Dianna Shea O’Briant
Banned Books-
Leader Post 2
2/25/15
Edna VS The
Patriarchy (AKA Leonce)
In the awakening, freedom and nonconformist values are
played with by the main character, Edna. A woman trapped in a loveless
marriage, boring, and strict within the confines of the nineteenth century’s
New Orleans society. Edna changed from being a mindless, almost brainwashed
person in this time going along with anything she is told, but after tasting
little bit of freedom as she vacations at Grande Isle with her female friend
Adele; the embodiment of the perfect mother and woman figure of the family.
Eventually, Edna decides to keep living the freedom she
tasted while at Grande Isle at home, yet everyone but her husband seems to be
okay with Edna Pontellier’s personal ‘awakening.’ Including the doctor who even says that she
“had transformed from the listless woman he had known” into someone who was
“warm and energetic.”
Her Friends; Adele Ratignolle, Robert Lebrun, Alcee Arobin,
Mademoiselle Reisz, and her acquaintances are all people who in the novel
aren’t particularly as fixated on Ednas changes as Leonce is.
As Edna moves more and more to independence, her husband
gets more and more furious of her neglect and freedom as a woman. He seems to
be the embodiment of the Patriarchy and seems to be the stand in motif for
their views about women. They have a role that should be met with specifics to
a “T”: Motherhood, Household Responsibilities, etc. Along with Leonce, Edna’s Father even sides
with Leonce describing that he is “far too lenient” on her and that the only
way to break her out of her newfound ways is to “Put your food down good and
hard; the only way to manage a wife.”
Having all that said,
Is it fair to say that Leonce is the voice of the Patriarchy
throughout this novel?
Do you think that there could be some other motifs that
Leonce and/or Colonel could represent besides the patriarchy?
Could this conclusion be one of the reasons that this book
had so much controversy? Could it be that society at that time was siding with
Leonce and agreeing with their societal values?
Leonce and the Colonel absolutely embody patriarchal ideals, ones that are held as true today as in Chopin's time. Beyond their expectations of Edna complying to set ideas of wife and motherhood, their obsession with control over her is an indicator of their presumed superiority. Leonce may be the worse of the two. He feigns an interest in her happiness, tries to buy her complacency with gifts and trips but these acts have nothing to do with Edna. Its all part of the show that is so important to him. He has to APPEAR to be the perfect, generous husband and father, when she begins to threaten that image he would rather remove himself from her presence than renegotiate the terms of their marriage.
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