The Critics View of Edna Pontellier’s Suicide in The Awakening Essay

The Critics View of Ednas Suicide in The Awakening There are many ways of looking at Ednas Suicide in The Awakening, and each offers a different perspective. It is not necessary for the reader to like the ending of the novel, but the reader should come to understand it in relation to the story it ends. The fact that readers do not like the ending, that they struggle to make sense of it, is reflected in the body of criticism on the novel or so all scholars attempt to explain the suicide. Some of the explanations make more sense than others. By reading them the reader will come to a fuller disposition of the end of the novel (and in the process the entire novel) and hopefully make the ending less disappointing. Joseph Urgo reads the novel in damage of Edna learning to narrate her experience story. He maintains that by the end of the novel she has discovered that her story is unacceptable in her tillage (23) and in order to get along in that culture she must be silent. Edna rej ects this muting of her voice and would, Urgo maintains, rather extinguish her life than edit her tale (23). To save herself from an ending others would frame or an ending that would compromise what she has fought to obtain, she has to write her own end and remove herself from the tale. As she swims out, the voices of her children come to pull at her like little antagonists, and there are others on shore who would also behave her down Robert, Adele, Arobin, and Leonce. Edna finds a way to elude them all, and narrates in her suicide the conclusion to her tale. In this type of reading, her suicide can be understood in terms of societal pressure. What is the result of silencing a persons voice? Urgo maintains, on a symbolic level... ...g Sea Freedom and Drowning in Eliot, Chopin, and Drabble. Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature 12 (1993) 315-32. Malzahn, Manfred. The Strange Demise of Edna Pontellier. southern Literary Journal 23.2 (1992) 31-39. Roscher, Marina L. The suicide of Edn a Pontellier An Ambiguous Ending? Southern Studies 23 (1984) 289-98. Showalter, Elaine. Sisters Choice Tradition and Change in American Womens Writing. Oxford Claredon Press, 1991. Skaggs, Peggy. Three Tragic Figures in Kate Chopins The Awakening. Louisiana Studies An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South 4 (1974) 345-64. Spangler, George M. Kate Chopins The Awakening A Partial Dissent. Novel A Forum on Fiction 3 (1970) 249-55. Urgo, Joseph R. A Prologue to Rebellion The Awakening and the Habit of Self-expression. The Southern Literary Journal 20.1 (1987) 22-32.