In her quest to find her true self, Edna becomes aware of her romantic and sexual needs. She seeks to fulfill these needs through relationships with other men. When Robert Lebrun begins to offer his affections to Edna, she soon falls in love with him. This proves that the romantic feelings from her youth did not magically disappear when she got married: marriage does not change a woman as much as society would like to believe. As the relationship deepens, Robert realises that he loves her too, but because he believes that she belongs to her husband, he ends the romance. His wish to conform to the rules leaves Edna heartbroken. One could argue that Edna is more courageous than Robert, because she dares to defy these rules. Though adultery is considered by many to be morally reprehensible, Edna deserves some recognition for attemping to break out of an unsatisfying marriage, especially in a society where divorce is virtually non-existent.
Her affair with Alcée Arobin is passionate, but purely physical. Robert is the man Edna truly loves, but Alcée satisfies her sexual urges. In the late 1800s, respectable women were supposed to be passionless, and the sex act was something a devoted wife did for her husband, some kind of self-sacrifice (Martin, 1988; Showalter, 1988). The fact that Edna is conscious of her needs, and wants to fulfill them, sets her apart from the rest of the women in the community. Edna does not let Alcée see her as he pleases: she fully controls the relationship, something which indicates once again her refusal to be treated as a man’s property.
Edna’s lack of maternal instinct is pointed out several times in the novel. She is depicted as somebody who is not a ’mother-woman’ (Chopin 2000: 10). She is fond of her two children, but does not miss them when they are away and is not very protective of them. She is constantly compared to the ultimate ’mother-woman’, Adèle Ratignolle. Like Robert Lebrun, Adèle is a symbol, a reminder of the constraints of society. She is completely devoted to her family, has children every two years, and performs her domestic duties perfectly. Edna and Adèle are good friends, but Edna pities Adèle’s ’blind contentment’ and ’colorless existence’ (Chopin 2000: 63). Adèle is portrayed as somebody who does not have the consciousness that Edna has, someone who is a ’child-bearer without an authentic voice’. Edna witnesses Adèle’s childbirth, which is described as a ’scene of torture’ (Chopin 2000: 122) and makes her feel revolted against the laws of Nature. It makes her realise how her own children keep her from ever being fully free, something which will soon lead her to suicide. Edna’s final act is left to the reader to interpret: it could be that Edna finally surrenders and understands that she cannot live her life how she wishes, or that she ensures that her independence is maintained until the end. Either way, it is clear that Edna would rather die than not be true to herself.
The Awakening’s critical reception gives us another example of how American society in the late 1800s expected women to act. Edna Pontellier was deemed to be ’weak, selfish and immoral’ (Martin 1988: 7). One reviewer said of Edna’s suicide: ’we are all well satisfied when Mrs. Pontellier deliberately swims in the waters of the gulf’ (Martin 1988: 7). This shows just how unacceptable Edna’s behaviour was for the people of her time. Even Chopin herself was attacked (Martin 1988; Knights, in Chopin 2000): critics had previously enjoyed her work, but she was now described as ’one more clever author gone wrong’ (Knights, in Chopin 2000: ix). Not only had she written about themes such as adultery, but she had failed to emphasise that they were morally condemnable. She did point out in various ways that Edna’s behaviour is selfish at times, but she did not judge her actions. Chopin was upset by the critics’ reactions and published an ironic commentary, excusing her protagonist’s behaviour but not apologising in any way for how she had treated the themes.
Another unconventional mother, Addie Bundren, is central in the novel As I Lay Dying. The book was written by William Faulkner and was first published in 1935. It tells of a poor family’s quest to honour their mother’s dying wish, which is to be buried in the far away town of Jefferson. It also relates how each of the family members cope with Addie’s death. Faulkner had a habit of treating motherhood in a complex manner (Porter 1995), and his treatment of motherhood in As I Lay Dying is certainly no exception. Both Addie and her daughter Dewey Dell have strong opinions about their own motherhoods, and they would certainly object to be referred to as ’child-bearers’.
Even though Addie dies early in the novel, she is a permanent presence throughout. This highlights how important she is in the family: her role is more than just somebody who gives birth to children. The Bundren family is not a loving family: though her family is committed to fulfilling her wish, most of them have selfish reasons for doing so. Her husband Anse, for example, wants to buy himself a set of false teeth while in Jefferson. Addie, like Edna Pontellier, is unhappy in her marriage. In her own chapter in As I Lay Dying, Addie recalls how she got married to Anse, using the sentence ”So I took Anse” (Faulkner 1996: 159). Both Addie and Edna settled for somebody they did not really want. While Edna sought to escape from the roles she had been given, Addie stayed put and filled these roles, and became increasingly unhappy and bitter.
Addie despises her husband, and her dying wish to be buried in Jefferson is a direct result of this hate. She wishes to punish her husband for her loveless life, and she knows that the journey to Jefferson will be a long and treacherous one. The fact that she would rather be buried with her blood relatives in Jefferson than with her own family in Yoknapatawpha County shows how much she wants to distance herself from Anse and their children. She has made a controversial decision, and this shows a strong spirit.
According to Addie, motherhood is an empty concept, just a meaningless word. When her first child, Cash, was born, she felt that her ’aloneness had been violated’ (Faulkner 1996: 160). She feels that the children are Anse’s, not hers: ”I gave Anse the children. I did not ask for them” (Faulkner 1996: 162). She is generally not a loving mother, and she does not seem to like children at all: she tells of how she enjoyed whipping her pupils when she worked as a teacher. These feelings are usually not socially acceptable, yet she acknowledges them in a very honest way, making no excuses. Addie knows that being a mother is her duty: in a way, she is a child-bearer, but she is not one who accepts her fate silently. In addition to having nonconformist opinions, she pursues an affair with the local minister, Whitfield. This results in her giving birth to Jewel, the one child to which she is a loving mother. What makes Jewel different from her other children is that he was born out of love, not out of duty. Addie likes his illegitimacy: he represents a conscious act of rebellion against the rules. She ends up giving birth to her two last children, Dewey Dell and Vardaman, because she feels that she is in debt to Anse, having had a bastard child. Even though Addie is submitting herself to moral principles, she is doing so out of her own free will. Anse does not know about her ’debt’ towards him. She is only trying to clear her own conscience so that she can die in peace.
In As I Lay Dying, the reader learns that Addie’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Dewey Dell, is pregnant. She is not married to Lafe, her baby’s father: in the society she lives in, this is not acceptable. In her first chapter, she writes that she had sex with Lafe because she ’could not help it’ (Faulkner 1996: 23). A seventeen-year-old girl admitting to having sexual urges, and satisfying them, is probably very rare in the American South in 1935. She is as honest about her feelings as her mother was, something which makes her chapters seem authentic. Dewey Dell’s pregnancy worries her so much that she is distracted from mourning the loss of her mother. She does not wish to have the baby, and decides that she wants an abortion. Dewey Dell makes the choice that she feels is right for her, even though she knows that most people would not approve of it. She does not tell her family about her pregnancy (though Darl knows) and deals with her problems on her own. She attempts to purchase abortion drugs twice: the first time, she is advised to marry the baby’s father, and the second time, she is raped by the drugstore clerk. It looks as though society will force Dewey Dell to be a mother, just like it imposed motherhood upon Addie.
The women discussed in this essay have fulfilled their roles as child-bearers to an extent, but they are all rebels in their own way. They are frustrated by the expectations society has of them, and refuse to conform fully to them.
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Reference list
Chopin, K. & Knights, P. (ed.) (2000) The Awakening and Other Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Faulkner, W. (1996) As I Lay Dying. London: Vintage.
Martin, W. (1988) Introduction. In Martin, W. (ed.) (1988) New Essays on The Awakening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Porter, C. (1995) Absalom, Absalom!: (Un)Making the Father. In Weinstein, P.M. (ed.) (1995) The Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Showalter, E. Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book. In Martin, W. (ed.) (1988) New Essays on The Awakening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
