The Awakening Criticism

In Virginia Ross’s criticism, “Kate Chopin’s Motherless Heroine”, the author tries to prove that the main reason behind Edna Pontellier’s actions was a yearning for a mother.  The author points out the many instances in which Edna is drawn to Adele Ratignolle.  Edna is in admiration of Adele’s physical beauty throughout the novel.  Ross explains that “Edna is drawn to Adele because of Adele is the embodiment of maternity defined by her current pregnancy and her ministrations to her children.”(Ross 254).  Edna seems to be jealous of the special bond that Monsieur Ratignolle and Adele Ratignolle share such as a child feeling excluded from their parents’ intimacy.  Adele is compared to the Madonna by Edna.  With this act, Edna is comparing Adele to a symbol of unconditional maternal comfort that is absent from her Protestant background.  Ross also points out the way in which Edna describes the sea with a shift from prose style to more alliterative language.  Before she met Robert, Edna had only admired men from a distance and did not use the same type of language to describe them as she did with the sea.  Throughout this criticism there are a few psychological terms that are mentioned that help to explain Edna’s actions.  These refer to stages in child development proving how childlike Edna was.  Ross makes a point that “Sadly, the woman [Mr. Pontellier] expected always to carry out the maternal role turns out to have an urgent need for a mother herself. “   I believe that the argument was presented very strongly.  Ross writes that “…Edna’s choice to go to Adele instead of inventing a pretext and staying with her lover, who has seemed to be her sole preoccupation for many months, is more convincingly explained by the supposition that her tie to Adele is actually the stronger attachment.”  This statement convinced me to agree with Ross on Edna’s yearning for a mother.  I was very confused throughout the novel as to why Edna did the things that she did.  Many of her actions and thoughts seem to contradict each other.  Ross’s theory seems to be consistently supported throughout the entire novel and helped me to make better sense of the protagonists’ motives.