Articulation and Artistry: A Conversational Analysis of The Awakening

In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the ways in which the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, articulates her feelings about her social position indicate that access to discourse is an important issue to consider in determining the causes of Edna's conflict. Edna's attempts to use language to reposition herself socially, especially in relation to the men in her social circle but also in relation to female characters, demonstrate the importance of language in defining social position. The discourse analysis technique of Norman Fairclough's Language and Power helps to illustrate the ideological aspects of language in the text, and Michael Toolan's conversational turbulence model, presented in "Analysing Conversation in Fiction," elucidates power struggles within conversations. Edna's failure to articulate her feelings and to gain access to discourse contributes to her demise, as does being denied access to her chosen profession of painting, another form of self-expression. Norman Fairclough suggests that dominant ideologies become "naturalized" in society; that is, a system of values and subject positions comes to be accepted as natural, obvious, or correct, or as Fairclough puts it, as "common sense": Conventions routinely drawn upon in discourse embody ideological assumptions which come to be taken as mere "common sense," and which contribute to sustaining existing power relations.... "The familiar common sense world of everyday life," [is] a world which is built entirely upon assumptions and expectations which control both the actions of members of a society and their interpretation of the actions of others. Such assumptions and expectations are implicit, backgrounded, taken for granted, not things that people are consciously aware of, rarely explicitly formulated or examined or questioned. (77) In The Awakening, the subject position of women as wives and mothers is part of the dominant ideology and is taken by the characters to be the most natural of assumptions. For an upper- or middle-class woman to work is a threat to her husband's social status and self-esteem. Lower-class women work because they need to, while upper-class women entertain and run the household. For a woman of Edna's social status to work would imply that her husband is not successful. It follows, then, that a point of conflict in Edna's marriage is her desire to paint. Fairclough raises the issue of "access" in social practice. The "dominant bloc" in a society has easiest access to "cultural capital," including discourse types and professions. In the terms of Chopin's text, the dominant bloc is male (and white); therefore, Edna is denied freedom of choice regarding her productivity. She is not allowed to take painting as her main activity, nor does she have access to the type of discourse that would give her kind a position of power against the dominant ideology that defines her social position. This lack of access lowers her "publicly acknowledged status," and of course the status of women compared to that of men generally is an access issue (64). Dr. Mandelet asks Edna's husband, Leonce, whether Edna is associating with a feminist group that he refers to as "pseudo-intellectual women --super-spiritual superior beings" (86-87). Mandelet's description represents what Fairclough refers to as "overwording," which "shows preoccupation with some aspect of reality--which may indicate that it is a focus of ideological struggle" (115). Mandelet's classification scheme for women is euphemistic yet patriarchal. Women are "pseudo-intellectual," not possessing the higher education or capability to be truly intellectual. Feminists are "super-spiritual"--above religious tradition. (This may refer to the spiritual connotation of the bird metaphor of Mlle. Reisz.) Feminists are also "superior beings," not quite human or natural. His euphemism refers to otherness, difference, and alienation from male ideology as represented benignly by the doctor. …