The Awakening of Aphrodite

    Kate Chopin's, The Awakening, begins and ends at a seaside resort on Grand Isle. It is here, in the nearby magical waters of the Gulf, that Edna Pontellier's sleeping inner self awakens, transforming her into the powerful goddess of love and art, Aphrodite.  It is also at Grand Isle where the goddess is borne back into the sea at the novel's end.  The nearby Gulf is used to express the mysticism and wonder that accompanies the resurrection of Aphrodite and her attempt to find paradise.
    Although Edna does not "awaken" (that is to say, Aphrodite does not rise from the foamy depths) until her moonlit midnight swim, there is much foreshadowing to this phenomenal event ghroughout the novel by the use of water imagery.  Within the first few chapters of the book , the importance of the Gulf is obvious.  It is during a walk along the beach, where "the voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude," that Edna begins "to realize her position in the universe as a human being." At this point, however, Edna is only bewildered by her thoughts and the "voice of the sea [which] speaks to the soul." [Chapter VI]
    During her conversation with Adele Ratignolle, Edna first begins to loosen her guard of reserve that always enshrouds her. Appropriately, this talk, in which Edna describes her search for meaning, also takes place next to the ocean.  Edna makes the connection between the endless stretch of water before her and a summer day from her childhood in Kentucky.  She remembers when she walked, as if swimming, through "a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean...beating the tall grass as one strikes out in the water." [Chapter VII]  Here, Edna is beginning to associate and compare her childhood, a time when she was free, to her present state of social entrapment.  Perhaps she also recognizes, if only subconsciously, the complete freedom available to her in the blue expanse of the sea.
    The obvious oceanic imagery is continued when Edna experiences an emotional upheaval while listening to Mademoiselle Reisz play Chopin" "The very passions themselves were aroused withing her soul, swaying it, lashing it as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body."  This description is a prelude to Edna's following baptismal swim.  It is her reaction to the music that puts into motion her subsequent transformation.
    Following Mademoiselle Reisz's performance, someone suggests a bath in the Gulf "at that mystic hour and under the mystic moon."  It is during this magical dip that Edna completes her awakening and emerges into the woman she truly is. Edna's moment of truth coincides with her discover of how to swim, which obviously symbolic of her self-reliance and independence.  The fact that her premier swim takes place in the waters of the Gulf places her in the magical element of absolute freedom that baptizes her and allows the transformation into the child she was as the arisen Aphrodite.
    The traditionally female mythical associates of moonlight and water enhance the atmosphere into Aphrodite is born.  Once Edna awakens, she begins swimming "as is some power of significant import had been given her" and she aspires "to swim far out, where no woman had swum before."  Edna swims away from her husband and her old life into a female paradise where there is the "heavy perfume of a filed somewhere near" and the waves breaking the beach "in little foamy crests like slow, white serpents."  This paradise seems to depend on the reversal of conventional theological images.  While remembering her childhood, Edna remembers "running away from prayers." She was running away from patriarchal theology and into the open wildness of feminine nature.  Edna's experience expands as she learns not to run but to swim.  Chopin's Aphrodite is born of the sea and born specifically because the colony where she comes to consciousness is essentially a women's colony, run by a single woman and dominated by the mother-women.  It is situated outside of patriarchal culture, beyond the limits and limitations of the city where men rule.
    Although Robert does not know what Edna has experienced during her swim, he tells her of the very spirit that has risen from the Gulf and transformed her into the goddess of love.  It is at this time, during their walk back to the cottages after quitting the midnight bath, that their relationship changes. Robert begins playing Adonis to her Venus as they sit on the porch and fall into an erotic silence.
    The Aphrodite imagery is continued at Edna's dinner party.  This is her most authentic act of self-definition; she actually plays the part she has metaphorically become.  It is this Last Supper at which takes place the final transformation of will and desire into bread and wine, flesh and blood.
    Edna sits enthroned at the head of the table.  She wears a crown-like jewel and a gown of gold and lace the color of her skin.  Her whole appearance and attitude suggest something regal; she is "the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone." [Chapter XXX]  Ironically, Victor later says that "Venus could have presented no more entrancing a spectacle than Mrs. Pontellier, blazing with beauty and diamonds at the head of the board." [Chapter XXIX]  Edna presides over a table covered in pale yellow under lace, heaped with red and yellow blooming roses and lit by candles under yellow silk shades in massive brass candelabra.  Gold, silver, and crystal cover the table and add to the richness of the setting.  The whole room has the air of a pagan celebration, a feast of the gods.
    However, in Robert's absence, it is Victor who is crowned Adonis.  Mrs. Highcamp weaves a garland of roses and places them atop Victor's black curls, transforming him into the vision of a sensual god.  It is this impersonation and then Victor's singing of Robert's song that seems to stir Edna into practicing her godly powers that bring the party to an end.
    The dinner party is Edna's only real noble act before the inevitable betrayal by a culture in which a regenerated Aphrodite had no meaningful role.  Edna can think of only one way "to elude" a society that keeps trying to put her back in her proper domestic place.  She answers the seductive voice of the sea that calls her to lose herself in its "mazes of inward contemplation" and promises a sensuous touch that will enfold her body in a soft close embrace. [Chapter VI]  Edna returns to Grand Isle for a last suicidal swim.  She divests herself "the unpleasant, prickling garment" of her old life as a "real" woman--a wife, mother, and mistress--and stands "naked under the sky!...like some newborn creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known."  However, Edna's last swim is not a true suicide; they "foamy wavelets [that curl and coil] like serpents about her ankles" tell us she is not journeying toward death, or even rebirth, but toward an imaginary world beyond the restrictive culture--a world in which women might be as free as the mythical Aphrodite.  Edna swims away from the white beach of Grand Isle, from the empty summer colony and the equally empty fictions of marriage and maternity.  She swims not into death but into her own life, back into her childhood.  Edna is still swimming in the last sentence, swimming toward the pagan paradise where "there [is] the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks [fills] the air." [Chapter XXXIX]  Defeated, even crucified, by the "reality" of nineteenth century New Orleans, Chopin's resurrected Venus returns to the watery paradise from whence she came.