The Awakening by Kate Chopin: A "Yeah" Post

The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a required summer reading book for my English class this coming year. I've had the audio book in my iTunes since my May hospital stay, but hadn't gotten around to listening to it. I originally intended to maybe just stick one of my summer reading essays into this post; Thought I'd take the easy way out. But this will not work for several reasons.

1. Despite the fact that I finished this book on July 27th (yeah, yeah, I put off writing this blog post), I have yet to completely finish an essay. My drive has been about 0 lately.
2. I have thoughts about this book that aren't covered in any of the assigned essays.
3. I hate everything formal I’ve written lately.

So. Here goes.
I want to talk to you (and by you I mean basically no one, since the only person known to have consistently read this blog is no longer going to read it) about sexuality and perceptions. I've expressed my opinions on sex before in this blog (see my Brave New World post) but I want to discuss it further and how it relates to this novel. I'm not talking about the act itself; I'm talking about the societal views on sexuality, the emotions attached to it, the double standards, the negative connotations, etc.
So. Yeah. Here it goes. For real this time.
In the beginning of The Awakening the reader sees Edna Pontellier in a domestic situation. She is with the other "mother-women" of Grand Isle, talking to them as her husband goes away to his club and her children play with the nanny. The mother-women are the... motherly type. They are caring, kind and fulfill all of the roles that domesticity puts upon them. They have “protective wings” unlike Edna’s developing wings of freedom or ultimate broken wings.
I hate them, the mother-women. I hate their flatness and I hate their subservience.
Yet I love them. I love their simplicity and I love their lack of real cares. Wouldn’t it be nice to have no feelings but duty and no role but to perform the duties given to you?
Edna Pontellier, comparatively, is a whore. Or at least that's what she turns herself into. She cannot be a "mother-women" because she awakens to her sexuality, her sensuality and her passionate desire for independence. She falls for Robert, then for Arobin. She cannot find a medium between pure, sacred, domestic Madonna and a dirty, flighty, lusty whore.
I hate her, Edna Pontellier. I hate her flatness and I hate her objectification.
I love her. I love her drive and her… her spunk.
...
Obviously, I'm a little conflicted here. I wish that in society, everyone could accept complex people. I wish that people didn't need to have labels. I wish, as John Green would say, that someone could look into the eyes of another and see their brown-ness and their person-ness; that someone could see all of person- the good, the bad, the Madonna, the Whore, the ego, the subconscious, the id- at the same time. That these parts could be seen to form a homogenous mixture instead of a heterogeneous one. That they could be seen as ingredients that blend to make a person, not entirely separate facets of a personality (or worse, entirely different people). But it's difficult. And I worry about it.
…
I know, when I think about it, that people can do this. I can do this. It’s hard for me sometimes, but I can do this. I hate pedestals- they are my biggest personal fear of a personal flaw. Yet I do the thing I fear sometimes. I put people on pedestals. And when those pedestals crumble, there are problems.
…
I really didn’t like this book. It made me think (which is good), but I really didn’t like this book.
…
The main point of this post was supposed to be sexuality and how society views it so negatively. But I guess it wasn't really. But still: I hate the word “dirty”, I've said this before. I hate sweeping generalizations and the concept of having the Madonna for a wife and the Whore for a mistress. I hate Freud for ever thinking of this complex, even though it would have existed anyway without a name. But maybe if he hadn’t named it, people wouldn’t use the word whore. Because I don’t like that. People are complex. No one’s a whore unless it’s a job title, but it’s rarely used that way.
…
This post is a bit all over the place. I could edit it and refine my ideas a bit. But no one reads this. So yeah. Not going to bother.