LeBlanc’s Gender Criticism of Chopin’s The Awakening :: Chopin Awakening

LeBlanc’s Gender Criticism of Chopin’s The Awakening Tomorrow marks thirty years since the Roe vs. Wade decision that gave women a reproductive choice in America. The occasion reminds me that women are continuously struggling to attain and maintain various levels of freedom. Elizabeth LeBlanc’s gender criticism of The Awakening---a novel published before women acquired suffrage---highlights one such freedom: the freedom to live on one’s own terms. The discussion delineates how Kate Chopin’s tale of one woman’s â€Å"choices, actions and attitudes may be construed as the attempts of a woman trapped in a sexually (in)different world to reconstitute herself as lesbian† (241). LeBlanc clarifies that Edna is a â€Å"metaphorical lesbian† who â€Å"creates a narrative or textual space in which she interrogates accepted norms of textuality and sexuality and constitutes herself as subject† (238). The use of the word â€Å"trapped† connotes a state of being cornered, with few choices and at the mercy of someone else. At first, Edna does seem trapped to a drone existence of bourgeois Creole society. But once she was â€Å"initiat[ed] into the world of female love and ritual,† (247) she began â€Å"seeking fulfillment and selfhood† outside of marriage and motherhood (244). Her gravitation toward a woman-centered existence, outside of culturally defined spaces, is an act of self-reconstruction. For example, at the risk of damaging her reputation, she rejects the obligation of her social class to host ‘callers.’ This is a figurative loosening of the ties that bound her to a tradition of waiting for life to happen. She defies that tradition and, in doing so, restructures her existence as a woman. Edna progressively moves away from all-things-traditional, or culturally predefined, into a space all her own. As a metaphorical lesbian, she â€Å"engages in a variety of woman-identified practices that suggest but stop short of sexual encounters.† One such practice is finding solace in a woman who already lives on the margins of society, Mademoiselle Reisz, who LeBlanc suggests is the actual lesbian in this narrative. Edna, LeBlanc writes, â€Å"is drawn to [her] whenever she falls into despondency and hopelessness† because Reisz’s â€Å"music penetrated [Edna’s] whole being like an effulgence, warming and brightening the dark places of her soul† (Chopin 103). It is she, who describes herself as â€Å"captivated† by Edna, who â€Å"fosters in Edna a sense of the possibilities for joy and fulfillment outside the realm of male tradition and meaningless codes† (252). Edna learns not to define herself in relation to her familial attachme nts, such as mother or wife.