케이트 쇼팬의 『각성』에 나타난 가족서사와 사랑의 문제

Abstract

Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening(1899) is usually evaluated to be about the necessity of being free to choose one’s own destiny. The heroine, Edna Pontellier is admired for her courage in acting upon her artistic and sexual impulses and even in committing suicide as a free act of self-recognition and refusal to return to the bondage of her domestic life. Many critics including Sandra Gilbert attempt to prove that Edna is resurrected or reborn as she swims out into the sea. Her awakening is to the irresolvable conflict between her vision of herself as an independent woman and the social force of Creole Louisiana near the end of the nineteenth century(Dingledine 212). However, these analyses do not seem to be very likely. The emphasis of her death ignored the morality of family but implied the story of a woman’s growing awareness of her own sensuality. That is the reason why the novel is called the American Madame Bovary. This paper is an attempt to reinterpret Edna’s death focusing on the family structure and frustration of love. The novel reflects this aspect rather than a woman’s vision. Edna fell in love with Robert Lebrun even though she ought not to. She seems to have decided that she would not have anything to say to her husband. When her husband, Léonce pleased her, his absolute devotion flattered her before their marriage. Edna fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which she was mistaken(22). The narrative seems to describe her marriage as a mistake and her new love with Robert and her inner sexual life as a true life to wake her. After experiencing the series of events Edna did not try to convince her husband what she wanted and why it was important because even she did not understand what happened to her. She presented significant problems as self-destructive in the complex narrative. However, her awakening about her mistaken choice of marriage would have to be taken responsibility to extend the process of instant love. If she had wanted to struggle for patriarchy, she would have searched another resolution instead of death. Unlike many critics’ insists, her death does not seem an act of self-knowledge or self-assertion nor a wish to protect her children(Sullivan and Smith 69). It is doubted that the result of a series of depressions becomes suicidal after Robert leaves her. In this respect, The narrative of the novel should expand Edna’s awakening to the practical act of struggle for recognition between her and her husband. Hereby, what is called as awakening should be the ethic for her own life.