The Awakening--Humanities Moment

My Awakening 

"12092222126_2edd5d1b8d_o" (CC BY 2.0) by Louisiana Sea Grant

My family and the cultural heritage I was born into taught me that men were just more important than women. I’m not even sure how I came to that conclusion, but it was probably a myriad of overt teachings, observations, and subconscious hints that led me to see myself as inferior to the boys. I actually remember hearing my dad ask, as a way of proving a point, “why do you think the most important contributors in science, art, music, and medicine are all men?”  In my mind it was clear--men were designed smarter and better than women. That was that. My reaction was to be a tomboy--to despise “girly” things in favor of what the boys valued.

At age 14 I moved from Utah to Port Angeles, Washington--a small seaport on the Olympic Peninsula. In 10th grade, Mrs. Hall’s honors English class was assigned to read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. The class groaned, especially the boys, and I grumbled too when I saw the length of it, but I read it and found myself relating. In this novella we get into the head of Edna--a woman who finds herself married and a mother before ever reflecting on her own wishes. The only way forward was through the world men created for her--first marriage, and when that further diminished her identity, an affair with another man. Nothing in her experience made sense to her, and she was lost. In the end she swims to the only freedom she can imagine--her own death.

The Awakening was the first encounter with empathy for the heritage I had inherited as a woman, and I started to see the conundrum women have had to navigate. Most kids in my class repulsed, and revolted at the assignment. They dismissed Edna as a nut case, and the whole novel as  ridiculous. But for me, in Edna I realized for the first time what it means to be a woman--what it means to hold some unconscious hatred of myself, and I began to see myself differently. Edna helped me to relate to other women, instead of rejecting that side of myself in favor of what men traditionally value. At first I felt pity, but then I began to  respect  how women have risen despite the outward opposition, and even more oppressive condescension of men who have tried to protect us by keeping us fragile.

Kate Chopin’s Awakening began my own awakening as a woman. Not that I was going to tell anyone in class that--it took me years to gain that kind of courage, but it began with this “crazy” novella.