Inexorable Birds Symbolism In Chopin's The Awakening

Susan Griffin wrote: “He says that women speak with nature. That wind blows in her ears and trees whisper to her” (14). While the sentiment is beautiful, the dichotomous thinking in patriarchal society that sets up binary separations of male/female and culture/nature along with assumption that women are inherently closer to nature informs these lines, and as Griffin says, this “notion is not intended as a compliment” because “the idea … is an argument for the dominion of men” (Griffin 10). This is particularly true in the Southern conception of woman and land. The earliest colonizers mythologized the New World as the Garden of Eden and, according to Kathryn Seidel, “The ‘possession’ of ‘virgin’ land by its male conquerors set up an inexorable …show more content…
Parrots and mockingbirds were popular pets in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Katherine Grier says that partial reasoning for their popularity came from their “apparent monogamy and devoted parenting” which meant they served as “natural models for middle-class family life” (46), or, more accurately, for the expected role of women during the period. The caged birds and Edna are both expected to stay within the confines of their socially constructed spaces, the cage and the home, and act according to their restrictive societal roles: be seen but not heard, take care of children/model devoted parenting, and entertain but only when their husband/owner asks. Since Chopin’s novel is about Edna’s transformation from the “patriarchal conception of women as passive” (Birkeland 37) to her own bodied subject with agency, these birds also become bodied subjects when they echo her …show more content…
While Edna’s husband Mr. Pontellier reclines on the porch of their vacation home in Grand Isle, the caged parrot repeats “Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!” which translates to “Go away! Go away! For heaven’s sake!” (Chopin 1). Because, according to Lori Gruen, animals and women “serve the same symbolic function in patriarchal society” as a “submissive other,” which preserves “the superiority of men . . . [through capture] as servants to provide for and comfort” (61), the caged parrot on the porch and the mockingbird on the other side of the door are suffering the same oppressed condition as Edna. Thus the parrot’s demands that Mr. Pontellier “Go away!” are symbolic for Edna’s own desire to escape patriarchal oppression as well as its own. In giving the parrot a voice which reflects Edna’s desire for freedom, Chopin transforms the bird from a passive “other” to a “speaking, ‘bodied’ subject” in an emancipatory strategy that Legler says is often found in ecofeminist works of literature (230). The result of Chopin’s “re-mything” nature and the “southern lady” as erotic, speaking, active subjects suggests she was aware of the damaging conception of woman as land and land as woman long before authors were actively writing “postmodern pastorals” in ecofeminist fiction (Legler