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Reconsidering the awakening: The literary sisterhood of Kate Chopin and George Egerton
Southern Quarterly, Spring 2003 by Rich, Charlotte
Similarly, Egerton's story "Now Spring Has Come" enacts this process of epiphany; like Edna and Robert in Chopin's novel, the protagonist and her would-be lover have very different "awakenings" that end the woman's hope of passionate fulfillment. In this story based upon Egerton's own relationship with the writer Hamsun, the female narrator becomes fascinated with and wishes to meet a novelist after reading his controversial novel, one that is thought "a very bad book . . . one of the modern realistic school" (39). Upon meeting they are deeply attracted to each other, despite his being younger than she is. They part ways for some months, as do Edna and Robert in Chopin's novel, and when they meet again, the writer's shocked reaction to the woman's aged appearance betrays his lurking conventionality. In the final scene of Egerton's story, as the protagonist sits in a church service by the sea, her melancholy thoughts metaphorically link the ocean with a feeling of death and surrender, as she "buries" her destroyed hope for love: "The sermon only struck my ear with a soothing, drowsy roll, something like the wave-note of the in-curling sea in the Mediterranean-a legato accompaniment to my thoughts; and I had a grand burial all to myself. I dug a deep grave, and laid all my dreams and foolish wishes and sweet hopes in it" (66-67). This passage anticipates perhaps the most famous passage in The Awakening, in which "the voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude" (893). In both works, the protagonists turn to literal or metaphoric self-obliteration in the ocean after their disillusionment over love, having realized that what seemed to be a higher union was nonetheless subject to status quo notions of an acceptable relationship.
But the most controversial topics within New Woman Fiction that Chopin's The Awakening and Egerton's Keynotes treat in remarkably similar ways are those of adultery and female sexuality-the material that earned Chopin's novel condemnation as poisonous "sex fiction." Both texts contain controversial scenes of erotic adulterous assignation. In Chopin's novel, Edna becomes "supple to [the] gentle, seductive entreaties" of Alcee Arobin, a well-known roue, whose kiss "was a flaming torch that kindled desire" (967). Shockingly devoid of guilt, she even admits to herself that her liaison was based on lust: "among the conflicting sensations which assailed her, there was neither shame nor remorse. There was a dull pang of regret because it was not the kiss of love which had inflamed her, because it was not love which had held this cup of life to her lips" (967). Similarly, in Egerton's most subversive story in the volume, "A Cross Line,"17 the protagonist engages in an extramarital affair and is unrepentant about her infidelity, believing that most men have overlooked or repressed women's sensuality. In a scene noted for its suggestive imagery, she envisions dancing before a crowd of men, bringing them to a state of ecstasy:
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