In the article by Katherine Kearns titled “The Nullification
of Edna Pontellier”, the author’s purpose was to talk about how Edna’s suicide in
the water symbolizes birth as well as death. The Author makes many great points
one being that Edna’s ‘awakening’ helped her to stir up great powers, she
starts to realize that she has many strengths and she wants to change her life.
The author compares Edna to Sleeping Beauty because it is better for the public
when she is sleeping, kind of like how it was better for the people around Edna
before she has her awakening. A second great point that Kearns makes is “… that
once one’s egoism is a defined condition, it may awaken a profound self-disgust
and weariness.” This is important because it provides a valid reasoning for why
Edna had even started to go on this search for herself, maybe she was disgusted
by herself for taking things from her husband for so long. Also she makes the point
that It is hard for a women to see a vision of herself while looking into a masculine
mirror. All of these points lead up to one important one, that the future in
Edna’s eyes is not a mystery that she never attempted to penetrate, but it was
a foregone conclusion that she perceives to bring on her suicide. The author proves is that Edna’s love for
Robert will subside and that her kids will have to suffer from her if she did
not suffer from her own death and that the sea mirrors the soul’s abyss which
could be the reason that the author of this article believe Edna’s suicide
symbolizes birth and death. I believe that the author did a great job at proving
her point; the article truly helped me to see that her suicide can be portrayed
as birth and death. I agree with the
author’s thesis because she did a great job at getting her point across.
Overall I truly enjoyed reading the article.
