The Awakening

English Literature

Miss Ravenscroft

How does Chopin present Robert Lebrun in ‘The Awakening’ as representative of conventional attitudes to love and relationships in the 19th Century?

Karina Bartlam

The novella ‘The Awakening’ – originally titled ‘A Solitary Soul’ – was written in 1899 by Kate Chopin but was condemned vulgar, morbid and unacceptable for hinting at a sensual awakening in a woman through the protagonist Edna as she grows and develops. Throughout the novella, the conventional attitudes of Creole Society to love and relationships are presented by Chopin through the characters; such as Robert Lebrun, a character presented by Chopin to be immature and a disregarder of society’s attitudes. Later in the novella, Chopin presents Robert to be developing through the choices he makes regarding his forbidden romance with the protagonist; typical feature of love literature. The character Robert Lebrun is depicted as a minor character although a main catalyst to the plot as his love for the protagonist increases her resilience to societies rules for women of that social class.

Chopin immediately presents Robert as ‘young’ suggesting his naïve and immature nature that allows his pursue of married women to be accepted amongst society as the omniscient narrator states “he did not know any better”. Additionally, this could link to his naïve dream of moving to Mexico “he was always intending to go to Mexico, but some way never got there” suggesting the popular dream of finding fortune elsewhere. The adjective ‘intending’ shows a lack of ambition as a character.  Chopin uses Robert’s immature characteristic to show how he defies conventional ideas “Robert talked a great deal about himself”. Contextually, it is important to note that talking was considered a female characteristic, therefore, suggesting that Robert defied society’s attitudes to characteristics of females and males being distinctly separate. Furthermore, Roberts being described as having female characteristics contradicts the setting of Grand Isle as typical male characteristics would have been expected due to the multiple married females ‘needing to be controlled’; a typical attitude for the Creole society.

Similarly, Robert is also presented as conventional by Chopin as his love for Edna causes him to dream of their future “dreaming a wild dream of your some way becoming my wife…dreaming of wild, impossible things, recalling men who had set their wives free”. From this we infer that although divorce was vastly unpopular they were still cases where it had happened. This dream is conventional as Robert simply wanted the conventional marriage, a common wish in the 19th Century, this would have meant leaving his social standing as a gentleman to pursue Edna.