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Itinerant of Calamitous and Passion
Edna Pontellier of The Awakening and Janie Crawford of Their Eyes Were Watching God; their idea of life’s delirium was to find the perfect marriage run by love and find the true joy by and through love. Though they seem to carry the same conflict, they have similarities as well as differences in both of the novels and the characters.
The Awakening is a novel relating the brave journey of a woman named Edna Pontellier who searches within herself to break free from her cage, to find what she truly wants, love. Born and raised Presbyterian, Edna rebels when she is a young teenager and marries into a Creole family, which is generally Catholic, despite her parents’ wishes. His name is Leonce Pontellier and the impact of Catholicism on Edna’s lifestyle leaves her confused and as a trapped bird in a cage. She longs to be happy and thinks that within marriage, love can develop naturally. She finds later that love for her husband can never blossom and the pressures of “wifehood”, (solely taking care of the children, staying home, pressured Rosary praying), a bit overbearing. Along with her lack of affection toward Mr. Pontellier, the shunning of divorce, by Catholicism and the time in which she lives, does not leave her ecstatic but feeling desperate, for she can not break free from her unfortunate, chosen lifestyle.
Because of Edna’s acceptance of society rules, she lives most of her life restrained. Until she starts to explore her own emotions and desires, she is left depressed and lonely. When she does start to emerge, she abandons all of her apparent responsibilities including her husband, children, and religious obligations, and starts to find contentment in Robert Lebrun, a young, vibrant man. They spend much time together and soon fall in love. However, after Mrs. Pontellier’s frivolous Robert runs away leaving only a note, which states, “I love you. Good-bye---because I love you,” (The Awakening pg 155), she finds no hope, no point in life as she knows it. Her last decision is to swim in the ocean until she grows too tired and eventually drowns. This is a cowardice escape but through it, she frees herself from the cage which held her. This chosen option is not the only option. She could have returned to Mr. Pontellier, who selflessly gave his wife freedom to do as she wished, and tried, once again, to love him. However, this was not very logical to her so she chose the latter.
Their Eyes were Watching God tells a story of a woman, Janie Crawford, who longs to discover eternal love and be respected. After being caught kissing a young man, Johnny Taylor, at age sixteen, she is compelled into marrying her first husband by her grandmother. His name is Logan Killicks, an older and wealthier man, who, at first, treats her as he should. However, along with the passing of time comes a passing of respect from him. He demands labor and refers to Janie as unlike his first wife, who “never bothered me ‘bout choppin’ no wood nohow,” (Their Eyes Were Watching God pg 26). This puts her in a state of distraught and disloyalty, bringing her to the conscious decision of leaving him for a younger, more snazzy man, whom is called Joe Starks.
Her second husband, whom she calls Jody, takes good care of her. He brings her to a small, run-down town by the name of Eatonville. There, he is elected mayor and he completely turns things around. “The town had a basketful of feelings good and bad about Joe’s positions and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down,” (pg 50). Janie is soon viewed as a high class woman, envied by the rest of the women in Eatonville. Her husband grows very jealous when the other men of the town notice his wife’s beauty and demands extreme conservativeness from her, refusing her appearance and voice. This is a thing which Janie resents and her love for Jody starts to diminish.
Years go by and Joe begins to age. His body and motivation show deterioration and no one can avoid getting older. Eventually death takes his life and Janie moves on years later, disregarding the “right” amount of time expected to mourn, to an even younger man, Vergible Woods who goes by the name Tea Cake. They run off to the city of Everglades in Florida where Janie she loses her true love. During a severe hurricane, Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog in the cheek. It slowly causes him to go insane and become a huge threat to Janie’s own life. In a desperate attempt at self-preservation, she shoots her lover. After losing what her life yearns for, she returns to Eatonville and disregards all gossip about her - where that “young lad of a boy” (pg 2) is, where “all dat money her husband took and died and left her” went, and how “she sits high, but she looks low,” (pg 3) - knowing she had loved far more deeply than any other woman in that small town had.
These two women become “victims of circumstance” through their decisions. After Edna weds Leonce, she is then expected to be a “mother-woman” ( The Awakening pg 21), someone who “idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grows wings as ministering angels.” Janie lives in a society in which the black “woman is de mule uh de world” (Their Eyes Were Watching God pg 14), not respected and only alive to serve her husband. In response to their similar predicaments, their reverberations are similar as well, for each find some refuge in a man other than their current husband. Edna has an affair with Robert and Janie runs away with a “hot young thing” while married to Logan, and then remarries after Joe Starks dies. Different final results govern the two women however.
“She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father’s voice and her sister Margaret’s. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer slanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.” (The Awakening pg 160)
Suicide - the intentional taking of one's own life. This definition found on dictionary.com is a basic description of Edna’s final stance for freedom. However, when one looks at another definition of suicide, destruction of one's own interests or prospects, a different outlook on her action can be opposite of the initial translation. When viewing Edna as a bird trapped in a cage and her death symbolizing her freedom, her interests are glorified. Her death was beneficial to herself, to her soul, to her being. This is not the destruction of one’s interests but the fulfilling of them and that is not a definition of suicide but rather a definition of living - to support oneself.
“Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God pg 193)
Janie took control of mostly everything in her life. She took the circumstances set before her and harnessed them. She reached her horizon; her ship came in. This boldness, this take-charge attitude, was nothing learned but inherited. It is a gift given to her in which she used bravely and uniquely compared to her own parents and grandmother. She did what she wanted to do, what she felt was right; and though one does not define right and wrong infinitely, one can govern one’s own actions. Janie was not afraid to reach out and take what she wanted nor was she afraid to love more than once. She loved deeply and that is what she wanted most.
Both women longed for the perfect marriage that would be idolized by other couples; one that was so deeply founded in love, as though the roots of a tree were in a brook, strong and steadfast, that it would never fail. Neither protagonist found that specific relationship, but both discovered who they were, what they wanted, and gained so much from the experience of nonconforming to society’s fold, that they both were separate women from whence they started. They were stronger, bolder, and wiser and lived according to what they wanted.
~Kathryn ♥