Edna Pontellier is a very interesting character. One moment she seems like a a good wife and even fairly content with her life and then the next moment she's in tears and refusing to come in to the house. Chopin sets Mrs. Pontellier up to be the perfect candidate for an affair. As of where we left off in the the reading, an interesting point has been made about how she and her husband came to marry. It wasn't a mutual falling in love, romantic experience, but instead his unyielding devotion and her acceptance that she would probably never have the celebrity that she dreamed of marrying. She claims to have fallen into a sort of mutual respect with her husband, and knowing that because the "love" that she had for him was not of a romantic nature, it would not leave her the way the feelings she had had in the past had. This creates a problem with the addition of Robert. He openly admits to acting like a love sick puppy to several women on the island in the past and has now begun following Edna around in the same manner. This is reminiscent of her husband's devotion to her, which she rather ignored, and may become her undoing as a woman of this polite and close knit society.
Chopin's use of the sea in this text is incredible. She's created an incredible connection between Edna, music and the sea. Edna is incredibly closed off at the beginning of the book, she explains to Mrs. Ratignolle that she did not have many friends as a child, her family was never really close, and she never was able to express her feelings to the men that she had previously admired, and yet she is able to open up to Mrs. Ratignolle while watching the sea. She has an intense moment of accomplishment, as well as loneliness and fear while swimming, and feeling the ocean around her, only to have that taken from her, rather rudely, form her husband. This sea is what separates her from her childhood home of Kentucky, almost like a prison, and yet, while in the water, she feels alive and free. I found it interesting that the sea seems almost like a motherly figure, allowing her to think about, ponder and free herself from her problems, while still intimidating and punishing. It's interesting to think about it in that sense, because Edna is accused of being a poor mother to her two boys.
I have to feel bad for Robert though. He obviously has no idea of what he wants in life. He jumps from woman to woman on the island, no matter if they have prior engagements and follows them like a dog. It is obviously his cry for acceptance, for love, but he's looking in all of the wrong places. This is going to cause a huge problem for him when he realizes that Edna might just take him up on those misplaced feelings.He obviously is not emotionally mature enough to realize what kind of mess he is going to make, we see his lack of maturity in his conversation with Mrs. Ratignolle about Edna.
Questions:
1. What do you think about the connection between the way Edna and her husband got together and the way that Robert has entered her life?
2. Does Mrs. Ratignolle seem like a trustworthy character or is there some hidden malice or jealousy underneath? Do you think she tried to warn Robert off for Edna's sake or because she was jealous of him treating Edna the way he used to treat her?
3. Is Mr. Pontellier a bad husband? Does he send too many mixed signals?
I really like some of the insights that you came up with in this blog post, and certainly how close to home many of them hit as the text went on. I like thinking on the character of Leonce, because although he appears in many ways to be the villain in a sense of the text, the only villainous act he does as we discussed in class is to be a man of his time period and have views on women the way in which he was taught to. I had read this text a while before and certainly held that sort of view prior and it was interesting to me, coming back in this class and then reading it again how that view on him changed in some ways and not in others, that he was sort of lost in not knowing what to do or how to handle Edna’s change, but also disliking the idea that he could take his wife to a doctor and have her “fixed”.
ReplyDeleteAlso there have been a lot of doctors in the texts we have been reading as sort of these outside characters providing a sort of frame of reference for the reader as it was for the time in which the text was written. I kind of find the doctor character to be an interesting addition especially in both this text and in The Return of the Soldier in regards to the knowledge that they bring and how seriously we as readers are to view them then.
Like Tara mentioned, I don't necessarily think Mr. Pontellier is a "bad" husband, I just don't think he was the "right" husband. For the most part, he means well, in the confines of the period in which he is living. I think we dislike him as readers because he is stuck in the traditional gender roles of the time (like when he gets mad about dinner or Edna not looking after the kids) but generally he wants the best for his children and his wife, like when he brings back little presents when he goes away. He seems like a great husband, but not the husband Edna wants or needs. She needs someone to support her individuality and her passions, not attempt to confine her to gender roles. Unfortunately, this is what leads her to her suicide, and having the "wrong" husband does not fit into her "livable world"
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