The protagonists of Antigone, Madame Bovary, and The Awakening are progressive women who choose to abandon their assumed roles of wives and mothers to instead fulfill their needs as human beings, but they do not necessarily shun a man as a companion and lover, or the role of motherhood. Both Emma Bovary and Edna Pontellier have children, and Antigone desires to have them. Each has at least one man in her life as well. A strange similarity among the protagonists is that each dies of her own will, though their reasons for committing suicide are different. These women are set
apart from many others because they know that the key to their happiness is themselves and they take the necessary actions to accomplish what they feel is best for them.If these characters are said to be "ahead of their time," the time periods occupied by the settings of each work must be considered. Sophocles' Antigone is probably set around the fifth century B.C. During this time, women were expected to be obedient and submissive. If a woman were married and had a family, she was to always put her family first and herself last. Though written thousands of years later, the traditional roles of women in the settings of Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Chopin's The Awakening have not essentially changed. Madame Bovary was written just over one hundred years ago and The Awakening, said to be the "American Bovary," was written a few decades later. During this time period, the middle and late nineteenth century, marriage and motherhood were supposed to be the keys to a woman's happiness and wholeness. However, Antigone, Emma Bovary, and Edna Pontellier are not satisfied with their limited roles, as demonstrated by both their thoughts and actions.
Time after time Antigone oversteps her boundaries as a woman. One of the most significant decisions she makes is to disobey King Creon's edict openly. She "seeks the help of her sister in defying the edict" (Scodel: Sophocles, 43). Again, she is disobedient when the guards "saw Antigone lamenting, scattering dust, and pouring libations. Antigone, questioned, is defiant" (Sophocles, 44). Antigone is not hesitant to confess her deed. On these two occasions Antigone's strength in both will and opinion, as well as her lack of fear, are conveyed. Her strong will and clear beliefs are shown when she empathizes that she "deliberately contravened Creon's decree, because, she says, the unwritten laws that govern her actions are to be valued more highly than any king's decrees" (Zimmerman: Greek Tragedy: An Introduction, 68). In addition, Antigone's support of the "unwritten laws" as opposed to man's laws reveals that she does not consider the king to be supreme.
Unlike most women of her time, Antigone fails to maintain a close bond with her sister. After Ismene initially declines to help Antigone bury their brother, she changes her mind, but Antigone "now rejects Ismene's help, who incriminates herself out of love for her sister" (Greek Tragedy, 68). Later, Antogone performs "her act [suicide] alone, and she refuses to allow Ismene any share in it" (Sophocles, 49). Though Ismene eventually offers her assistance while clearly expressing her own sisterly love, Antigone still turns her sister away.
Ismene is the foil of Antigone. She is a weak woman "whose timidity defines Antigone's courage" (Sophocles, 49), and a woman who is obedient. Unlike Antigone, Ismene "is a woman, not fit to fight with men, and she will not oppose the city" (Sophocles, 43). That Ismene is "a woman, not fit to fight with men" emphasizes her weak role while her refusal to oppose the city demonstrates her obedience. Ismene "believes that Antigone is right to insist that burial is just, but considers Antigone foolish in attempting the impossible and exceeding a woman's position" (Sophocles, 49). This belief shows that, unlike Antigone, Ismene is too frightened to act on her own values and beliefs.
Although Antigone doesn't quite conform to "the role of the woman," she does wish to be a wife and mother: "...her laments reveal her regret for life, for marriage and children" (Sophocles, 54). Initially, Antigone wants to die, but when death is upon her, she wants the gift of life and the many things that come with it. She isn't afraid of death itself, rather the manner by which she will die. To avoid her sentence of starvation, she kills herself.
Much like Antigone, Emma Bovary does not mimic the stereotype of "the woman." For Emma Bovary and many of the other protagonists involved in stories of awakening, "Marriage was not so much their happy ending as it was their precondition of their unhappiness and an incentive to their emancipation" (Bart: Madame Bovary and the Critics, 107). This statement already excludes Emma from fitting the stereotype of "the woman." Emma is unhappy with her "mediocre and boring husband" (Madame Bovary and the Critics, 133). In Emma's time, a woman was expected to worship her husband, but obviously Emma does no such thing. Not only is her husband unable to make her happy, but no man can make her happy. "The husband fails her by doing nothing, the lover helps to destroy her by being too enterprising" (Giraud: Flaubert: A Collection of Essays, 102).
Perhaps Emma is more concerned about wealth than about men. She is preoccupied with the idea of the fabulous and exciting life that money can bring. "She has long hoped for a sudden event which would give a new turn to it - to her life without elegance, adventure, and love" (Madame Bovary and the Critics, 133). She acts as the power of attorney, a title rarely granted to women. However, money doesn't bring joy to Emma's life, and "it has often been said that money... is the cause of her ruin" (Thorlby: Gustave Flaubert and the Art of Realism, 43).
The daughter that Emma delivers does not become the center of her world, either. She rarely sees her, or even cares to, because the child is in the care of the nurse-maid. Emma doesn't find a great deal of satisfaction in marriage and men, in money, or in her own child.
So different from a typical female is Emma that "in the opinion of Baudelaire: 'Madame Bocary has remained a man'"(Madame Bovary and the Critics, 113). Perhaps Emma's unhappiness stems from the fact that she is, in reality, a woman, and society treats her as such. "Emma'sdress was way too long and got in her
way. The dress stands for the obstacles which she repeatedly encounters in her married life and which come between her and her happiness" (Flaubert: A Collection of Critical Essays, 102).Finally, Edna Pontellier, the most modern of the three, also transcends the limits of her gender. Contrasting her peers, "Edna... refuses to practice the domestic arts as prescribed" (Dyer: The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings, 52). Further depicting the typical functions of a woman in the nineteenth century, Edna's "role in the marriage is reduced to that of a chief ornament in his display of wealth. The rules of their stylized existence permit her to take but not to make. Her creative instincts are stifled, and denied her" (A Novel of Beginnings, 66). Edna doesn't live by theis rule for long. She expresses herself when she "paints, preferring a brush to a needle" (A Novel of Beginnings, 52). By painting rather than sewing for her family as a good mother-woman should, she completely goes against the rules by which a woman is supposed to live.
Evidence that her marriage did not make her whole are her affairs with Robert Lebrun and Alcee Arobin. These affairs heighten Edna's sexual awareness. Though she and Robert never have physical intercourse, Robert awakens emotions in Edna that she has never before experienced. She and Alcee do have sexual intercourse, and the "sex empowers her" (A Novel of Beginnings, 56). Commonly, the male is the one who has sexual exploits, but Edna is the person pursuing this activity. Ultimately, like Emma Bovary, her happiness is, indeed, not derived from any man.
Edna Pontellier explores many aspects of her self. She is different from most women because she "will try to find her own way, will try to abandon the unconscious imitation that has too often, and for too long, determined how she has lived" (A Novel of Beginnings, 33). In her self-exploration, she hopes "to realize her position in the universe as a human being" (A Novel of Beginnings, 34). Edna becomes "less and less inhibited, less and less a mimic of those around her" (A Novel of Beginnings, 36), which reveals that she is becoming her own person and not a clone of every woman, and "[t]hroughout the novel we see Edna attempting to move toward spaces to which women are not normally granted access" (A Novel of Beginnings, 49). This movement is seen when she ventures out to the racetrack and bets, considers selling some of her paintings, and also when she moves into her own pigeon-house. Under all this freedom, Edna's displeasure still lurks. "Her growing determination to assert her social, economic, and sexual independence openly challenges the patriarchal society in which she is trapped" (Lee: American Fiction, 65). In trying to discover who she is as a person, "Edna Pontellier spends the last seasons of her life searching for knowledge of herself" (A Novel of Beginnings, 33-34).
Edna does find a way to escape the trap of the patriarchal society: death. She is aware of how society functions, and she "refuses to return to a world that values only her performance as a mother, whose highest expectations of women are self-sacrifice and self-effacement" (A Novel of Beginnings, 105). Because she does not fit society's conventions of a woman's role, she is "unable either to continue defiantly or to return home submissively, [so] she returns to Grand Isle, takes off her clothes and walks naked into the sea" (American Fiction, 66). Edna does love her children, they are the only two people she considers prior to her death. Despite her love, she has "a willingness to sacrifice her life for her children - but not to sacrifice herself" (A Novel of Beginnings, 36). Edna does not put her family first, she puts herself first. This practice is criticized by society during Edna's lifetime, and since Edna Pontellier cannot live in the society designed by and for men, she simply ceases to live.
Instead of being passive imitations of all women, the three women, Antigone, Emma Bovary, and Edna Pontellier, choose to live for themselves and die for themselves. They live by their own wills, make decisions for themselves, and go where few women dare to go. Because they are humans, they wish to be treated as such, and not as weak, unthinking, stereotypical women. They focus not on their roles as wives and mothers, but rather, they focus on themselves.
Works Cited
Bart, Benjamin F. Madame Bovary and the Critics: A Collection of Essays. New York: New York University Press, 1966.
Bloom, Harold. Kate Chopin. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Dyer, Joyce. The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993.
Giraud, Raymond. Flaubert: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964.
Lee, Brian. American Fiction, 1865-1940. New York: Longman, 1987.
Scodel, Ruth. Sophocles. Boston: Twayne Pulishers, 1984.
Thorlby, Anthony. Gustave Flaubert and the Art of Realism. London: Bowes & Bowes, 1956.
Zimmerman, Bernhard. Greek Tragedy: An Introduction. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Originally published at Associated Content/Yahoo! Contributor Network. Originally written as high school essay, English IV Advanced Placement (Grade 11, 1996).