SOURCE: Thornton, Lawrence. “The Awakening: A Political Romance.” In Unbodied Hope: Narcissism and the Modern Model, pp. 63-80. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1984.

In the following essay, Thornton examines Edna Pontellier's growing awareness of politics in Creole society in The Awakening.

          The food of hope Is meditated action; robbed of this Her sole support, she languishes and dies. 

—Wordsworth, The Excursion

I

Anyone familiar with The Awakening knows that it echoes characters and events in Madame Bovary, but Chopin's indebtedness to Flaubert stops short of merely imitating the problems Flaubert imagined for his heroine. First of all, while Edna Pontellier and Emma Bovary are both narcissists, Edna becomes aware of political crises related to her position within Creole society that sharply distinguish her from Emma, who responds to French provincial society only as a mirror of her romantic fantasies. Secondly, Edna's existential crisis lasts much longer than Emma's short...