A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Suicide in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening

Abstract

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) has been subject to controversial interpretations, often arousing hostility and disregard among both critics and readers. Particularly, the protagonist’s suicide has been largely debated, being considered as the failure of Edna’s awakening and of the attempt to claim her individuality. However, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate that her death is not a failure, rather a triumph: it is the only way Edna finds to freely express herself against any social constraint and break all the chains that limited her will. Starting from Kristeva’s concept of the ‘abject’ firstly introduced in Powers of Horror (1982), Edna’s ultimate gesture will be analyzed from a psychoanalytic point of view – through the reading of Freud’s most significant writings, The Ego and the Id (1922), Civilization and its discontents (1929) and Beyond the pleasure principle (1920). In short, it will be argued that Edna’s awakening, resulting from the traumatic confrontation with the evils of Nature, is what will actually lead her to suicide, interpreted as the liberation of the deepest drives of Edna’s unconscious.