Chapter 12 begins with Edna Pontellier waking from her overnight slumber in the hammock and preparing to spend the day with Robert at the Cheniere Caminada. During their adventure, they always seem to be in the presence of the lovers, the lady in black, and Monsieur Farival. Although they are seemingly background characters, the lovers and the lady and black seem to foil each other, almost representing the two sides of Edna's life: passion(the lovers), and piety/convention(lady in black). While boarding the boat going to the Cheniere, Chopin describes the lovers as "all alone. They saw nothing, they heard nothing", while the lady in black "counted her beads for the third time" (Chopin 32). The lovers are lost in love and passion, unperturbed by constraints of conventional married life, while the pious lady in black experiences the monotony of fulfilling her duties and staying true to her promise to religion.
Moreover, when the lovers are on the boat, a young Spanish girl conversing with Robert asks , "'Are those two married over there- leaning on each other?", and he playfully responds, "Of course not" as if it were obvious (34). It is astonishing to think that the Creole society approaches marriage in such a way that publicly demonstrated passion and love is thought of as juvenile and almost comical, and makes it easier to understand Edna's feelings of domestic entrapment and boredom.
Later in the reading, after Edna exits the service early and spends a majority of the day napping, she spends the afternoon with her "buddy", Robert. Although they seem to be no more than friendly companions, both Edna and Robert show symptoms of a big fat crush whenever they are with each other. When Edna awoke from her nap, "she peeped out at him two or three times" through the window while washing up in the bathroom like a schoolgirl stealing glances at the boy on the football team (37). Similarly, when Robert saw Edna coming to join him under the orange tree, "illumination broke over his whole face" (37). Edna gets more excited to spend more time with Robert than she does with her own husband, which represents her human nature as a factor of her dissatisfaction with being a housewife, and therefore her incompetence as such.
That evening at dinner, Edna's heart gets pulled in various directions when she hears Robert's decision to move to Mexico, effective the next day. Her reaction is described as "blank" and "bewildered", kindling an "embarrassed and uneasy" response from Robert (41). Edna's confusion and frustration jumps off the page through her shocked and accusatory speech, and surprisingly, her sudden desire to attend to " a hundred things demanding her attention indoors" (43). When she knew her alternate happy-reality as Robert's love was unattainable, she throws herself back into custom and the chores of her actual reality. She realizes this, diagnosing herself with "symptoms of infatuation" towards Robert which caused her to feel shock and grief when she learned he was suddenly leaving her life, and caused her to face the grave situation of her unhappy reality. When the person that provided her with a breath of fresh air(aka Robert) left her life, it has "taken the brightness, color, meaning out of everything", leaving her life as if it was "a faded garment no longer worth wearing" (46).
Reflecting upon her feelings towards her life as a married mother, she thinks "The present alone was significant; to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she ahd held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded" (45).
After this realization, Mrs. Pontellier evolve into a more independent, almost selfish person, and consequently grows more and more disagreeable with her husband/family lifestyle. This side of her shows itself after she bickers with Mr. Pontellier in chapter 17 about Tuesday evening Programme and dinner. She finds herself alone in her house stomping on her wedding ring and shattering a vase out of anger, claiming that "the crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear", even though she quickly regathers herself and pretends like nothing is wrong when her maid passes by and offers to clean up the mess, slipping the ring back on her finger.
Though Edna has shown difference in character and independence from Creole society norms throughout the books, her actions have never reflected her rogue thoughts as much as they did in this past reading. From the very start of Chapter 12, Edna was" blindly following whatever impulse moved her, as if she had freed her soul of responsibility"(32). She feels free amongst the waves and in the half darkness of the night; she is unafraid to admit her childish love for Robert and selfish desire to begin work as an artist once more instead of solely being a housewife. What is so intriguing and impressive is that she recognizes these changes, "realizing that she herself was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that colored and changer her environment, she did not yet suspect" (40). Other people begin to notice her evolution as an individual as well, including her husband and her friends. After visiting with Mrs. Pontellier and discussing Roberts travels in Mexico, Victor ends chapter 20 admiring the woman, saying "The city atmosphere has improved her. Some way she doesn’t seem like the same woman" (61).
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