a crazy story for a mommy writer. 

True, and it is.  When she started  writing, she was super popular.  This kind of reminds me a little of Shirley Jackson, honestly.  She wrote short things for magazines for money.  What made her work popular, at least in part, was because writing about a subculture of America that people found interesting.  Although she was living in St. Louis, her stories were set in Louisiana amongst the Creole people- and people loved it.  This movement in American literature where authors focus on a specific region or people group  has been called “Local Color”, and her ability to showcase the local color of the Creole people led her to success.     

Subcultures are so fascinating to me and I’m always amazed at how many different subcultures there are- and I’m not talking about just ethnically. There are endless subcultures on this earth, and most of the time we don’t even know what we’re looking at. 

Oh, for sure.  I think of guitar players as their own subculture- they speak their own language, have their own passions, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have their own foods. 

 HA!  Do I sense a bit of mockery?  But you are right, we do have a little bit of a subculture, but if you think guitarists are a subculture, what do you think of my cousin Sherry who is neck deep into Harley Davidson culture and goes to Sturgis, South Dakota every year.  

True, and there are hundreds of thousands of people who participate in that subculture all over the world   And of course, we’re talking about hobbies which are not the same as actual ethnic subcultures in any location, understanding and just seeing behind the fence of someone else’ experience is the fun.  The idea of living life vicariously through the stories, so to speak, of people who are so radically differently is one of the things I most love about reading.  In the real sense of the term “local color” though, this was an actual movement after the Civil War.  Authors were using settings from different parts of the country and it made the writing feel romantic for people unfamiliar with the setting while actually being fundamentally realistic- I know that’s a paradox, but if you think about it it makes sense.  They were works that could only be written from inside the culture by someone who was a part of it- that’s what made them realistic.   Chopin was considered a local color author because she was Creole writing about the world of Louisiana Creoles.   

Well, apparently it was well received.  She got stories printed first in regional publications but then in national publications.  “The Story of an Hour” which was the only story I had ever read of hers, and I didn’t know this, was published in Vogue in 1894.   

Very impressive, Houghton Mifflin, the publisher that to this day publishes quite a bit of high school literature textbooks actually published a collection of her stories, titled it Bayou Folk.  So, just in the title, you can tell they are playing up her Louisiana connection.  And that book was a success.  Chopin, who kept notes on how well all of her works were doing, wrote that she had seen 100 press notices about the book.  It was written up in both The Atlantic and the New York Times.  People loved how she used local dialects. They found the stories and I quote “charning and pleasant.”  She was even asked to write an essay on writing for the literary journal Critic- which I found really insightful.  

Well, of course, all of these things sound like a woman bound for monetary and critical success- stardom of her day.   

 And so her trajectory kept ascending.  She was published in the Saturday Evening Post.  Of course that was a big deal.  Everything was moving in the right direction….until.. The Awakening.  The Awakening was too much and she crashed immediately and hard.  

You know, when I read these reviews from 1899, it’s so interesting how strongly they reacted.  Let me read a few, her local paper, The St Louis Daily Globe-Democrat wrote this, “It is not a healthy book….if it points any particular moral or teaches any lesson the fact is not apparent.” The Chicago Times Herald wrote, “It was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the over-worked field of sex-fiction.  This is not a pleasant story.”  Here’s another one, “its disagreeable glimpses of sensuality are repellent.”   

She was not prepared for this.  She did not expect it.  She was expecting people to see it as the American version of some of the things she had been reading in French that had been published in France.  Her treatment of sexuality is what really got her, and maybe if her protagonist had been male she could have gotten away with it.  Actually, I’m pretty sure, she would have gotten away with it, there are other authors who did.  But discussing how women felt about sexuality- and let me say- in case you haven’t read the book- this is not a harlequin romance.  She doesn’t talk about hot steamy passion in descriptive tones.  She is very polished and shows deference to the WAY things were expressed in her day.  The problem was not in how she was treating sexual content- the problem was that she WAS discussing how women felt about sexuality and this just was too realistic.  People weren’t and maybe we still aren’t, ready to be vulnerable about how we feel about intimacy.   

You know, I tell students all the time that in American politics, sexual issues have always been used as a wedge issue to define people’s position as good or bad people.  That has not changed in the American political scene in 200 years and is something our European and Asian friends have mocked us about for just as long.  We are a people committed to moralizing, even to this day.  For a long time, it was cloaked in religion, but now, hyperbolic moralizing, although not done in the name of a faith is still a favorite American pastime.   

Well, honestly, I guess that’s also been true for the arts as well.  But honestly, greatr art is never moralizing.  And Chopin knew that.  Furthermore, if anyone had read that essay Chopin printed about her writing that I referenced, they would have seen that Chopin, by design, does NOT moralize in hers.  She does not condemn or judge.  She has no interest in telling us how we should or shouldn’t behave.  She sees the role of the artist, and clearly stated as much,  and the role of fiction as in demonstrating how we genuinely ARE as human beings.  It is a role of showcasing the human experience.  It is meant to help us understand ourselves.  What she does in her writing by using a culture that is unfamiliar to us, is allow us a safer space from which we can pull back the veil that IS our experience, so we can see ourselves.  Let me quote her from that essay and here she’s talking about the Creole people of Louisiana,   

“Among these people are to be found an earnestness in the acquirement and dissemination of book-learning, a clinging to the past and conventional standards, an almost Creolean sensitiveness to criticism and a singular ignorance of, or disregard for, the value of the highest art forms. There is a very, very big world lying not wholly in northern Indiana, nor does it lie at the antipodes, either. It is human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it.” 

Well, regardless of how she wanted to come across, apparently, she struck a nerve people didn’t want struck.  The Awakening unsettled America.  The book was published in April of 1899, by August critics were destroying it, and again I’ll use the reviewers words,  it had been deemed “morbid and unwholesome” and was reproached on a national stage.  She was scorned publicly.  When she submitted a new short story to the Atlantic “Ti Demon” in November after the publication of The Awakening it was returned and rejected.    Her own publisher, the one who had published the controversial book decided to “shorten is list of authors”- and they dropped her.  Of course to be fair, they claimed that decision had nothing to do with the problems with the reception of The Awakening. 

I’m sure that it didn’t.  Chopin was obviously crushed.  She would only write seven more stories over the next five years.  In 1904 when she died of a stroke, she was basically a forgotten writer.  And likely would have remained forgotten until, ironically the French discovered the novel in 1952.  A writer by the name of Cyrille Arnavon translated it into French under the title Edna with a 22 page introduction essay called it a neglected masterpiece.  What he liked about it had nothing to do with “local color” or creole people or anything Americana.  He saw in it what we see in it today- psychological analysis.   

So fascinating, this is the 1950s; this is exactly the time period psychology is shifting from Freudian interpretations of Chopin's’ day into behaviorism and eventually to humanistic psychology.   

Why does this matter? 

With Freud everything is secret and we’re ruled by unseen forces we don’t understand without psychoanalysis.  Chopin’s book came out when this was how we were looking at the world.  After him came Skinner’s behaviorism which said everything can be reduced to rewards and punishments.   Humanistic psychology is this third way of looking at things.  It’s extremely empathetic.  Names like Karl Rogers were looking at life with the idea that it’s just plain difficult to be a human, and we need to understand this complexity.  They would like books that are not all black/white thinking or moralistic.  This is what’s crazy to me about Chopin.  She wrote in the days of Freud, but she was so far ahead of her time psychologically; nobody would get her for another 60 years- literally two entire movements later in the field of psychology.   

Well, when they did get her, they really got her.  In 1969 a Norwegian critic Per Seyersted brought her out into the open in a big way.  This is what he said, “ Chopin, and I quote “broke new ground in American literature. She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman’s submerged life. She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman’s urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom.” 

Finally people were understanding what she was trying to do.  That’s exactly what she wanted to show- the complexity of being human.  Here’s another Chopin quote whole talking about the role of a writer, “Thou shalt not preach; “thou shalt not instruct thy neighbor”.  Or as her great- grandmother Carleville, who was extremely influencial in her life, used to tell her, Kate’s grandmother who raised her was known for saying this “One may know a great deal about people without judging them.  God does that.” 

Well, she was immediately resurrected.  Today she is considered one of America’s premiere writers. 

Well, it also didn’t hurt her reputation that she was being discovered in Europe at the exact same time, the women’s movement was taking off in the United States and finding an unsung feminist writer was very popular.  

Yeah, I thought she WAS a feminist writer, but you don’t see her as that. 

I really don’t, and that’s not to say there isn’t any feminism in the book, because obviously, it’s about life as a woman at the turn of the century.  Virginia Wolfe famouslty argued in her essay A Room of One’s Own that no one knew what women were thinking and feeling in the 17th century because they weren’t writing.  Well, you can’t say that about Chopin.  She was absolutely writing about what women were thinking and feeling, it just took 60 years for the world to allow her to share it.   

If we want to talk the particulars about The Awakening, which of course we do, we have a female protagonist.  I’m not going to call her a hero because I don’t find anything heroic about her.  But it’s very very honest characterization of what women feel, and honestly, perhaps it’s what a lot of people feel- both men and women when they live, as we all do, within cultures of high expectations.   

Isn’t writing about standing up to cultural norms and societal expectations kind of cliché?  I’m surprised you find it interesting in this situation. 

 Well, it for sure can be.  It’s what a lot of teenage angst poetry is about.  But Chopin’s book is a lot more complex than just a denouncement on social expectations of women’s roles.  In some ways, that’s just the setting.  This particular woman, Edna, is for sure, unhappyily objectified by a husband.  That part is obvious.  But, Chopin isn’t necessarily moralizing against this or anything else.  In the opening encounter between husband and wife, we see the wife being objectified, but we also see that they have worked out some deal.  She has a very privileged life.  It’s not a life between two people who have emotional intimacy, for sure.  These two clearly don’t.  Edna asks if her husband plans on showing up for dinner.  He basically sayd, I don’t know- I may; I may not.  It doesn’t appear Edna could care less one way or another and Chopin isn’t condemning them; she is observing.  This are the deals people are working out in the world.  She makes other observations in regard to Edna and her relationship with her children.  She loves her children; sort of; but it’s certainly not the motherly and passionate devotion most mothers feel towards their kids.  It’s definitely not the self-denying ideal, we see expressed through a different character in the book.  Again, Chopin is not endorsing nor condemning.  She’s observing.  There’s no doubt, Chopin herself was progressive.  She was raised in a house of dominant women.  She herself was a head of household.  She was educated.  She made money, but she had healthy relationships with the men in her life.  She is not a man-hater, that I can tell.  She never remarried but there is reason to believe she had at least one  other significant male relationship after her husband’s death.  So, portraying her as a woman who influenced feminism in any kind of deliberate way, I don’t think is something that she intended, nor was it something that happened.  She was cancelled. 

I understand that, it’s just interesting that today, we think of her first and foremost as a feminist writer in large part because she had sexual content in her books.  Although, as I think about the progressive women in the 1890s, what we know about them from history is that most were not really be fans of indiscriminate sex.  

Oh my, we’re getting edgy here, but I have to ask.  Why do you say that? 

You have to understand this is before birth control.  Sexual relationships for women meant running the very real risk of generating children which was often a life-risking ordeal.  Kate herself had gone through that seven times in twelve years.  Women were spending half of their lives pregnant.  Many progressive women in this time period were not fighting for the freedom to have sex, they were fighting for the right to NOT have it.  They wanted the right to say no.  The goal of Self ownership was central to nineteenth century feminism.  Woman's rights were about possessing a fully realized human identity.  We think of this today in terms of sexual freedom but that’s the arrogance of the presence kicking in.  Obviously human sexuality is a core part of the human experience and that’s likely why it’s central to Chopin’s story, but there are other aspects of person hood.  Women, especially educated ones, were interested in navigating a sense of place in the community and the universe at large- and that involves all kinds of things- hard things like love, connections, maternity. 

Exactly, and that’s why Edna is so complicated.  Being a human is difficult.   Navigating  “the woman’s sphere”, to use the expression of  the notable Chopin scholar Sandra Gilbert is complicated.  And so, we all find ourselves, one way or another in cages- some of our own making, some of the makings of our community, our religion, our culture, our own personalities- whatever it is.  And that is the opening of our story.  The Awakening starts with a woman in a cage.  This is not to say that men do not experience cages or awakenigs- they absolutely do, but Chopin is a woman and will speak from inside the world of women.  She will drop a woman named Edna, a middle child Presbyterian English speaking girl from Kentucky, into a French speaking Catholic world of elite Creole women.  Edna is flawed, but not awful.  She’s flawed in the sense that we are all flawed.  This woman acts out- in the way that many of us have acted out- often as children, but for some of us, we don’t experience this desire for agency until later in life.  For Edna it comes at the age of 26 and when it does- she will scandalize her world the way acting out always does.  She finds herself in a cage and decides she wants out...but then what…where do you go from there.  Let’s read how Chopin sets this up in the first paragraph of her story. 

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: 

“Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!” 

He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence. 

Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper with any degree of comfort, arose with an expression and an exclamation of disgust. 

He walked down the gallery and across the narrow “bridges” which connected the Lebrun cottages one with the other. He had been seated before the door of the main house. The parrot and the mocking-bird were the property of Madame Lebrun, and they had the right to make all the noise they wished. Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their society when they ceased to be entertaining. 

Christy, does she give the entire story away in the beginning? 

She’s doing something.  She opens with a bird- a parrot. We will talk more about this later, but birds are a big deal in this book.  But why a parrot- what do parrots do- well they imitate.  They talk.  This parrot is in a cage repeating something an English reader may not understand.   

What does that phrase mean? 

It means Go away! Go away!  For God’s sake!  The bird is telling everyone to go away, and Mr. Pontellier pretty much ignores the bird and does actually go away.  The bird speaks a little Spanish but also a language no one else understands.  There’s a lot of intentionality here.  This book begins with a bird in a cage and the book ends with a bird, but I won’t tell you how we find that bird yet.   

 These 19th century writers were always using symbols on purpose.  

They really do.  And if this one is our protagonist- what we can see is that she’s beautiful, she’s in a cage, and although she can talk, she cannot articulate something that can be heard properly or understood.   

And so that is our starting point. 

I think it is.  Next episode, we will join Edna and explore this beautiful place, Grand Isle- the site, and if the title of the book hasn’t given it away yet, I will, of her Awakening.  We will watch Edna awaken- but then, we know from our visit with Camus…that is only step one.  Now what. 

Indeed…now what.  Well, thank you for spending time with us today.  We hope you have enjoyed meeting Kate Chopin and jumping into the first paragraph of her lost but rediscovered American masterpiece, The Awakening.  And if you did, please support us by sharing this episode with a firend, either by text, by twitter, Instagram or email.  That’s how we grow.  Also, if you have a favorite book, you’d like us to discuss, you are always invited to connect with us, again via all the ways Modern world people do. 

Peace out! 

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