Now, please don't hate me for this because I've been here.
I feel that Edna's death at the end is completely premeditated and selfish. She went out to Grand Island to kill herself as it was the source of her greatest pleasure, pain, and her awareness of both. While she was caught for the longest time in the monotonous setting of the household she never thought of her own well-being, and definitely was, at the least, mildly depressed. With her moment of self-realization, she snapped into a world in which she had very little control. Her little lifeline in the hopes for a free life with Robert are shattered when he freaks out and leaves.
(I am inclined to the reading that he is freaked out by realizing that she is independent and thinking, along with knowing that she slept with Arobin. Far from being the paragon of virtue he remembered she has slept with the man about town, in conjunction with realizing that she won't settle down with him it is enough to make him slink out of town with his tail between his legs.)
Now, back to Edna. She went out on that beach with intent to die. She may have told Victor what she wanted for dinner, but she knew that she wouldn't make it. She was keeping up appearances for the children's sake. In many cases of suicide, the friends and family are very confused when they hear the news. Often they protest and say that the last time they had seen the departed it was the happiest they had been in a long time. They have made the choice to leave. They are done. It's the last 100 feet of a marathon run wearing ankle weights. They smile and laugh and cry and end it all. Edna made the choice even though she had a chance to get out. She had a support network, albeit a shaky one due to the lack of understanding of depression in the time period. There were people to help her. Chopin states that "[p]erhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him-" (p 116).
I know that recovering from depression is like crawling up the slippery slopes of Hell itself with weights on your ankles, but damn it, she just gave up and let go. That doesn't sound very awakened to me.
I couldn;t agree more. Edna is by far the most selfish person i have ever read about.
ReplyDeleteIt is impossible to know everything that goes through a persons head before they take their own life. In Edna's case we know that her movements were mechanical. "Edna walked down to the beach rather mechanically, not noticing anything except that the sun was hot" (114). "Despondency had come upon her" the night before (115).
DeleteThese sentences in themselves support the fact that she was not in a clear state of mind.
I find it difficult to blame Edna or see her actions as selfish. Yes she may have been wanting to end her own problems, but like we discussed in class she may have thought her family would be better off without her.
Either way I believe she wasn't thinking clearly. In my opinion it's really hard to blame a person for their actions and to go as far as to call their actions selfish when they are not in the right frame of mind.
Great comment, Dana.
Delete