Awakenings: The Story of the Kate Chopin Revival

9. Romantic Overtures

141 9 Romantic Overtures lynda s. boren Kate Chopin entered my life more than twenty years ago when I inherited aWomen in Fiction course atTulane. It had been a popular class, and as the departing instructor handed me her syllabus, she pointed to one writer in particular on the list. “You will love teaching Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. It is a gem. Your students will love it too; it is set in Louisiana .”There was a slight wistfulness to her look and her voice, betraying mixed emotions at moving on. The experience of teaching Chopin’s novel in its unique romantic setting , under the spell of live oaks festooned with Spanish moss and the distant rumble of streetcars up and down St. Charles Avenue, proved irresistible . I was hooked. Throughout the ensuing years, The Awakening followed me from one teaching position to another. In snowbound Vermont , my colleague and department chairman at Middlebury expressed a fervent wish that I offer the novel to students in my American literature survey course. As I reflect back on this, I was perhaps seen as a golden opportunity to have Chopin taught by someone who was herself a native of Louisiana, whose heritage stretched back for generations into not only the culture of New Orleans but the lesser known region of gentle pinecovered slopes within miles of Natchitoches and the Cane River. Eventually, Chopin led me back to the place of my own birth, and I found myself rediscovering sights and sounds, sensations from my childhood that evoked memories long buried. It was then that I realized the essential romantic quality of my relationship to Chopin’s work. In an uncanny way, she was instrumental in my own awakening. 142 lynda s. boren In Natchitoches I helped to organize the Kate Chopin International Conference at Northwestern State University and chaired a special session on Chopin at the MLA convention in New Orleans. Out of this grew an edition of essays on Chopin, a manuscript still in progress when I made my way to Thailand as a Fulbright professor in Bangkok. I had brought Chopin to Thailand, or had she brought me? Contemplating once again the pleasure of reassessing Chopin, I realize that the enduring appeal and essential power of her masterpiece that were so far beyond the abilities of her critics to appreciate draw upon those classical elements of romanticism that have resonated for centuries with readers: the alienated hero or heroine defying convention in search of self-fulfillment, the glorification of imagination and creativity over the mundane, and the often tragic consequences that preempt happy endings. Within this romantic context lies a range of writers from Rousseau to Anne Rice and beyond. The mysterious, the gothic, the ambiguous, the strange and hypnotic draw us into the narrative, where defiant souls struggle for self-realization. This is the Chopin that now speaks to me most clearly after many years of teaching and whose masterpiece, The Awakening, invites us to accompany its heroine on her romantic voyage of self-discovery. Where does one begin to map the romantic journey? What is the starting point? Historically, we might claim that it began with the Crusades, with Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, or with those moments in history and romance that elevate our symbolic heroes above reason,beyond established codes of social behavior,into spiritual realms of self-realization—no matter the cost. Spiritually, it has its beginnings, as one well-known critic reminds us, in ancient thought and themes.1 Philosophically, the romantic impulse, in its questioning of reason or rational behavior as a guide to moral governance and law,severs the obligation to deny ego,self,or desire in the preservation of a so-called social good. But it goes without saying that society cannot remain a static, absolute entity. The social good itself changes as a direct result of those very individuals who find themselves most at odds with it. At the heart of romanticism lies this obvious paradox: the ethos of individualism , which eventually leads to social change and acceptance, inevitably isolates and punishes those courageous enough to undertake such a quest. 143 Romantic Overtures For Edna Pontellier in Chopin’s The Awakening, the beginnings of her journey reside in submerged childhood memories, in impulses that compel her to flee the confining and suffocating forces that deny her a much desired freedom. These memories are triggered by her growing unhappiness...