An Ocean of Uncertainties

It is after the first 50 pages that the quote at the back of The Awakening is mentioned for the first time in the story. "She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before." (p. 60) Even though the quote is featured as a summary because of its metaphorical meaning, when it appears in the story it is actually very literal. Mrs. Pontellier is facing the challenge of swimming "far out" into the ocean for the first time, because she had only splashed in the surface until now.

Before this epiphany, Mrs. Pontellier felt no control over "her body and her soul." She describes her purely automatic life as that which she does "unthinkingly, as she walks, moves, sits, stands, goes through the daily treadmill of a life which has been portioned to her." (p. 66) This image of life as a treadmill is very strong, as it is something that you use with a purpose but work as hard as you try you will never get anywhere new. The same happened to women in their daily lives; they always had something to do but when reminiscing about the past they found that they were caught in doing so much that they never truly did anything.

The Awakening is slowly becoming a very strong plead to the women of the late 19th century to get out of their "treadmill" and into a true and dignified life. It is noteworthy that only no "woman had ever swum before," implying that men had been allowed to swim "far out" and only women had been asked to stay in the shore with such a wide range of possibilities stretching out in front of them.

However, even Mrs. Pontellier has moments in which she wished she could just allow society to move her here and there without her having any responsibility to deal with. Even though she had been impulsively demonstrating her nonconformism with her society's plans for her life, Mrs. Pontellier found herself "not seeking refreshment or help form any source... she was blindly following whatever impulse moved her." (p. 67) Chopin shows that it might be easier to just accept the situation and go along with it, but depending on the end of the story, she could be pointing out that it is worth the try. The reader is left wondering what Mrs. Pontellier finally achieves as the story moves on to other points.

In a different observation, the story line of The Awakening hasn't exactly been very exciting until now, which is probably on purpose. To demonstrate the nonoccurrence of events in a woman's normal life and to avoid distracting the reader from the true argument at stake in the book, Kate Chopin kept things simple with the plot while still managing to make a very strong, feminist point.