I forced myself to read The Awakening during my trip to Texas this week. I had picked it up to read so many times before, but the language of the era had always stopped me from getting past page 25. This time I was determined, especially since I was captive for six hours with nothing else but American Airlines magazine and maps of the DFW airport at my disposal. The story made me think a lot. At times while reading I would lose myself in the streets of New Orleans [one of the settings in the novel] wondering what it would be like to spend my days wandering around visiting friends and drinking coffee in outdoor cafes. I wondered what it would be like to have no responsibilities other than those of a wife and mother. In Edna's life even those responsibilities were limited. Her husband was away from home most of the time, and there were servants to help care for the children, cook and clean. What would be left? I can understand the darkness that befell Edna in living this life: the frustration, the loneliness, the absence of purpose.

As Edna's behavior began to change within the story, I went down a mental sidestreet. I sat on the plane staring into space for some 30 minutes plus wondering why it is so difficult for us as humans to allow our loved ones to change. Why do so many of us insist that relationships stay exactly the same forever? We seem to accept only inconsequential changes and tend to allow only terrible tragedy as a mode of true growth. Is it easier to believe that our friends are exactly the same people that they were when they were 12 than to try to understand where they are, how they are, who they are now? It's almost as if our minds won't let go of that very first picture we had of someone, like it doesn't know how to categorize and catalog the growth that happens from years of living. Why?

Let me know what you think of The Awakening. How does a human being become a possession and who/what is at fault?

Namaste