We're are all animals

While I was considering my paper topic, I started thinking of the animal appearances in Chopin's The Awakening. We discussed this a  bit in class, but I would like to take it a little further. Much of our critism of the Edna and the story has to do with our own morals and judgments about what is and is not proper. Looking at Edna's life through the lense of any seemingly sensible person would allow an arrival at all of the conclusions we have come to as a class. Do I really like Edna's character? I do on account of how incredibly interesting she is. Do I condone her actions? I would never.Does any of this matter? Giving this book a different reading, I believe the answer is no. I think that Chopin wants us to first see this book through our moralistic eyes and then maybe dig for something deeper. The element of animals in this story appear only a few times, but each time it represents something larger and more meaningful. When Robert and Edna are together, Robert says: “Climb up the hill to the old fort and look at the little wriggling gold snakes, and watch the lizards sun themselves" ( Chopin 39). I passed this statement over quickly at first, but then realized it meant something more. The descriptive words like riggling and gold paired with the indulgent sunning of themselves mirrors the life that Edna wishes to have. Through our human eyes she is selfish and a fool, but in the eyes of animals, fidelity really doesn't matter.
This animal motif continues with another snake reference. When Edna visits Madame Ratignolle, her hair is described as being "in along braid on the sofa pillow, coiled like a golden serpent" (Chopin 114). Madame Ratignolle's snake is coiled whereas Edna's was wriggling. This further represents the difference in the lives of these women. The final serpent allusion appears when Edna's final moments of life brings her to the ocean. She decribes the water as "foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles" (Chopin 120). The coiled snakes wrap around her ankles, as if they were the ones that caused her to walk into the ocea.
The lack of place for a woman like Edna during this time is shown even further by our own judgment of her character. She would have done well in a place that embraced the animalistic nature in humans. The snake, that has been used as a religious reference symbolizing a woman's downfall is reclaimed in this story, as a sort of animal spirit.