Half Asleep

Mrs. Pontellier continues her road towards awakening, getting closer and closer as she begins to understand that no one can stop her. To the dismay of everyone around her, Mrs. Pontellier refrains herself from womanly duties and decides to pursue her own likings. It is under this pretense that Mrs. Pontellier starts calling herself an artist, showing her drawings to others and using her family and the maids as models. 

Even though Mrs. Pontellier felt she had wasted her life doing things for which "Fate had not fitted her," and she had been obligated to fulfill responsibilities decided for her before she was even alive, she wasn't willing to be pulled down by her past in her way to her future (past blog). Mrs. Pontellier regarded her past as “nothing, offer[ing] no lesson which she was willing to heed.” (90) The reader is then forced to accept that the character that Chopin wants us to learn from is the new Mrs. Pontellier. There is no “lesson” in the same character’s past persona. This can also be considered a call from Chopin to all the women living in oppression to leave their past behind and search for a new future.

In her road to awakening, Mrs. Pontellier seems to be doing quite well. Chopin has already told the reader that she made it. “She had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded.” (66) The title of the novella is The Awakening; it starts when Mrs. Pontellier isn’t “awake,” continues as she becomes aware of her sleepiness, and she has now reached the point where she considers herself an awakened soul. What now? If Mrs. Pontellier has already accomplished the point of her life and of the story, what else does the book have to offer us? Is she now going to create a sect to unite all women against society? Is she going to kill herself in honor of those who couldn’t live a worthy life? The reader is left with unanswered questions as Mrs. Pontellier reaches her desired state yet there is half of the book left.

 

We have known Mrs. Pontellier for feeling foreign to the world around her, but it is the first time in which she “had suddenly become antagonistic.” (105) Everything around her belonged to the same world, except her. Now she didn’t only feel like she didn’t belong in it, she also felt opposing to its ideas and its people. It is no longer okay for Chopin and for Mrs. Pontellier to watch the world reproachfully from the outside, it is necessary to take action against anything you don’t agree with. Maybe that is what the rest of the book will be about. Maybe Mrs. Pontellier will dedicate her free time towards fixing the laws of society that were imposed to her of which she doesn’t agree with.