![]() ![]() Edna edges into the uncharted territory of her own consciousness. Yet also partly named: oppression, anguish. Whatever it is, it is indescribable, unfamiliar, vague. ![]() Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake.”Īwake to what? After the fight, Edna moves out to the balcony and weeps profusely: “An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish.” ![]() She springs out of bed to check, while Léonce - no longer worried, if he ever actually was - enjoys his cigar. When Edna dares doubt this, Léonce calls her a bad mother. He has spent the evening at a casino and now it’s approaching midnight, but the card game has left Léonce “in high spirits, and very talkative.” He wakes his wife to gossip but she answers him sleepily, “with little half utterances.” Spurned, and still intent on rousing her, Léonce manufactures a fever for their sleeping son. Early in “The Awakening” - Kate Chopin’s great feminist novel of identity and self-consciousness, which still throbs with relevance more than 120 years after its publication - the heroine’s husband picks a fight. ![]()
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