Lynne's monthly column - June 2006

The Awakening
After my lengthy literary sojourn through this Winter, firstly in Russia, then Canada and finally firmly back in the 19th century I thought I should probably try and report from the 20th century this month but to no avail.

There is something warmly plump and comforting and beckoning about the 19th century novel that merits a frequent return, almost like touching base. Of course we read them with 21st century eyes and experience so it takes some effort to try and see how they were viewed by the 19th century reader.

I almost made it there but the book that has me at its mercy yet again was actually written in 1899, The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Nothing plump about this one, it’s a skinny 100 page read.

I’m evangelical about this book and have recommended it to so many people, and very deviously forced 6 people to read it when I made it my selection for a postal reading group. It’s a tricky book to recommend as I think there is so much in it to miss if you don’t try and read it in the context of 1899.

The approach of the end of a century is always a bit of a panicky time. It can all feel a bit insecure and risky and there’s a sudden requirement for telling it like it is and this strange need to make a mark. People do daft things like build domes or in our case plant twelve fruit trees and call it a Millenium Orchard.

Kate Chopin went the whole banana and wrote a book that was still raising eyebrows in 1974 as she explored Edna Pontellier’s rejection of the traditional roles of wife and mother forced on her by society. Finally the feminists got to grips with it and it became a book to be celebrated.

So you’d imagine with all the brouhaha, that Kate Chopin had perhaps written a bit of an X rated book wouldn’t you? You’re probably expecting to read steamy passages about heaven knows what but of course this was 1899, it couldn’t be written like that, the most overtly sexual description you are in for is “moments of silence pregnant with the first felt throbbings of desire” but Kate Chopin found some very clever ways around this dilemma, silence being one of them.

Firstly she chose to locate her novel on a warm and deeply sensuous island in the Gulf of Mexico, you will feel the drowsy heat radiating off the page; a frozen north location would not have done at all, far too much fur to get in the way. The music of the rather risqué composer Frederic Chopin (no relation) pervades the book, an association that would not have been lost on the 19th century reader.

Then she gives the parrot more to say than Edna. As you read you realise that Edna says nothing for herself for quite some time. When Kate Chopin finally gives her a voice she uses it very emphatically and assertively with Leonce and you want to cheer.

Watch out for all the imagery around the sea, and how about this for a quote,

“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamouring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

No surprise then that Edna prefers the embrace of the sea above that of her pompous husband Leonce.

The bathing suits worn by women in 1899 must have made learning to swim a minor miracle. Fullness would seem to be the order of the day. Rough heavy serge was recommended or mohair which had a silky look when wet that was considered attractive. All made into full gartered knickerbockers and a short skirt with fullness over the hips and “considerable fullness” around the back. The top was required generally to have fullness all over the place.

However Edna does teach herself to swim. I’ll leave you to imagine what Kate Chopin might have had in mind with all her references to surging waves and tides.

There is one marvellous and enormous gap in this book which I have always called chapter 27 ½. Chapter 27 ends with “It was a flaming torch that kindled desire”, chapter 28 begins “Edna cried a little that night after Arobin had left her”.

Never can what a writer didn’t write have caused so much trouble. Nor can a writer have been so vilified for her reader’s imaginative assumptions than Kate Chopin. The predominantly male critics panned the book

“the story was not really worth telling, and its disagreeable glimpses of sensuality are repellent” and the libraries quickly banned it.

It’s an obvious thing to say but truly what a difference a 100 years can make. Now we take so much for granted; a writer can more or less go where they want, write what they choose. No need for subtle imagery though I believe readers are often grateful for it and for something, anything occasionally being left to their imagination. Winning The Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex award for the worst description of the act must be every writer’s nightmare, so we do have some checks and balances, freedom of expression guarantees nothing.

The Awakening was not a book before its time, it was an honest book of its time and thank goodness Kate Chopin had the courage to write it.

Sadly that courage and confidence were shattered by the critical response to her book and she drew her world in around her until her death in 1904.

I think we all owe a great debt to Kate Chopin and I just can’t resist another quote
“But the night sat lightly upon the sea and the land. There was no weight of darkness; there were no shadows. The white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the mystery and the softness of sleep”.

Lynne Hatwell June 2006