Alright, I'll be honest. I really don't know how I feel about Edna. The class seems to be divided on almost two fronts: (I'm going to be exaggerating a bit)There are the people who believe that Edna is depressed and thus is absolved from almost every action she took. Then there are those who believe that she is incredibly selfish and do not take the fact that she might actually be depressed or the like into account. I do not really know how I feel, so I tend to flip flop a bit in class.
On one hand, I love everything that Edna stands for: independence, wanting to be her own person, seeing the social injustice of society and wanting to take measures to correct it; even if it's only for herself. I see her moving out of her home to be an act of defiance to a corrupt system that sees women as nothing but bobbles to play with and treat as children. I understand why she stepped out on her husband, I believe I can see her thought process and what she wants to accomplish. Edna is testing out her newfound freedom and want very, very badly to just be allowed to do what she wants. In the context of gender relations, that is something that I can get behind.
However, this leads into why I really just don't like Edna. For one, she leaves her family. As stated above, I understand and accept why but I do not believe that makes my internal reaction any less intense. She left her family, her children (who she doesn't care for, I don't care what anyone says) and her husband (who I think might be suffering from protagonist centered morality). These are people who need her, and I honestly believe that some things/people should come before ones own self to a certain level. She hardly thinks of her children, and only seems to care when they are infront of her. When they are together, her acts of weeping and such are so overblown that I cannot take them seriously. Her poor husband is fully abandoned, Edna doesn't speak to him about it and hardly seems to care how he's getting along. It's almost like he wasn't in the situation to begin with, and I am not sure whether or not I approve of that.
I actually kind of like her husband, even though I can not take him seriously as a character. He appears to me to be a caricature, and thus not even an actual character in his own right. Although I give him props, we are never told directly (unless I'm forgetting something) that he gives his children to his mother; thus, he's taking care of them. Probably doing a better job than Edna ever did anyway, but I digress. He's the one who takes responsibility for everything, and even though I hate his views on women and the such, I understand him I think. Plus, in that day and age his fear of how society will view the family is, in my mind at least, completely rational and understanable. Edna is the one who is ruining the family, not him.
You know, I think I might have come to a conclusion about Edna. I believe that I understand her, but by no means do I like her. I'm not going to get into whether or not she has depression or something like that, honestly, that doesn't really factor into too much for me. So that is my conclusion, hey, I have a question. I am the only one who even moderately likes the husband?
I definitely agree. I can't stand Edna. She leaves her family, like you said, and that just seems to be a horrible thing to do not only as a wife and mother, but also as a person. The worst thing was definitely the fact that she drowned herself. that is just the epitome of selfishness in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI don't really care for Edna either. The children thing I'm kind of on the fence about, but in general she seems to have become self-absorbed to the point where other's feelings don't have much significance for her. She goes from the extreme where her feelings aren't listened to or considered important (even by herself) to the extreme of she's the only one that matters. It's good that she's rebelling against the misogynistic attitude of society at the time, but she goes too far in doing it.
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