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Understanding Suicide in Kate Chopin’sThe Awakening

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening explores the spiritual development of a woman wrought

by her inability to fulfill female sex roles of the late 1800s. Edna Pontellier is a twenty-eight year

old woman who is expected to behave according to society’s expectations for a young wife. This

takes an excessive amount of self-sacrifice that is not uncommon among housewives of the time,

and neither is the depression and loss of self that accompanies it. As Edna begins to realize the

heaviness of “her position in the universe as a human being” (Chopin 13), her position as an

outcast in society also weighs upon her. The social system that conditioned Edna to believe that

individuality was bad is the same that contributes to her despair and suicide; her death is not an

isolated incident, but rather a reflection of oppressive social mores. Edna’s reasoning toward

ultimately committing suicide is based in the conflict between her search for independence, and

her emotional state relative to the setting of the novel.

Edna, as a product of late 19th century society, is expected to be many things that she has

little choice in or control over. Society expected women to stay in the home as housewives and

mothers and away from work in the public sphere. These were not roles by choice but instead

delegated to every woman “on the basis of love and duty” (Frieze 139) through social

conditioning. During Edna’s time, she was expected to marry a man, have any number of

children, and raise them into fine young ladies and gentlemen. Her husband, Mr. Pontellier, may

love her dearly, but constantly claims she is not an acceptable mother-woman. For example, she

does not check on the children in the middle of the night when he asks and in general “evinced

so little interest in things which concerned him” and not directly her own self (Chopin 5). The

duties of a mother-woman must be given absolute priority in Edna’s life, to such an extent that

“mother-love is the spirit of self-sacrifice even unto death” (Barr 408). Edna confides in her best
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friend, Madame Ratignolle, that she would in fact give her life for her children, surrender her

physical being and die, but would not give her spiritual self—a paradox that Mme Ratignolle

misinterprets to be impossible and selfish (Chopin 47). Edna’s ideas and beliefs run very counter

to the mainstream, so they are frequently misinterpreted or dismissed. When seriously

considered, Edna’s sentiments reveal a certain depth about her character, one that seeks to

prevail against social conditioning.

The expectations of society relative to the setting of the novel reveals a compromising

situation for Edna as she begins and advances in her spiritual awakening. Wives that are forced

to erase their individuality do not exhibit the symptoms of internal conflicts as isolated incidents.

Instead, their symptoms and methods of alleviating often reflect the social systems that put them

in this situation in the first place. While on summer vacation in Grand Isle, Louisiana, Edna

spends the long, lazy days reflecting on the times she submitted to her husband’s command, and

realizes that she has an agency as a human being, and is allowed to have passions, ideas, and

desires beyond the confines of social structure. When her husband commands her to come in

from the porch one evening, Edna announces that he has no right to speak down to her like that

ever again (31). As the novel progresses and Edna acts more and more on her spiritual

awakening, she also experiences varying conflicts, both internal and external, between the way

she and others have been conditioned to see women and the way she longs to behave. Edna is

often troubled by her intrusive thoughts about individuality, and a case can be made that she

turns to art as a distraction. It quickly becomes an obsession, and as her individual spirit blooms,

so does her talent: she later is good enough to sell her paintings and generate a small income.

Nonetheless, this is one small attempt at alleviating the stresses brought on her by her desire to

find autonomy and a “voice” in a social structure that denies her one. In fact, there are serious
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psychological repercussions for social conditioning of females that, upon closer analysis, expose

a darker side of the female duty.

The sacrifices women are expected to make in order to acceptably fulfill their duties as

mother-women lead to serious emotional stresses, including depression or even suicide. Women

give up significantly more “aspects of their previous lives and previous selves” (Tuula 55)

relative to their male partners. A woman must dedicate her entire existence to her role, which

according to social psychologists is far from healthy. Social psychologist P.B. Bart’s study of

middle-aged women in 1970 revealed that nonworking, housewife mothers ran the highest risk of

psychological disorders, including depression, as well as elevated rates of suicide (Frieze 265).

These disorders stem from “dissatisfaction, frustration, bitterness, or even desperation” (265)

from a loss of autonomy or self-determination. Edna displays these symptoms at prominent

points in the novel, highlight a downturn in her overall emotional state. In chapter 27, her

husband abandons her yet again at dinner, and this constant habit infuriates her. In her need to

“destroy something,” she attempts to crush her wedding ring and throws a glass vase onto the

hearth (Chopin 52-3). The day after, she “felt no interest in anything about her,” as if she now

inhabited “an alien world” (53). The violent impulses represent Edna’s need for control in her

powerless state, and the melancholic, dissociated feeling is typically associated as a common

symptom of depression. Her insomnia and long evening of contemplation at the end of the novel

then adds to the discussion about her emotional state, and provides an obvious explanation for

her decision to take her life: that she was so wrought by disillusionment and a fragmented mind

that she needed a physical escape from the world.

Over the course of the novel, Edna’s emotional state becomes more fragmented as she

finds that she cannot balance both her individuality and her desire to be a socially-acceptable
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“mother-woman.” Her spiritual awakening is set in the background of the first wave of the

feminist movement, in which women who spoke out against oppressive social mores were often

heavily shunned and criticized. Mlle Reisz, an unmarried artist and fellow tenant at Grand Isle, is

shunned from society for being unable to fulfill the gender roles of the day, namely marrying and

having a child. She tells Edna that true artist “must possess the courageous soul…the soul that

dares and defies” in order to succeed (63-4). Mlle Reisz’s defiance of social norms is one form of

“courage”; feminist women would be another as they search for autonomy and a voice in a

society that grants them nothing. However, these outspoken women are scorned upon. Mlle

Reisz is described as “the most disagreeable and unpopular woman” (59) among her neighbors,

homely or even deformed to everyone else. Likewise, the local doctor and family friend Dr.

Mandelet refers to these enlightened women as “pseudo-intellectuals,” and treats it as a passing

phase when Mr. Pontellier describes Edna’s apparent sickness to him (66). The social system that

rejects any woman’s push for individuality only complicates Edna’s awakening, making her

internal conflict even more strenuous and leading her deeper into a depression. Edna’s search for

sexual and physical independence in society falls short of full defiance. She cannot bring herself

to completely stand out from society because, as she told Mme Ratignolle, her spiritual

independence is one of the most important things to her, second only to the well-being of her

children.

As Edna wades into the water to drown herself, she pictures her sons trying to stop her—

she knows that her suicide is the best way to ensure that her sons are raised properly. Her

husband does not see her as a good mother, and if Edna chooses to live she will be cast as an

adulteress and ostracized from society like Mlle Reisz. Edna loves her sons too much to put them

through that grief and shame. It appears contradictory that Edna would take her own life,
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therefore meeting the social expectations for her to “die for her children,” but this also meets the

promise Edna set for herself early in the novel. Killing herself by choice meets both of her

personal morals: living by her own volition, and living primarily for her children. Edna’s suicide,

therefore, can be rationalized as the best outcome she could have configured for herself.

For many wives, the grief they experience through the loss of autonomy in marriage

causes them to take their own lives to find some kind of control over their lives. Edna makes her

decision both for this reason as well as out of love for her children. Much of the cause of Edna’s

suicide is rooted in gender roles for women in the 1800s. Her suicide is not an isolated incident.

Instead, it is a representation of a larger social system that isolates women from being able to

make decisions about their own lives. Edna acknowledges that she bore her children into “the

great unnumbered multitude of souls that come and go” (110) but is intent on making sure that,

even though she could not be a good “mother-woman” in life, that her death ensures that they

live a comfortable, safe, and happy life. Society conditioned Edna to believe that anything short

of dying for her children would be selfish, especially if she could not fulfill any other gender

roles. She took this to heart, and the dramatic ending of The Awakening is the result.

Works Cited

Barr, Amelia E. “Good and Bad Mothers.” Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: A Sourcebook. Ed.

Janet Beer, Elizabeth Nolan. New York: Routledge, 2004. 21-22. Print.

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993. Print.

Gordon, Tuula. Feminist Mothers. New York: NYU Press, 1990. Print.
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Frieze, Irene H. et al. Women and Sex Roles: A Social Psychological Perspective. New York:

WW Norton and Company, 1978. Print.