Waiting for Edna

     In the play Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon are alienated from society. They are able then, through this separation, to perceive a world without societal expectations and question the true meaning of life. Kate Chopin first gave the novel The Awakening the title of A Solitary Soul and this is exactly how Edna begins to act now that summer is over, Robert is gone and she finds no real diversion in the city. Edna is willingly placing herself in a situation very similar to the one Vladimir and Estragon where placed in by Samuel Beckett to reflect upon societal repression and existentialism.

      Edna much like the two stooges, Vladimir and Estragon, feel and anxious need to question their environment and why they have to appeal to it. Since her arrival to the city Edna has broken every single rule established for a women like her. She has decided to take long walks through the city looking for nothing in particular, she has left the kids to the mercy of their nanny and she is dismaying the key values of her marriage with Leonce. Leonce is reproachful towards her newly adopted attitude and is seeking help with doctors and other close friends of his. But Edna is now finding herself understanding why she wants to swim further out, why that society is not for her. 

The Ocean

Kate Chopin’s Edna Pontellier and Ken Kesey’s inmates have the same outward conformism to society, but inside are searching for a way to escape such regime; ironically such freedom in both novels is expressed by the vast ocean. Both texts are a harsh critique on society of the time and its methods of segregation towards a certain person or group in society.

On one hand, Kesey’s novel evaluates the approaches of mental hospitals to cure the ill around 1950’s after the war. It was inhuman the way patients were treated with electro-shock therapies to the point of becoming morons, and if that was not enough they were emasculated by a possessive female figure Mrs. Ratchet.  When new inmate Randle McMurphy joins the pool he imposes new revolutionary ideas to rein the Combine. The first time inmates and readers experience true freedom is when McMurphy manages to take a group to the outer world, he convinces Mrs. Ratchet it will be good for them to go on a boat ride. The inmates can finally break out of the induced trance they had been living in and are allowed to see another reality. When in the ocean the prisoners feel free, it is a vast body of water that symbolizes and marks the beginning of the end for Mrs. Ratchet’s electro-shock therapies and crazy treatments.

Edna Pontellier is placed, by Chopin, in a repressed society in which men are the leading figure. Mrs. Pontellier insists she can achieve more than what any woman has done before and is set to achieve it. Her persistence will lead her to alienate from her common mother and wife chores, unsatisfied with the society she is forced to live in. Author Kate Chopin expresses Edna’s desire through the ocean. The character is constantly reminded of her duty as a rebellious woman when she sees the vast ocean. When she first learns to swim, she only gets a few meters away from shore, even though she claims she was miles away. It was a milestone throughout the novel well she can finally feel free. Every little accomplishment she has every step she takes closer to swimming farther out than any woman has done before.

The ocean in both scenarios is a symbol of freedom against a repressed society. In both novels the characters feel pressured to conform to their environment in a simulated happiness. Yet, after the ocean comes in play a glimpse of freedom is perceived by the readers. In many other literary works the ocean, due to its infinite size and places it can take you, has been used to symbolize: escape and free will.