A few years ago, I started reading a novel written over a hundred and twenty years ago. I wasn’t prepared for how a woman a century ago could have known and extracted the intricate details of my heart. As I conducted research for this article, I found that after her husband’s death, Kate Chopin, the author, received advice to write as way out of her depression. Now I know at least a bit more why I feel her voice so much in my own – writing was a savior to us both.
This beautiful book was banned, reviewed as “vulgar”, and heavily criticized. It is considered one of the first feminist novels in American literature.
Kate Chopin was shamed for sharing the story of a woman tired of living her mildly miserable life, in what I consider a masterpiece of American literature: The Awakening.
Many probably read the story and see it as Edna Pountellier having an affair – a sexual awakening, if you will. But that’s not what it’s about – at least not entirely and not to me – and I don’t believe it’s what Ms. Chopin was creating either. It’s about Edna Pontellier finally waking up to herself, which also involved waking up to her sexuality (oddly enough we still have trouble with women accepting their sexuality over a hundred years later).
I’ve been accused of having an affair. I know how that feels. I’ve debated about saying anything about this, but I think I have a right to. I did not cheat on my ex-husband, and I can share that if I want to. But I know Edna’s heart. I know what it is to wake up in a life you chose and realize you have buried yourself in your attempts to keep him happy.
I know what it is like to choose the dishes over your art. I know the shame that comes from admitting you want something which burns from your bones. I know how you can become complacent to feeding the mundane because the extraordinary is just too loud for the ears around you.
Let’s get back to Edna. I’m sure it can debated, but I believe her awakening begins, when she hears a song. Sometimes, this is all it takes.
Something – some agent which climbs in past the flesh and strikes you straight through the heart.
It happened to me the first time when I heard a cello being played in my school auditorium in 2nd grade. It’s happened through the words of others. It happened yet again when I read about it happening to Edna:
“A certain light beginning to dawn dimly within her – the light which, showing the way, forbids it…the very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon the piano sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier’s spinal column. It was not the first time she had heard an artist at the piano. Perhaps it was the first time she was ready, perhaps the first time her being was tempered to take an impress of the abiding truth…the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her.”
Swaying it.
Lashing it.
I happened to read this book after a trip to the beach. After a walk against the setting sun, through the streets of a beach town, when I cried out to the pink sky – to god – to the universe – to the divine – I pleaded for a chance to come back. To become.
I pleaded for love again. I begged for my marriage to be healed. I hoped love could be restored there. But I also threw into the pink sky, that I would brave enough to know if I needed to leave. And then I met Edna, and she has walked alongside my own awakening.
I looked up the origins of the word become, because I’m a writer, and that’s what we do when we want to get intimate with a word. It’s equivalent to falling in love with someone and wanting to know everything about where they came from. To fall properly in love with a word, you need to know where it came from.
Become – comes from the Old English, “becuman” happen, come about, befall,” also “meet with, fall in with; arrive, approach, enter,”
Happen.
Befall.
Meet with.
Fall in with.
My first awakening happened when I realized I could come back – I could meet with and fall in with the me under my illness. I saw her – the girl with things to say and things to feel and I let her enter back in. She became incredibly strong. Strong enough to know when another becoming was necessary.
And so I still speak to the god of the pink skies. I seek out sunrises and sunsets and music which sends a “keen tremor down [my]…spinal column”.
Edna’s story is tragic. I hate to ruin it for you, but it does not end well. I believe this is because she forgot that she didn’t need a man to know love. I believe if she, or her creator, had lived in a time when it was acceptable for a woman to be sufficient in her own right, flourishing in her own creative expression, respected for her art, aware of the beauty of passion for diving into the seduction of the sea of the soul, then maybe this story could have ended well.
She did not live in such a time. Thankfully, we do. You, my friend have a beautiful trove of treasures inside. I’m not sure what caused you to bury it. Was it an illness? Was it the unending efforts to try to be enough for him? For her? Was it shame to admit you loved something so unaccepted by our culture?
I’m inviting you to become. Today. Right now. I want you to meet with, fall in with. I want you to happen. I want you to befall. I want you to wake up and finally listen to the “certain light beginning to dawn” within you. It’s there. I know you can feel it swaying and lashing.
Don’t be afraid.
Wake up.
Become, my darling.
I think Kate and Edna would be proud to see a new era of women living without shame, proud to step into their power. I think they’d be proud of us in all of our becoming and I think if Edna sat with me right now, we wouldn’t have to say a word. We’d just know – we’d feel it in our bones – that to allow oneself to wake up to all that flows within is the greatest thing we can do with our life. For those of us who are trying to wake up, we see it in the eyes of the others who are doing the same. It’s the great becoming and the great connection of the great mystery of living and loving.