The Awakening

5 Pages 1260 Words

Music as one of the main themes in The Awakening: How do different characters perceive music?

The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a novel of intellectual, spiritual, and moral evolution, as well as a novel of artistic development. In this essay I would like to focus on the artistic side of the work and analyze the impact of art, and especially music, on the novel’s characters. My aim is to prove that music plays a key role in the novel and serves as the main instrument of Edna’s awakening.
Edna Pontellier, the twenty-eight-year old wife of a New Orleans businessman, is the protagonist of the novel, the title of which refers to Edna’s development throughout the story. After a series of impulses, Edna realizes how dissatisfied she is in her role as a wife and mother and she begins to act upon her newly discovered wishes and passions. She, through a set of “awakenings” – experiences which enliven her suppressed emotional ego, works herself up to a state of total self-awareness, discovers her own identity, and pursues her emotional and sexual desires. Edna becomes a woman far too independent for the Victorian society and, in the end, finds that people who had lead her to that state left her to experience it solely by herself.
As I have pointed out earlier, music has the greatest influence over Edna’s process of awakening. At the beginning of the novel, Chopin describes Edna Pontellier’s feelings and perceptions upon hearing music. Edna is described as having pictures and fantasies conjuring up in her head while listening to music.
“Edna was what she herself called very fond of music. Musical strains, well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind. She sometimes liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle played or practiced. […] When she heard it there came before her imagination […]” (Chopin, The Awakening)
However, when Edna first listens to Mademoiselle Reisz play, she experiences ...