In Voltaire's Candide , it is only in the final paragraphs that Candide makes his first revelation-in-assertion--Je sais aussi qu'il faut cultiver notre jardin--that his schooling in le mieux des mondes possibles has come to fruition and end . He is here the self-assured majordomo of the Garden group, and his aphoristic assertion is programmatic, but throughout the foregoing narrative there is ever the sense that this hero, learning 'on the hoof' in and from his picaresque wanderings, is a child-man, not a self-responsible adult . By such a piece of authorial legerdemain, objective criticism of the hero is precluded, so that where it can be exercised it is directed solely against the existential forces that impinge upon the child-burgeoning-into-man . Something similar is enacted in The Awakening . The heroine is a child-woman, whose period of schooling and self-discovery is made coeval with Adele's pregnancy . This gestation period is a journey not through a geographic world as was Candide's, but through a world of roles, roles determined, other-prescribed, or self-adopted . The journey is picaresque not from the random intervention of new character and incident, but rather, from the personal motivations of family and friends--which from Edna's viewpoint are other-determined--and from the uncontrollably vying demands on Edna of the sleeping places of her soul(106) as they awaken . Edna emerges from this flux only near the end--in the interview with Dr Mandelet (119-20), when with a flourish of self-awareness and self-definition, the adult Edna is born . There is assertiveness here, and objectivity, but still the uncertainness : 'And you are going abroad ?' 'Perhaps-no, I am not going...perhaps it is better to wake up after all... Oh ! I don't know what I'm saying, Doctor . Be that as it may here and in the concluding episode on Grande Isle, throughout the foregoing gestation period Edna is never so aware, never a self-responsible adult : objective criticism of the child-woman heroine is precluded, and, if it is to be exercised at all, it can be directed solely against the existential forces which impinge upon this child-woman in gestation .
The Awakening has, of course, other characters who at times behave childishly, either overtly---Leonce huffs and puffs with impatience and irritation(33) because Edna will not come to bed ; Robert is childishly gratified to discover her appetite(41)---or by implication : the Mexico-bound Robert sat down upon a stool which the children had left out on the porch(47) ; the venomous Mlle Reisz is left...alone, seated under the shade of the children's tent(53) . But, by the end, no other character is shown to have undergone anything like such a qualitative change of personality as Edna undergoes . Existential circumstances may change, but these others are settled persona--Leonce considers les convenances from first to last ; the pre- and post-Mexico Robert ever guards his reserve(111)--and as such are fit to be objectively criticised . Nor, it follows, and as we can see, is any of these authorially allocated a gestation period coeval with literal pregnancy . The logic of this correlation with biological pregnancy is that, like the babe in the womb, Edna's first and continuing sensorial experience and awareness of being awake, alive, and individual, is a tactile relation with liquid : Edna 's sea to the fluid of the amniotic sac . The further logic of this correlation is that to the babe's genetic make-up is the sum of the awakening Edna's character-determining antecedents : mother-less upbringing, with the Presbyterian Margaret as mother-surrogate, at home in a Southern planter's family in financial decline, and whose Southern identity--with Greycoats and stock breeding--is vestigial ; the child Edna as solitary ; her friendship only with the self-contained(18) ; her admiration and mimesis of the intellectually gifted, and her self-development --she talked and glowed(18)--when with them ; romantic infatuations with distanced, ethereal men ; marriage to a Catholic and into White Franco-Spanish Catholic['WFSC'] society ; children ; six years schooling in the combined roles of WFSC wife, mother and hostess .
It was said earlier that, in the matter of objective criticism of Edna, she is authorially precluded by the fail-safe of her non-adult status . To this contention I would add and argue the case that throughout her gestation, including her 'successes' towards liberation, individuality and independence, Edna is ever subject to, and host of, those anteceding determinants : the awakening of the sleeping places of her soul widens the range for potential self-discovery, but it also unveils the wider spectrum of now-activated determinants, from which the child-woman cannot escape because she never has the rational mind and self-control to identify and supercede their influence . And, lastly, as a result of the babe-in-the-womb correlation, and as is shown, Edna's primary and continuing relation with the world is sensual-- a scenario hardly conducive to the development of a self-controlling, rational mind . On these three counts, I would say that Edna is 'an uncriticised heroine' .
Procedurally, I propose to consider, in this order,
(1) the culture in which Edna awakens, against which she measures herself
and is measured, against which she contends ;
(2) the roles in which the awakening Edna finds herself ;
(3) the roles to which she progresses ;
(4) Edna when and after she is 'delivered' into adulthood by Dr Mandelet .
Along the way I hope to include , where relevant to the point at issue, what facts ---counterpoint, symbolism, literary reverberation, the terminist logic of names, and structural placing of incident or of aspect of individual characterisation---of Chopin's style I can distinguish : not as ballast for what is necessarily a personal reading, but in an attempt to catch at, even if it does not quite convey, Chopin's authorial intent .
The WFSC notaricum was used earlier to categorise the Creole society in which Edna awakens : it will be called 'Creolia' from now on . What I had in mind is that this Creolia has the Southern component : a racially separate sub-culture of mulattoes and quadroons in service to the purely Franco-Spanish Creolia . Creolia places these blackish Creoles by the sole use of forenames--Ellen, Celestine, Tonie,Catiche, even Madame Antoine--in contrast with the formal address--Mademoiselle, Madame, Monsieur-- followed by surname, used of and to their own kind . This sub-culture, both at Madame Antoine's and at Catiche's, sets off---in its tempo, ease, and zestful savouring of the natural and everyday---the pale thing that passes for ease within convention in urban and holidaying Creolia . Both locales, too, provide Robert and Edna with setting and ambience conducive to transcendence--away from the stock Creolian roles of lady and her cavalier servente, and into a shared participation in the eternal at the Cheniere, and then, at Catiche's, out of the self-created roles of ever-separated lovers and into a communion that potentially promises to merge sacred and profane love .
Creolia exists on a caste base. but beyond that it is continuously the case that where its exclusiveness promises to loom into clear definition, the definition is shaded off by disproving instances . For example, the Grande Isle ensemble chez Lebrun are given as always...exclusive visitors from the 'Quartier Francais'(4) . Yet the Lebruns are characterised as feudal overlords for the season : Victor Lebrun objected ; and his decrees were as immutable as those of fate(25) ; Robert proposed it [the beach-party] and there was not a dissenting voice(28) ; Madame Lebrun knocked on the table with her knife handle(44) and calls the dinner-party to some order . The impression is that it is Lebrun imperiousness and inclination, and not a willed ethos, that determine exclusiveness at Grande Isle . A central feature of Grande Isle is the cult of mother-women who efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels(8) to their children who by Chopin are similarly effaced as individuals, emerging into particularity only onstage, as ham child-prodigies . The cult is exclusively of family, but when seen in instances there is no group will to exclude the non-family people . There was Mademoiselle Duvigne who died between summers(11) ; there are now the lovers, the lady in black, and Mlle Reisz : the lovers form part of the beach-party (28) ; Farival whispers to no avail to the lady in black in church (38) ; Mlle Reisz, who had quarreled with almost every one(26), gives a performance that aroused a fever of enthusiasm(28) . This is laissez-faire exclusiveness : respect for, and tolerance of, the non-family individual's right to isolation and participation .
It is against this lack of definition that Edna awakens to an existence to which she tries to give definition . It is a real problem--for Edna and for the reader . For example, Edna is wooed by Monsieur Pontellier(19), who is, subsequently, and exclusively, Mr Pontellier to Edna's Mrs : Pontellier has married a Protestant, a non-Creolian, and a Creolian group distinction from the Pontelliers appears to have been institutionalised in the English, to their French, form of address . Yet, all declared that Mr Pontellier was the best husband in the world(8), Mr Pontellier was a great favorite, and ladies, men, children, even nurses, were always on hand to say good-by to him(7), and Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim . She had received instructions from both the men and women ; in some instances from the children(29) . The Pontelliers are included, but to different degrees : Leonce is comprehensively approved of, and, in token of his devotion to the Creolian mother-woman cult, 'ladies' comes first in the enumeration, whereas Edna is allocated no 'ladies' nor 'gentlemen', and her non-participation in the cult is stressed by sense, syntax and lexis .
Edna's distance, in syntax here, from the children is one instance in an assiduously laid case at Grande Isle that Edna is unnatural, by way of being undutiful in the quality of her care for the children . The case is authorially hyped, and it is shot through with a hypocrisy that undermines the Creolian surface identity of Louisiana State 'Pelicans'--symbols of parental devotion to, and self-sacrifice for, one's children . Leonce, returned from Klein's, discovers symptoms of fever in Raoul (5-6) : the charge is 'inattentive mother and wife', when what he really means is 'inattentive mistress' . This Pelican, here in private, feeds on his children, while in public he is the genial provider . His hypocrisy is forefronted again later, in the privacy of a letter to Edna, in which he begged her to consider first, foremost, and above all else, what people would say(100) : not 'the children', not 'their love', etc. The authorial hyping is in that Leonce is the only Creolian husband whose behaviour in diverse situations is foregrounded : he is baldly given as typical, and there endeth the argument .
Adele is the wifely counterpart : archetypal Creolian mother-woman and Pelican who would give her life for her children(51), she is the only one to emerge from the bevy of ministering angels and be foregrounded in detail . She sews winter night garments(9) for her children in the summer . Her pregnancies occur biennially, the current one by the process of beginning to think of a fourth(9)--with the ironic inference of spontaneous fertilisation, since that is all her mind is on--and to this end we have the concomitant fainting-spells and taking the hour's rest which she considered helpful(22) . These are the tokens of her Pelican role, a role lived, not played . But the game is given away, and Adele's hypocrisy comes through, in other respects . Her children are not individuated, whereas Edna's are : in sex-category (boys), in behaviour--they constantly tumble(7/8/12/32), and in personality : The little Pontellier boys...making their authority felt (25) . Although two of the three Ratignolles are of an age with the Pontellier boys, all three are categorised as babies(9) or as little ones(13) : their individuation lies in amorphous, non-sexual, impersonal babyhood . And to preserve the facade, Adele is beginning to think of a fourth . But as for real children, Adele retreats from the children playing games under the oaks, because their voices were high and penetrating(13), just as Leonce retreats from the chattering birds (1) . Adele eschews what does not smack of maternity or babyhood, and in token of this she is given only one instance of proximate contact with her children (13), where the credibility of fond, encircling arms is annulled by the hyperbole of a thousand endearments .
Edna and we have this paragon as sole exemplum of Creolian mother-woman, and for this reason I thought the case for Edna's departure from type was authorially hyped . On reflection, I can see that Chopin enacts sparingly because one suffices for all : it is corresponsive rendition ; non-individuation because the mother-women have, beyond their role, no wish to individuation, whether of themselves, or of their children beyond the state of babyhood .
As was said earlier, the awakening Edna has been preconditioned to, and is ongoingly subject of, a range of determining factors . By contrast with Creolians, she is strikingly individual, which may, provisionally, be attributed to the early death of her mother--just as Robert and Victor, whose father died early, are persona with personality . There is, also, the underlay of Protestantism, which, with its stress on personal communion with God, promotes the sense of individuality, and sees accumulated wealth as signs of election . What is unusual in The Awakening is that Edna sees this religion as anti-individual---religion took a firm hold upon me ; after I was twelve and until-until-why, I suppose until now...-just driven along by habit(17)---and, as a component of her preceding torpor, is something now to be set aside . Her reason can doff the formal, yet as determinant her religion is intrinsic to, and ongoingly asserted in, her burgeoning individuality . The manifold Self is the God with whom Edna now communes, and as signs of election to Selfhood she stocks the 'pigeon-house' with whatever was her own in the house, everything which she had acquired aside from her husband's bounty(91) .
No more than she escapes the Presbyterian imprint does Edna change from the child solitary who is friendly only with the self-contained(18) . For the awakening Edna, this early type is now actualised in the serene queen of Creolia, Adele . Edna's tragedy is that her awakening experiences are novel in their sensorialness---here it is the excessive physical charm of the Creole [that] had first attracted her, for Edna had a sensuous susceptibility to beauty(14)---so that what she believes to be new parameters of individuality are simply a luxurious re-staging of old scenarios . The same may be said of her earlier admiration and mimesis of the intellectually gifted, and her self-development through contact with such a one : Mlle Reisz is now the exemplum of a talented individual who, in artistic terms, can successfully exist apart from, yet within, Creolia, and out of their mutual contact Edna nurtures an appreciation of classical music, while self-developing as a painter . The old prefigures the apparently new .
Three other determinants from Edna's home background, and then I will move on to marital determinants . I would categorise these three as fecklessness, polar progression, and the gambling instinct . Edna's father has frittered away the blue-grass farm in Kentucky(75) at the horse-races : in New Orleans, Edna becomes a track-devotee, and also staked her father on his last venture, with the most gratifying results to both of them(75) . Moreover, his fecklessness then and now is residual in Edna : she 'liberates' herself by moving just two steps away to a little four-room house around the corner(85) . She does not actively oppose Leonce's bras long extending from New York, nor does she expose the artifice used, nor does she definitively cut the marriage ties : 'And you are going abroad ?' 'Perhaps...' (119) . She frequently manifests resignation : she had abandoned herself to Fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference(112) . Lastly, for all the 'manifold Edna' she discovers in herself, there appears to be no restorative inner resource, for on rainy or melancholy days Edna went out and sought the society of the friends she had made at Grande Isle(79) . 'Polar progression'--a move in the opposite direction, not willed, but as a reaction against--may in Edna have its roots in the fact that she and her younger sister, Janet, had quarreled a good deal through force of unfortunate habit(18), and it is first clearly seen in her response to the violent opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic(19) . Edna frequently ruminates on her sense of failure as Creolian wife, mother and hostess--a sense promoted by the ever-complaining (in private) Leonce . Her move to the pigeon-house is a reaction against his complaints and his conception of what she should be . Of Edna's Tuesday callers (55), Mrs Highcamp is the only one invited to the House-colding Party : presumably because Leonce thought that the less you have to do with Mrs Highcamp, the better(55) . Leonce regularly has dinner served at half-past seven (54) : Edna has the House-colding Party commence at half-past eight(93). These, granted, are minor integers of 'polar progression', but it is more serious in its effects on an Edna trying to come to terms with her existential condition when it produces scenarios for further involvement with her sacred (Robert) and profane (Alcee) lovers . We find that Edna's desire to see Mademoiselle Reisz had increased tenfold since these unlooked-for obstacles had arisen to thwart it(63), and the result of her efforts is the occasion to read Robert's letters to Mlle Reisz, thus to make the Cheniere and all a living memory . Or, again, one may read that to Leonce's imperious manner towards servants (58) is Edna's opposing familiarity (91) : an ambience to which Alcee takes with gusto and self-deprecating humour, and which binds their alliance . A separate strand of 'polar progression' is Edna's move away from the advocated female role to a male stance . It is Edna, yet, I think, male eyes that view Adele's negligee which left her arms almost wholly bare and exposed the rich, melting curves of her white throat(59) . At the Jockey Club, she did not perceive that she was talking like her father(80) . And, again, at Mlle Reisz, Edna drank the liquor from the glass as a man would have done(85) . These and the other instances of 'polar progression' mark 'changes' in Edna's life, lifestyle and personality, but the 'change', the new-ness, is only apparent : an opposing response is, for Edna, an ongoing character-determinant .
The most signal marital determinant is seen in Edna's transition to the pigeon-house and into the house-proprietor role formerly held by Leonce . No surviving on chocolates and coffee in a garret for the sake of individuality and art : Edna will be artistic and individual, on the caste foundation that old Celestine...says she will come and stay with me and do my work(86) . Moreover, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself(86), yet it is alright for Celestine to 'belong' to her, alright for the company of friends from Grande Isle being sought solely as anodyne for rainy or melancholy days(79), alright for Mlle Reisz to be trotted round to entertain Father while he is posing (73) . In short, Edna becomes a Leonce, seeing friends or servants as objects fitted to a role which he/she apportions . Just as Leonce was eager to be gone, as he looked forward to a lively week in Carondelet Street (7), so the awakening Edna packs off Father, husband and children, and joyously rediscovers the marital home, the kitchen, the garden, the fact that it was so pleasant, too, to dine in a comfortable peignoir(78) . Just as Leonce promises bonbons and peanuts(3) for the children, Edna ordered a huge box of bonbons for the children at Iberville(88)--in each case, it is a woman who is left to tend the children at a distance : Edna at Grande Isle, the mother-in-law at Iverville . Edna moves away from Creolian mother-woman role to that of Creolian father-man .
The fact that such woman to man role-change can in such a short space be so easily effected says that there is nothing intrinsically sex-related in one or the other role, and that there is not much substance to these roles . Edna, caught in the flux of awakening reason and sensualness, never gains this overview, for the purposes of self-definition . On the lesser roles she tries out---music-lover, horse-race expert--- she comes closer, and can reach conclusion : Edna...could not help wondering if she had lost her taste for music(80) ; 'I've had enough of the races...' (82) . But in the main she finds herself caught in the alternations between hope and despair, joy and melancholy, old roles and the old with the appearance of the new . Edna's tragedy is that she sees herself as a substance which in the alembic of liberty will, through social and artistic interactions and opportunities, substantially change, whereas unawares she is in fact catalyst . She is herself catalyst in that all the new-ness, all the change, simply manifests the florescence of determinants long unactivated in the sleeping places of her soul . She is catalyst to others : to Robert and Leonce . By her presence , Robert is seen to break from the cavalier servente role, to actualise the bearded story of going to Mexico, and to return thence sexually aware [See his response I knew her well enough (109) to her I know him pretty well(107)] . Before Edna awakens, there are three working proprietors happy with their endowment, work status, and financial status quo within Creolia : Monsieur Ratignolle, Madame Lebrun, and Mr Pontellier . Of these, Leonce is the sole one in constant, proximate contact with an Edna unfitted by nature or by instruction for Creolia . He is also the sole proprietor who, like Robert, breaks out of Creolia, to ply his skills in the Northern stock-broking heartland, Wall Street .
In Camus' L'Etranger , the character Meursault 'inexplicably' commits a murder that is put down to the impact of the sun on him . In Chopin, the awakening of the heroine child-woman, Edna, to action and individual potentiality is often couched in respect of her relation with the sea, and she finishes her life there . She experiences the sensual embrace of the sea, that breaks upon the beach in little foamy crests that coiled back like slow white serpents (29) . The adult Edna, on the verge of death, feels the foamy wavelets [which] curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles (124) . One notes, first, that 'white', the emblem of innocence, qualifies 'serpents', the stock symbol of the Edenic tempter to the Fall . The logic of this conjunction is that the sea is passive scenario for, not the promoter of, Edna's awakening to sensual awareness . Or--more likely-- the 'serpents' are 'white' schematically as well as symbolically : placed just before, and therefore not as yet guilty for, Edna's awakening in the waves . This latter view is reinforced in the second quotation, where the sea is actively sinuous in its meeting with an Edna who has by now run a fair gamut of sensual awareness . But now it is Edna who is qualified by white : a paradox if her awakening is read from a Biblical standpoint . The solution, I think, lies in the recurrence of the adjective foamy . 'Aphros' is Greek for 'foam', and 'Aphrodite' means 'foam-born' . The Edna who who was like the little tottering, stumbling clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone(29) is undoubtedly intended to represent Aphrodite/ Venus Anadyomene, and the later sexually vital Edna who walks into the sea with white feet, as a paradox, is solved in the hypostatic potentiality in one Venus of Sacred and Profane Love .
The Venus tradition is, I think, the main motif is an analogical pattern in The Awakening that is syncretistic . It features Eden (serpents, Edna, carnal awareness), Baudelaire's La Chevelure [the young woman's...hair, loosened from its confining cap, became an inspiration . While Edna worked she sometimes sang low the little air ''Ah ! si tu savais !'' It moved her with recollections (62)] and Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter [She went and stood at an open window and looked out upon the deep tangle of the garden below . All the mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the perfumes and the dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and foliage(56) ]. In both these literary analogues, Edna is identified with the male subject, Baudelaire or Guasconti, as marking her adoption of the male role . And, lastly, regarding Longfellow's Evangeline, to the Acadian lovers, Evangeline Bellefontaine and Gabriel Lajeunesse, we have Edna and Robert on the Cheniere, with evocations of Acadia, and Chopin's pair obtaining refreshment from a youth...mild-faced Acadian...drawing water from the cistern (38) .
These analogues, apt in situ, do not distract--because not consistent motifs--from the main Venus motif, that is consistently held, its apparent variation corresponding to the various aspects of the Venus tradition :
Venus Pudica : the blushing Edna who is ashamed at reading a racy book, and shocked at talk in public of accouchements ;
Venus Anadyomene : Edna born from the sea--Chopin's symbolic overlay and intent contrasting with the self-liberated Edna's notional symbolism of correlating 29th birthday with House-colding Party ;
Venus Genetrix : Figuratively, Edna is biological Genetrix : the tumbling boys are not idees recues that the awakening Edna can discard, but are, rather, enfants recus, to whom Edna has a biological tie and role which cannot be dropped . Her acknowledgment of this fact in the interview with Dr Mandelet ['Man-delay' : the seer-doctor pushes back the 'man' who has flourished in Edna, by stressing the inescapable fact of Venus Genetrix in Edna and everywoman] is a marker of her 'delivery' into adulthood ;
The Toilet of Venus : Edna, looking tired and a little travel-stained(122), who goes down to the beach [to] take a good wash and even a little swim, before dinner(123) . This episode is against a latent motif concerning Mardi Gras/Shrovetide : the Edna as wife and hostess has her weekly social gatherings scheduled for Tuesday/'Mardi '. Then, They were delicious February days(101) at liberty, but Leonce promises to return in early March/'Mars' . Further, a sort of purification takes place in the Mandelet interview (119-20), that features Edna's confessed awareness of her limitations, and finishes on Mandelet's father-confessorial Goodnight, my child(120) ;
La Belle Dame Sans Merci : Robert, to Edna : Mrs Pontellier, you are cruel(108) ; No; I only think you cruel...Maybe not intentionally cruel(114) ; Mandelet, of Adele : Adele is full of whims...I felt that it was cruel, cruel(119) .Evidently, this aspect of Venus is not used uniquely about Edna, and, coming from the seer-doctor, it is not felt to be so subjective as Robert's ascription of cruelty . I can only note the conjunction of Genetrix and Belle Dame Sans Merci in the labouring Adele's existential state, and, with Edna, in ideas put to her concerning her character-definition---and leave it at that ;
Venus Urania and Pandemos--Sacred and Profane Love : Leonce is in the mould of Creole husband [who] is never jealous ; with him the gangrene passion is one which has become dwarfed by disuse(11), and wife Edna is satisfied that no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby threatening its dissolution (19) . In Creolia, Profane Love is eschewed or disused . As for Sacred Love, it is channeled into mother-woman as Godhead and stereotype : a process in tune with a mindless, unimaginative group who read Daudet and Goncourt, naturalistic authors, who expect a painting to be realistic--The picture completed bore no resemblance to Madame Ratignolle . She was greatly disappointed to find that it did not look like her (12)--and whose artistic tendencies are regulated into soirees musicales or put into service to the development of one-/two-tune prodigies .
The awakening Edna moves away from this passion-less marriage and mind-less ambience into relationships with Alcee and Robert, in which, respectively, her awakening sensuality and awakening mind flourish . Alcee dons a dust-cap as grotesquely as he could (91), and helps with the removals--hardly a stereotypic rake . As for Robert, When Etienne had fallen asleep Edna bore him into the back room, and Robert went and lifted the mosquito bar that she might lay the child comfortably in his bed (42-3) . The relationship with Alcee is sexual, and develops on and after the move to the 'pigeon-house' [doves are an attribute of Venus] . The relationship with Robert is of greater duration, and to it is attached the sense of something special : Robert never assumed this serio-comic tone when alone with Mrs Pontellier (11) . Then, Edna's intuition takes her to Catiche's, which is frequented by Robert . Also, they are first seen together, sharing some utter nonsense ; some adventure out there in the water (3) . And they share in the seminal experience of the day on the Cheniere : they transcend reality there through the novelty in Creolia of an exercised imagination--in effect, they share in a mental conception , the product of the non-sexual consummation of a Sacred Love . The pair are avoided by the other people on the Cheniere, as mortals eschew the immortal : the Grande Islers return to chez Lebrun ; Madame Antoine leaves them alone and does not return till late ; Tonie will not even return because Edna is there . Talk of being asleep for 100 years firms out the notion--and their sense-- that this is an experience of eternity .
When Edna is called to Adele's parturition, the Sacred Love liaison has just been reactivated after an interview distinguished by the antiphonal I knew her well enough (109) and I know him pretty well(107). Sexual knowing, Profane-ness, is admitted now to what before was Sacred : He kissed her with a degree of passion which had not before entered into his caress, and strained her to him (117) . The sexual liaison with Alcee is yet current and active . The combination, in one liaison with Robert, of Sacred and Profane Love is intimated . It is thus that Edna goes off to the parturition, and then into the Mandelet interview . It has to be read that Edna is then 'delivered' into adulthood not just because she acknowledges the fact of woman's biological tie with children : the potentialities now in the liaisons, especially the promise of satisfactorily combining mind and sensuality in the Robert-relationship, have to be contributory factors to the 'parturition' which 'delivers' the adult Edna .
The promise is soon discovered to be left unfulfilled, as Robert departs, and Edna is left with Alcee, Profane Love and the prospect of a continuing unimaginative sensual relationship with him and with the world--a world from which eternity has subjectively been excised . Her end at Grand Isle in the sea is predominantly sensual, and for this reason I do not think it planned . The world she has left to her is sensual . The sea is sensuous in its embrace, and her last thoughts are not thoughts as such : not 'the past flitting before one's eyes', but sounds and smells of home--the home which has determined her being . Edna is hoist on her own petard : 'her own' by transmission, not self-creation . And as such she is beyond criticism .
