The Man's Reaction

Except for the beginning of the book, the focus of the story and the action has been mostly on Mrs. Pontellier. There is, however, another character whose emotions and responses should be noted to understand Mrs. Pontellier's effect on the world around her. Mr. Pontellier is the man of the house, or at least had been before his wife decided to change before her eyes. Mr. Pontellier feels angry, worried, but most of all confused, as he doesn't understand where his wife's strange conduct is coming from.

The first evidence of Mr. Pontellier's disapproval with the situation came when Mrs. Pontellier claimed to having left the house on Thursday just because she wished to. To that, he says "why, my dear, I should think you'd understand by this time that people don't do such things." (100) Mrs. Pontellier doesn't even find herself opposing his restricting comments, merely explaining that she wanted to leave, so she did. Catastrophic as this behavior seemed to Mr. Pontellier, a couple of minutes later he did that which he had so earnestly accused his wife of doing with no double thought about it. "I'm going to get dinner at the club. Good night." (102) Obviously needing a reason to go out of the house was a law that applied only to women. The juxtaposition that these two events create is enough for the reader to understand the unfairness of the laws governing woman conduct.

Mr. Pontellier's self-assessment doesn't find any flaw in how he treats Mrs. Pontellier. In fact, he considers himself "a rather courteous husband so long as he met a certain tacit submissiveness in his wife." (110) Until this moment, Mr. Pontellier took this behavior for granted. Bad idea. Now that Mrs. Pontellier is acting to demonstrate specifically her lack of submissiveness to society's restrictions, Mr. Pontellier has no idea what to do. It takes all of his self-control to continue being courteous to his wife. 

In fact, Mr. Pontellier finds himself going in search of the family's physician, taking his wife's conduct as a sickness and looking for a solution. Doctor Mandelet seemed to think that it was all a passing stage in Mrs. Pontellier's life, and should all be cured when given some time. However, he could not restrain from asking the questions that were bothering him. "Has she been associating of late with a a circle of pseudo-intellectual women--super-spiritual superior beings?" "Nothing hereditary? Nothing peculiar about her family antecedents, is there?" (126) The doctor clearly agrees that there is something wrong with Mrs. Pontellier, even daring to mock her by calling her ideals "pseudo-intellectual." It is therefore not only a problem of how Mr. Pontellier sees his wife's change, but this shows that everyone in society was programmed to disapprove of Mrs. Pontellier's (or, for that matter, anyone's) opposing behavior. Chopin used Mr. Pontellier and the doctor to represent the general hostility that she, Mrs. Pontellier, and The Awakening would receive when trying to form an opposition towards society's view of women.