Chapter III of The Awakening stood out to me in several ways. A particular section from this chapter that really drew my attention was:
“He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation.
Mr. Pontellier had forgotten the bonbons and peanuts for the boys. Notwithstanding he loved them very much, and went into the adjoining room where they slept to take a look at them and make sure that they were resting comfortably. The result of his investigation was far from satisfactory. He turned and shifted the youngsters about in bed. One of them began to kick and talk about a basket full of crabs.
Mr. Pontellier returned to his wife with the information that Raoul had a high fever and needed looking after. Then he lit a cigar and went and sat near the open door to smoke it.
Mrs. Pontellier was quite sure Raoul had no fever. He had gone to bed perfectly well, she said, and nothing had ailed him all day. Mr. Pontellier was too well acquainted with fever symptoms to be mistaken. He assured her the child was consuming at that moment in the next room.
He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother’s place to look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business. He could not be in two places at once; making a living for his family on the street, and staying at home to see that no harm befell them. He talked in a monotonous, insistent way” (11-13)
This passage draws on the ongoing expectations of women to be perfect mothers and wives that is so perpetrated within society–and continues to be. One of things I found most interesting in this chapter is the way that Mr. Pontellier views himself as a husband and the manner in which he thinks of his wife and what her role is supposed to be in his life and their marriage. When he states that he found it “discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation” , it is of interest the way that he sees his wife as a woman who he does everything for, yet he takes no accountability for all the things he ignores doing (11). He frames himself as a victim in his marriage where he lives for his wife while she goes on being ungrateful and disrespecting him. However, he fails to see the many ways that he is ungrateful for his wife. It is intriguing the way he states that his wife is the “object of his existence”, which could either be true or could be a statement of him trying to convince himself that all the times he ignores his wife and leaves her along to take care of the children by herself is because he is working to support her. He is annoyed and feels disrespected that his wife does not want to listen to all the fun he had on his night out, completely disregarding that he woke her up from his sleep and left her all alone to take care of their children while he spent the night partying.
I also found it thought provoking the way in which societal expectations of women and men’s role in marriages play out here. Mr. Pontellier very much supports them, telling his wife that she needs to be a better mother and help tend to Raoul because that is her “place” (12). He also becomes angry, saying that he can’t do everything and that he is not home as much as his wife because he is trying to ensure that “no harm befell them” (13). His actions display the way that patriarchal expectations for women and men make husbands believe that their actions are to support the family. This is a major pressure on Mr. Pontellier, believing that he must do it all for his family to survive and the way he goes about it is because of societal pressures for him to act in such a way. Yet, these expectations placed upon him also benefit him. He is given the opportunity to leave the home, to party, to not need to spend time at home taking care of the children 24/7, and he simply cannot understand this. Because patriarchal standards frame women as being ‘born’ to be mothers, their unpaid labor is framed as natural. Mr. Pontellier does not see what his wife is doing to take care of the children as work. He undervalues it. And in response, Mrs. Pontellier feels utterly alone and over worked. This chapter displays how deeply rooted societal expectations within marriages are and how disregarding the unpaid labor of childcare is deeply damaging to women’s mental and physical well being.
Current Media in this Section
Chapter XV relates deeply to current media surrounding immigration. The quote below, in particular, relates to an Instagram post I saw just yesterday about Trump’s immigration raids and the way that people in support of them believe extremely racist and prejudicial things about immigrants from South and Central America.
“Madame Ratignolle hoped that Robert would exercise extreme caution in dealing with the Mexicans, who, she considered, were a treacherous people, unscrupulous and revengeful. She trusted she did them no injustice in thus condemning them as a race. She had known personally but one Mexican, who made and sold excellent tamales, and whom she would have trusted implicitly, so soft-spoken was he. One day he was arrested for stabbing his wife. She never knew whether he had been hanged or not.
Victor had grown hilarious, and was attempting to tell an anecdote about a Mexican girl who served chocolate one winter in a restaurant in Dauphine Street. No one would listen to him but old Monsieur Farival, who went into convulsions over the droll story.
Edna wondered if they had all gone mad, to be talking and clamoring at that rate. She herself could think of nothing to say about Mexico or the Mexicans” (108-109).
The Instagram post I watched was a street interview of several different people who were in favor of Trump’s immigration raids and the actions of ICE. The interview asked the people why they were in favor of the raids. Many people gave reasons that were either racist or based in false prejudicial stereotypes–the same/similar stereotypes that Madame Ratignolle gave. This interview shows how that discrimination is still present in American society. Some of the people in the interview didn’t care about the raids and that detachment about what is happening is similar to Edna’s actions and thoughts. But such detachment from racial prejudices and horrific actions against immigrants also perpetrates the problem, and trying to tell a joke, as Victor did, to lighten up the conversation ignores combating discrimination entirely.
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