Summers 1 Katie Summers ENGL 305 Close Reading 6 September 2014 Music: The Beauty of Loneliness, Pain, and Disappointment in Kate Chopin s The Awakening Music has the ability to capture an emotion in song, but also has the ability to generate a picture in one s imagination. By generating these pictures, music can also create emotion within someone. Benjamin Britten, renowned English composer and pianist, describes music as an emotion: It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. In Kate Chopin s The Awakening, music captures and expresses emotion, and by generating images for readers and characters, creates emotion. For Edna these emotions parallel those Britten lists: loneliness, pain, strength, freedom, disappointment, and never-satisfied love. For Edna, a woman grappling with societal norms, gender roles, and cultural expectations, music becomes an outlet that awakens her soul, gives her courage, and encourages her to fight forpursue her freedom. However, even though readers see how Edna uses music as a beautiful outlet, this outlet, arguably, inspires Edna s hopeless resignation resulting in her death. Chopin s selection and placement of music in The Awakening, arguably parallels and foreshadows the desolation, loneliness, pain, and disappointment, as well as the strength, freedom, and courage Edna feels as she struggles with gender roles and cultural expectations. One musical selection Chopin introduces to readers shows illustrates Edna s dynamic connection to music and shows how music encourages Edna to find her freedom, ultimately her
Summers 2 own death. how the cruel beauty of music ultimately becomes an outlet for Edna. In particular, Edna enjoys listening to music because, [m]usical strains, well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind (26). Music, in this sense, not only paints pictures for Edna, but sparks in her certain emotions. She recalls one of these pictures when remembering a song, which Edna entitles Solitude,, as Madame Ratignolle plays for her. As she plays, the music generates a picture in Edna s imagination of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him (26-27). Here, Madame Ratignolle s song not only creates a picture in Edna s imagination, it creates a picture that stimulates the emotions Edna feels. This hopeless resignation the man in Edna s imagination feels parallels how the societal norms and gender barriers make her feel. This song inspires Edna to change her life to withstand the cultural norms and gender roles but like the man in her imagination, she feels desolate, lonely, and disappointed. Ultimately, this song encourages Edna to end her desolation, loneliness, and disappointment. Through another selection of music, Chopin not only parallels the emotions Edna feels, but shows readers how music overtakes Edna and inspires her to find freedom. This song, though, foreshadows Edna s ultimate demise. but arguably foreshadows Edna s ultimate demise. As Edna recalls the song that Madame Ratignolle has played for her, her family and friends try to convince Mademoiselle Reisz, a gifted musician, to play a song for them. Once Mademoiselle Reisz begins, Edna explains that, [i]t was not the first time she had heard an artist at the piano [but that]...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 (27). This moment, unlike when Madame
Summers 3 Ratignolle played Solitude, marks when music not only generates an image in Edna s mind, but awakens emotion within Edna: She waited for the material pictures which she thought would gather and blaze before her imagination. She waited in vain. She saw no pictures of solitude, of hope, of longing, or of despair. But 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. (27) Here, Edna does not only picture a man standing on the seashore feeling despair and desolation, she, herself, feel these emotions within her being. In this scene, where Edna recalls how a particular song expressed an emotion and one created an emotion within her soul, Chopin foreshadows Edna s own fate: a fate spurred by loneliness, pain, strength, freedom, disappointment, and courage. At the end of the novel Edna finds herself standing on the seashore, also naked, feeling hopeless and despondent as she watches a bird with a broken wing...beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water (113). Feeling a call to the sea, a call towards freedom, Edna follows the bird out to sea and, swimming too far out, is unable to swim back to shore. After realizing she is incapable of dealing with her struggle with societal norms, gender roles, and cultural expectations, she does what she feels she has to. She ends her life. She ends her life because the music she has been exposed to has awakened her soul, and she finally feels the cruel emotions Britten explains music provokes. Another selection of music Chopin uses, Zampa, also parallels Edna s hopeless resignation, and illustrates how her connection to music motivates her death. emotions and foreshadows the death Edna faces at the end of The Awakening. ZZampa ou La fiancée de
Summers 4 marbre, a romantic opera--also known as The Marble Bride by Ferdinand Hérold--describes the death of a pirate-lover at sea. In this opera, Zampa, the chief in a band of pirates, attacks the island of Castel Lugano and captures the daughter, Camilla, of a count. Zampa forces Camilla to come back with him, and Camilla goes with him in order to guarantee her father s safety. When Camilla and Zampa get back to camp, Zampa hosts a celebration for his new betrothal, meanwhile, nearby, the statue of Alice, a woman Zampa abandoned, watches this celebration take place. Zampa slips a ring on the finger of the statue and eventually calls for the statue to be thrown into the sea. After a series of events, Alice--vengeful and angry--drags Zampa out to sea with her. ( Zampa ou La fiancée de marbre; or the Marble Bride ). Chopin introduces this opera--filled with death, isolation, and despair--at the beginning of her novel, setting the scene for her readers. The music in this opera evokes a sense of loneliness and pain in its audience, and as the characters go about their daily lives Chopin introduces Zampa. Not only does this opera set the scene for readers, it also foreshadows Edna s own death at sea. One of Chopin s last references to a specific music selection, Isolde s Song by Richard Wagner, also evokes Edna s emotions and foreshadows how Edna s connection to music results in her death. Chopin introduces this song to readers while Edna visits Mademoiselle Reisz. While Mademoiselle plays the piano for Edna, Edna reads a letter written by Robert, and as, the shadows deepened in the little room...the music grew strange and fantastic--turbulent, insistent, plaintive and soft with entreaty. The shadows grew deeper. The music filled the room. It floated out upon the night, over the housetops, the crescent of the river, losing itself in the silence of the upper air (64). This song creates a dark atmosphere for Edna and causes her emotions to turn dark as well. While she is listening to this song she starts to sob, just as she had wept one midnight at Grand Isle when strange, new voices awoke in her (64). This song, able to express
Summers 5 emotion, also creates an emotion within Edna. But not only does this song function as a means to evoke emotion, it also foreshadows Edna s death. This song, from the opera Tristan and Isolde, is based off of the legend of Tristan. This legend, ultimately about two lovers--tristan and Isolde--who share in a forbidden love, ends in a fate parallel to that of Edna. Like Tristan and Isolde, Edna and Robert share a forbidden love bound to end. Tristan, the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, kills Morholt, an Irish champion sent to bring back tribute from Cornwall. Tristan, although defeats Morholt, is wounded in battle and nursed back to health by Isolde, the niece of Morholt. After returning to Cornwall healed, Tristan praised Isolde, which led King Mark to strive for her hand in marriage. However, Tristan and Isolde had feelings for each other, but their sense of honor prevented them from showing their true feelings. Eventually, their passion for each other grew, but they tried to hide it from their people. Still, their communities found out, and Tristan settled somewhere other than Cornwall, where he married another Isolde. Tristan, again wounded in battle, asked his wife to cure him, but she was unable to. He sent for Isolde of Cornwall, his first and true love, but she came too late and he died. Hearing of his death, she also fell ill and died. ( Tristan and Isolde ). Like Tristan and Isolde, Robert and Edna s love for each other is forbidden and undying. However, Edna realizes her relationship with Robert will also end: Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never lifted. there was no one thing in the world that she desired. There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone (113). At this point in the novel, Edna decides she has no need to live out the rest of her monotonous life. Like Tristan, who dies after realizes he will never see
Summers 6 his Isolde again, Edna cannot imagine a day without Robert. She ends her life before she faces a life without him. Chopin s selection and placement of music in The Awakening-- ultimately foreshadowing Edna s death illustrates the deep connection Edna has to music. This deep connection to music becomes an outlet for Edna, but also pushed Edna to end her own life. The cruel beauty of music is that it opened Edna up to her own invoking the emotion and generating the imagination of the reader--ultimately parallels and foreshadows the loneliness, the pain, the strength, the freedom, and herthe never-satisfied love. Edna Pontellier faces before her death. As Benjamin Britten, the English composer, described above, music can cruelly become emotion, and each song or opera Chopin introduces in this novel--zampa, Solitude, Isolde s Song --not only shapes the emotions of the characters and readers, but also cruelly become these emotions. Motivated by these emotions that music awakens in Edna, she hopelessly resigns, and ends her own life. Works Cited Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Ed. Margaret Culley. New York, W.W. Norton Company: 1976. Print. Tristan and Isolde. Myths Encyclopedia: Myths and legends of the world. Advameg, Inc., 2014. Web. 6 September 2014. Zampa ou La fiancée de marbre; or the Marble Bride. OperaScotland.org. Opera Scotland, 2014. Web. 6 September 2014.
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