Book Response #2

I have recently started reading the book The Awakening, but Kate Chopin. This is a book about a woman named Edna Pontillier, She is a woman that is constantly trying to free herself from a society that she does not belong to. She falls in love and then loses all of the love she had for her husband, which she later has an affair on, and her two children. In the end, she swims into the ocean, and kills herself. I think there is a symbolic meaning of maturation for Edna’s first successful swim attempt. 

I think there is a symbolic meaning of maturation for Ednas first successful swim attempt. Edna, along with many new swimmers, is afraid of just letting go and trusting the sea with her body. The book says “an ungovernable dread.... when in the water, useless there was ah and near by that might reach out and reassure her.” Earlier in the book, the sea is described as “inviting the soul The sea represents the feeling of blankness, and feeling desolate, which both are two feelings that Edna has been afraid ti experience and enter. When she enters the ocean, she is being submerged in those feelings and almost forced to accept them. Her relationship caused her to become her own person and become much more independent, which is something that goes against what she believes is supposed to be the accepted and excepted behavior from women. Her swimming in the ocean shows that she is coming to accept of herself and her feelings, and who she is. This is why I think there is a symbolic meaning of maturation for Ednas first successful swim attempt. 

Another reason I think there is a symbolic meaning of maturation for Ednas first successful swim attempt is because of what she said in the water. In the water, Edna says “Think of the time I have lost splashing about like a baby!”  It is almost as if she is accepting that she had childish tendencies of being gullible and simply being 100% dependent on others. Her saying this is as if she is getting rid of the expected and accepted behavior of Victorian women. In the book, she states she “wants to swim where no woman had swum before.” She is saying that she wants to push past the common and followed stereotype for women in her day and age. She says she “reaches out for the unlimited in which to lose herself”.” She opens her eyes and she pushes herself with her arms deeper into this new state of mind and being for her. This is why I think there is a symbolic meaning of maturation for Ednas first successful swim attempt. 

All in all, Edna is someone who for most of her life maintains the role appointed to her by society. When she finally took that first successful swim, I feel as if she broke through that. Edna is seemingly a semi-conscious young woman and doesn’t seem to know or understand her wants and needs. I hope Edna continues the way she seems to be portraying herself, as a self-conscious young woman.