As I Read

I read this book at the beginning of my college career and fell in love with it. I'm rereading it now getting ready to do a comparison between Scarlett O'Hara in GWTW and Edna Pontellier in the book I'm reading, The Awakening, to talk about the ways in which each one fails and succeeds as a feminist character. I have yet to do the reading to help me create a definition of an ideal feminist character, but in my head... it's impossible to be such a character. The feminist character must not only attempt autonomy, she must achieve and maintain it. This does not involve flinging yourself at a man by the novel's end, when really the one in the mist was yourself. It does not involve swimming out to sea and drowning yourself because you cannot maintain your new identity in the society you just had to beat away. Of course, I know these are high expectations, and if I were to meet a real life Scarlett o'Hara or Edna Pontellier, I'd have nothing to criticize. Still, I can't help but wish that they had some super-human qualities to make them strong and self-sustaining. Anyway, it's a nice day out and I've been sitting in the backyard on a blanket reading. Here are some quotes that have stuck with me:

"The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing."

"She had all her life been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that they concerned no one but herself."

"Edna had once told Madame Ratignolle that she would never sacrifice herself for her children, or for anyone."

"In a sweeping passion she seized a glass vase from the table and flung it upon the tiles of the hearth. She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear."

"It was not that she dwelt upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing."

"...a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium."

"It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier's mind to wonder if his wife were not growing a little unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she was not herself. that is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world."

This last one, I believe is my favorite, though I can relate to the one about wanting to throw and break things, as well. Some might say I inherited that particular trait.