Existentialism in Chopin's The Awakening

A close reading of The Awakening reveals strands of existentialism woven subtly into its literary fabric, most of them associated with Edna Pontellier and the ocean. We see an example in Edna’s response to her husband’s letter: “…all sense of reality had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference” (104). The reference to Fate, spelled with a capital “F” suggests chance or the indifference of the universe to human suffering and life and death. Consciousness invites suffering, and that is what gives rise to Edna’s depression. 

Another example occurs when Pontellier remembers giving birth through the miasma of chloroform. The story’s narrator describes her ordeal as “…an awakening to find a little new life to which she had given being, added to the great unnumbered multitude of souls that come and go” (110). This passage can be interpreted as a reference to fecundity and the transience of life. Pontellier is in the process of birthing spirituality and sensuality, and in some ways she is as careless of the consequences of her actions as the universe is indifferent to our existence or non-existence. Her consciousness is not fully developed; it remains in a state of adolescence. 

Later in the book, Doctor Mandelet describes the existential matrix in which our lives play out: “And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost” (111). “Moral consequences” are a human construct. Nature does not recognize them. But every culture has codes of conduct for which we must bear responsibility. Therein lay not only philosophical angst but also the material for great art.