In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, and Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, the heroines come from extremely similar backgrounds. They all live in the 19th century and are lower upper class. Their husbands, while not stupid, are not particularly bright or aware of what is going on in their own households. Certainly, they seem to not be aware at all of their wives’ growing discontent. Their husbands are extremely lenient and unintentionally let their wives have a lot more self government than was usually allowed in that time period. And, of course, at the end of each novel, each heroine commits suicide.
But what is radically different about each novel is that although each heroine begins and ends almost exactly the same way, all three women are very different people and decide to commit suicide for very diverse reasons. Also, what each author is trying to communicate with the suicide of his or her novel’s heroine is very different.
In Madame Bovary, Emma is constantly seeking new emotions and sensation to fill up the void inside her. She enjoys fantasizing that she is a heroine from one of the books she reads. She often does impulsive things if she thinks they will bring her pleasure. As a child, she even makes up extra sins for confession so she can stay longer in the mystery and the thrill that she feels confession is. She never truly feels happy and her driving motivation from childhood on is to seek pleasure and new sensations. This is why she marries her husband Charles. The narrator says of Emma that she believed that marriage would bring her the ultimate happiness. When it doesn’t, she turns to the material to console herself, spending more and more exorbitant amounts of money. Since her husband doesn’t bring her pleasure, she turns to adultery.
In the Awakening, Edna Pontiellier is not aware that she is unhappy with her life until a family vacation to the Grand Isle. There, with the spurring of outcast Madam Reisz and her growing attraction to the landlord’s son, Robert, Edna begins to realize the shallowness and oppression of her life. Edna becomes aware that she has an identity separate from her society or even from her family. She says to her close friend Adele, “I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself” (Chopin 62). Edna begins to exercise more control over herself. This begins when she disobeys her husband when he demands that she come in and not spend the night on the hammock. It culminates when, back at home, she buys her own modest home with her own money while her husband is away. Edna also begins to feel more sexually liberated. She doesn’t feel guilty for her attraction to Robert and carries on an affair with a local dandy. Later, she realizes that she truly loves Robert and that he is the only one in the world that she cares about. She is ecstatic when Robert returns and declares his love for her.
In Hedda Gabler, Hedda is constantly discontented and bored. She is the most powerful of the heroines and enjoys exerting her power over others. She amuses herself by doing outrageous things that alarm people and get their attention. For example, one day Hedda scares the Judge, a family friend, by shooting her father’s pistols in the air. She also enjoys mocking people and making cruel remarks that she disguises as kind or unintentional so that she is permitted to say them. It is not until her old flame, Lovborg, returns that she feels any kind of happiness. She finds that Lovborg is writing a great work of literature and delights in her visions of his success. She says that she sees him returning victorious from his book reading “with vine leaves in his hair.” When he fails and commits suicide, Hedda says she hopes that he “did it beautifully.” Her vision is shattered when she finds he shot himself unromantically in the gut.
When Emma commits suicide, she does it because she is disillusioned by the world. She believed that sensations and pleasure alone could bring her happiness but even the greatest pleasures of her life eventually dimmed and became dull and unexciting. Even though throughout the novel, she has been extravagantly romantic, she is so disillusioned with romance that she decides on a simple death by arsenic. She thinks as she is going to sleep that at least it will be quick and painless. Flaubert uses cruel irony when it takes Emma days and days to die an agonizing death. Also, as she is dying, an old pauper walks by singing a song that he sang earlier in the novel. The song is about the wrongs of adulterous women and it makes Emma’s death even crueler. Also, after Emma dies, the novel continues seeming to suggest that life goes on without her. Flaubert also seems to be denying Emma’s beliefs that she is like a romantic heroine from a novel by making her death as unromantic as possible. It seems from the song sung at Emma’s death and the fact that she dies so painfully that the narrator does not approve of Emma’s carnal indulgences.
In the Awakening, when Edna finds that Robert has left her, she feels lost and alone. She never truly loved her husband or her children so she feels that there is nothing keeping her in this world. She realizes that “there was no human being that she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone”(Chopin 151). When she returns to Grand Isle alone and decides to go for a swim, it does not seem that she goes swimming with the intent of suicide. But once she is out in the ocean, she swims farther out than she knows she can return from. She realizes that she is tired of living and drowns from exhaustion. Throughout the novel, the ocean represents Edna’s self awareness. The narrator of the Awakening seems to be saying that being aware in a society like Edna’s can only cause self destruction. It does not seem like the narrator disapproves of Edna’s death because she is given a suicide that is beautiful in its imagery. In the very last couple of sentences, Edna sees the images of romance and happiness of her youth so it seems as though she is rewarded or at least happy in death.
Hedda’s suicide is the loudest and most forceful of the three. At the end of the novel, the Judge, always being desirous of having control over Hedda, takes advantage of a change of events that puts him in power. When Hedda learns that the Judge has control over her life, she can’t bear it. Freedom has always been one of the most important things to her and she feels she can’t live under oppression. The last thing she says before she kills herself is “so you’re the only cock in the basket now Judge.” Her death is sudden, loud, and powerful. A loud bang and she is gone. Hedda’s death is her intentional removal of her last and only true possession, her life. Her defiance against her society is highlighted in the last line of the play when the Judge says, “But one doesn’t do such things.”
The fact that all three of these women were driven to suicide in part due to the pressures and oppression to their society is a very grim and depressing one. Although not all of the narrators seem to approve of their protagonists’ decision to commit suicide, each work offers a window into the protagonists’ thoughts and an explanation as to why they would be driven to such a desperate act. Through the narrative, the reader is aided in understanding why these protagonists would make an act that could appear overly desperate or selfish.
Although all three women commit suicide, this is merely an end to three different stories. They escaped the same way but their personalities and identities were very different. It is crucial for the reader to understand that though these works have useful similarities, it is in the specifics of each work that the true message of each piece comes across.
Sources:
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc., 1992.
