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Sea Symbolism In The Awakening

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Sea Symbolism In The Awakening
The Sea as A Lover: A Woman’s Quest for Autonomy in The Awakening

When authors use symbolism effectively, readers can begin to understand a work of literature on both the surface level and in an illustrative context, attributing significance to ideas, actions, or even characters themselves beyond what is initially described. In her novella The Awakening, Kate Chopin employs symbolism through a variety of images to reveal particular details about the protagonist, Edna Pontellier. One such symbol is the sea, an essential figurative element. Ivy Schweitzer’s scholarly essay, entitled Maternal Discourse and the Romance of Self-Possession in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, asserts that the sea is a motherly figure lacking in Edna’s life. Though in her critical analysis of The Awakening Schweitzer asserts that the sea is a “maternal space” (Schweitzer 184), I will argue that the sea represents a metaphorical romantic partner for Edna, and that it really is the symbol of an idealized lover that was an impossible reality in Edna …show more content…
Schweitzer claims that the sea is a motherly realm; however, like a lover, “the voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation” (Chopin 18). Though Schweitzer and Chopin allude to the sea as possessing competing metaphorical implications, the former makes the intriguing claim that the sea possesses two internal contradictions: a voice which guides one to solitude through a language without words, and a touch which surrounds one in a gentle, loving embrace (Schweitzer
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