Sexual Fulfillment in Chopin's Awakening
Society keeps order, allows for advancement, and gives humanity a good face. It also imposes morals, roles, and limits a person's potential development. If someone wishes to reach beyond what society expects of them, they must cast aside social restrictions. Edna Pontellier, in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, feels the urge to cast off the veil society burdens her with and live as she chooses to. The driving factor behind her desire to awaken is her lack of sexual fulfillment. She lives her life following conduct becoming of a woman who marries into the Creole elite of New Orleans. While her husband, Léonce, adores her, she does not truly love him and their relationship appears platonic. Robert, a young paramour, woos Edna and she finds herself with wants and desires. Edna later experiments with a known womanizer named Alceé, and uncovers more passions. While Edna fails to fully come into her own in society, she awakens her sexuality through her experiences with the aforementioned men.
Léonce appears to be an ideal husband for the turn of the nineteenth century. He adores his wife Edna, buys her affectionate gifts, and cares for her general well being. When other women see his treatment of Edna, they believe him to be a perfect husband. Edna, however, sees him as being distant and reserved. Though he gives her material freedom, he sees her as a possession. He provides little emotional support and cannot fill any of Edna's rising sexual needs. "Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse" (77). Léonce proves to be the father figure for Edna. He pampers her and takes care of all her physical needs. However, he is unable to realize that what she needs above all else is sexual attention. She needs this not because he is her husband and should care for her in this manner, but because her sexuality has laid dormant and suppressed and is just now awakening. Because of the relationship Edna and Léonce have, he cannot provide her with the needed attention and she looks elsewhere to fulfill her growing sexual desires.
Robert presents himself as a solution to the lack of romantic love in Edna's life. A young, nice looking man, he spends his summer devoted to Edna. She likes his attention and his adoring manner draws her to him. As they spend more time together, he begins to sing her songs and recite romantic poetry. This romantic aspect fills a void in her life. "For the first time, she recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her early teens, and later as a young woman" (45). Robert gives her the picture perfect, model, swept off her feet in love romance that she direly needs. However, he soon retires to Mexico for a business venture and leaves Edna to pine for him in his absence. While he is gone, Edna thinks constantly of Robert and begs Mademoiselle Reisz to allow her to read the letter Robert sends. Devastated, she finds no mention of her name in the letter. When Robert finally returns, he pays little attention to her and again departs, telling her he is leaving because he loves her. "She writhed with a jealous pang. She wondered when he would come back. He had not said he would come back. She had been with him, had heard his voice and touched his hand. But some way he had seemed neared to her off there in Mexico" (103). While Robert helped awaken Edna's sexuality, he left her again, and she now knew the true joys and pains of love.
Edna suffers from terrible loneliness during Roberts absence. Léonce is away at Edna's sisters wedding, and Edna keeps busy spending time with Alcée, a known ladies man. A good looking clever man, Alcée persistently tries to court Edna. First slowly, and later by leaps and bounds, he becomes intimate with Edna. Though occasionally crude, Alcée attracts Edna. "He talked to her in a way that astonished her at first and brought the crimson into her face; in a way that pleased her at last, appealing to the animalism that stirred impatiently within her" (78). Alcée stands for everything society says Edna should not do, though she wants and needs to. He is lust-he is sex for sex. Edna knows the wrong in their relationship, but cannot deny something that her newly awakened sexuality craves. It is her way of rebelling against society and fulfilling many suppressed wants and desires. It leaves her empty, however, as this passion did not come from love.
Affairs and liaisons are not necessary parts of life, but for Edna Pontellier they help awaken her true sexual desires, passions, and needs. Her husband provides the needed cover for society and helps her to realize what she is lacking in life. Robert supplies the love, the passion, and the fairy tale romance. He shows her what love is and elicits her childish infatuation. Alcée brings out Edna's id, her want for sex. He allows her to show her animalism that craves sexual attention. Through her experiences with these three men, Edna fully awakens her sexuality.
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