The significance of Robert Lebrun in The Awakening is key as his involvement with Edna, or lack thereof, leads up to what is arguably the biggest disappointment for Edna in the entire novel.
Early on , it is revealed that Edna was once a passionate young woman with a propensity to seek the unattainable love. When Robert begins increasing the distance between himself and Edna, Mainland points out that Edna plays it cool and continues her affair with Arobin instead of becoming desperate Too concerned with being scandalized by involvement with a married woman, Robert flees, leaving Edna feeling more isolated than ever. Throughout The Awakening , Edna is constantly diminished by those around her.
In the end, she is despondent when she realizes that because she is a woman, she will never truly escape the social constraints imposed on her. It is a sad yet direct result of this oppression that Edna pursues suicide, her only means to escape any ensuing scandal and to avoid living in a state of isolation.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym and Robert S. Edna has gleaned much from Arobin about initiating and pursuing a physical relationship. In stark contrast with the prudery of her personality at the beginning of the novel, Edna boldly and without warning kisses Robert with a "voluptuous sting," indicating that she has learned to express herself sexually.
Overall she has learned some valuable life lessons from both Mademoiselle Reisz and Arobin — both of whom are frowned upon by the polite society she left behind: Mademoiselle Reisz for her harsh if honest opinions of others; Arobin for not respecting sexual boundaries. Yet she gives all the credit to Robert: "It was you who awoke me last summer out of a lifelong, stupid dream," she tells him. While he may have played a part in her awakening sensuality and the accompanying sense of self discover, she has grown beyond him.
She clearly is somewhat amused by the way he phrases his revelation of love, repeating back to him "Yes, we have heard of such things" when he tells her of his desperate fantasies of running away with her, another man's wife.
In response, Robert's "face grew a little white. His is not a brave, defiant soul as Edna's is. Even her actions later in the novel arise partly from genuine rebellion and partly from whimsy. As she confides many of these things to Madame Ratignolle, she experiences for the first time a genuine expression of her small self, which intoxicates her "like wine, or like a first breath of freedom.
Significantly, she tells Madame Ratignolle "sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadows again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided.
Note that Edna realizes with relief after she is married that "no trace of passion. Further, if all passion eventually burns itself out, so too will her love for Robert, a fact she realizes in the end.
While Chapter 7 depicts Madame Ratignolle as not much of a thinker she objects when Edna becomes momentarily analytical , Chapter 8 reveals her as a shrewd realist about interpersonal dynamics, asking Robert to "let Mrs. Pontellier alone. Robert's response certainly foreshadows his ultimate entanglement with Edna. Although he has established a pattern of engaging in rhetoric instead of action — the mock romances with married women, the unfulfilled intention to seek his fortune in Mexico — evidently he does wish to be taken seriously, to receive credit as a passionate lover and successful entrepreneur based on his intentions rather than his acts.
Yet Madame Ratignolle immediately and candidly identifies the truth of the situation: "You speak with about as little reflection as. Although he initially resents Madame Ratignolle's suggestion, betraying his own illusions about the depth of his character, by the time they reach her cottage, he has regained enough composure to admit that Madame Ratignolle should have instead "warned me against taking myself seriously.
Your advice might then have. Madame Ratignolle's well-meant advice underlies Robert and Edna's later emotional entanglement, poised as both are, like children, to indulge in the high drama of thwarted romance. The ideal of romance is illustrated by the courting couple who is also vacationing at the pension , shown "leaning toward each other as the wateroaks bent from the sea.
There was not a particle on earth beneath their feet," so high are they on the newness and passion of their romance.
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