The French Influence in Kate Chopin's The Awakening

From the beginning of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the influence of French culture is apparent. The main theme is reminiscent of Madame Bovary, and the background against which Edna must react is related to two short stories by Maupassant: Solitude and Réveil (Awakening). Moreover, an outburst of Baudelairean "hysterical tears" occurs at a key moment of the story and is followed by the portrait of a pianist that has a "flower of evil"-like quality. One should not gloss too much over these influences, however, because the novel develops as a partial rebuke of Flaubert's sensualism, Maupassant's pessimism and Baudelaire's insistence upon the superiority of art above life. As a whole, the novel reveals, even within the French-speaking Creole society, a world in which French culture remains only as a persistent but distant source of effects and ideas. (EJ)