Sunday, February 06, 2005

My review of short scene from Awakening by Kate Chopin

I know that I wrote rubbishly in many places, but don't criticicize me please, because it is the first time when I write what I think about a novel.
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The dinner was not so big; there were a few of guests who “were selected with discrimination.” They were different from each other, and as it seems to me every represented diversity of society and age. Mr. Ratignolle represented the Creole. Mr. and Mrs. Merriman look like people who try to be in the high society. For example, Mr. Merriman was famous for his laugh on other’s jokes. Isn’t it good way to be attached to people who won’t like to know you as an equal?
Mrs. Highcamp, a lady who likes young souls and bodies, who likes to be among youth, male youth, using her daughter. She wants to be younger, I think. Maybe she wants to gain that she didn’t have in her youth, enjoyment of merry time among people of opposite sex. She plays with young Victor, she wants his attention. She saw he didn’t pay a lot of attention to her, but she stays “with easy indifference for an opportunity to reclaim his attention, while he was chatting to prettier Mrs. Merriman. Probably “easy indifference” shows that Mrs. Highcamp was often out of attention. I would say she is some kind of a fly who sticks to man’s body.
Miss Mayblunt, about whom people talk as a “intellectual” woman, seems to use her lorgnettes to make such a view. But who knows. It is interesting to notice that fact, that such intellectual and skillful women as Miss Mayblunt and Mademoiselle Reisz are not married. At least Miss Mayblunt has some companion who was with her on the dinner, Mr. Gouvernail. By the way, the description of him as a “observant” is well done. His comment on the scene with Victor and Mrs. Highcamp was detailed and brief enough to notice what was going on that moment. Words “desire”, “red blood” and “gold.”
The decoration of room reminds a wedding, or heaven, something from angels. Edna was without husband, she felt herself as a queen, “the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.” That moment she was not, at least she didn’t feel herself like that, a decorative addition to her husband who was the host all the time, probably. I said wedding, because of colors of decoration: gold, pale yellow, red and yellow roses. Moreover, “there came over her the acute longing which always summoned into her spiritual vision the presence of the beloved one.” She doesn’t want to be alone, she wants to be with beloved one, but she overpowered with a sense of the “unattainable.” I don’t know, but I think she wanted physical enjoyment, she possessed the desire, but she wanted to be alone, not to be married, not to belong to someone except herself. Maybe it is the explanation why Edna invited Miss Mayblunt and Mademoiselle Reisz. She wanted to be like them, to be the artist and independent woman.

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