Marge Piercy's poem "A Work of Artifice" fascinates me. Writing about taking care of a bonsai tree, she seems to be writing about the plight of woman instead. Bonsai trees are a form of Japanese art. The purposes? Contemplation and ingenuity for the grower. Rather than growing gardens of bonsai trees, bonsai growers focus on developing one tree that mimics a full sized tree. In reading the poem, I felt that the bonsai tree was the woman, the gardener the man. Trapped by the confines of the concepts of beauty, women are bonsai trees, cultivated and controlled by men.

The "attractive pot" the author refers to symbolizes woman's outer shell. Her jewelry. Her clothes. Her hair. Though a woman may be beautiful, if her pot, her outer shell, is shabby, she too seems shabby. The bonsai tree, the author writes, "could have grown eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain till split by lightning." The bonsai had so much potential to become something great. Something huge. Something massive. In acquiring large size, the tree would have gained power, respect. The tree could have done great things; shaded an old man hiking up a mountain, housed a nest of birds. "But a gardener carefully pruned it." Suddenly, the tree's potential future crumbles. There is no hope for this tree, no hope for greatness. It's future? To be pruned by a gardener. If the tree is woman, the gardener must be man. Woman's fate is to be controlled by man. To be pruned, changed, morphed, into whatever the man wants her to. Like a tree, she is helpless to the man's pruning, cutting, chopping. She is dependent on the man for water, food, nourishment. The tree is only nine inches high. The gardener has pruned it well; it has lost its potential to be great, to be large. What could have been an eighty foot tall tree has now been confined, compressed into a meager nine inches. No wonder woman feels suffocated. The gardener convinces the tree that her situation now is better than what it would have been. He croons, "It is your nature/ to be small and cozy,/ domestic and weak,/ how lucky, little tree,/ to have a pot to grow in." The relationship between the tree and the gardener seems like that of a marriage. Dependent on each other, promised to each other, the man and the woman are tied together. There is no escape. The man convinces the woman she is lucky to be his wife, lucky to have a home, lucky to be a woman, to be subordinate to man. It is woman's nature, man says, to be subordinate to man. For the man to be the gardener, the woman the bonsai tree. Man knows that he must establish his power early. Piercy writes, "one must begin very early to dwarf their growth: the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers" to describe man's power over woman. Her feet are bound, leaving her unable to walk properly, unable to escape. Her brain is crippled, derived of knowledge, derived of truth. She cannot think for herself. Her hair is in curlers; she is trapped by the confines of beauty, shackled to the person she must portray.

Woman is a bonsai tree, cultivated by man.

Death...by Birth?

I still cannot decide. Did Edna die at the end of The Awakening? Or did she simply walk into a better, freer life? The "seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting" voice of the sea calls to Edna, urging her to jump in. Because of all of this sea imagery, I am currently leaning more towards the belief that Edna died. However, I don't necessarily believe that she committed suicide. Rather, I feel like she let herself die. She let herself drown. "Her arms and legs were growing tired," Chopin writes, then goes back to narrating Edna's thoughts. Never does she even mention Edna fighting back against this weariness; instead, by thinking of all of the "failures" in Edna's life, all the incidents and people who have given her trouble, she only weighs herself down more, almost as if she is preparing to let herself drown, let the water rush over her head and push her to the bottom of the ocean.
We have talked frequently of how Edna is regressing into childhood. If she is regressing, her death must then, paradoxically, be her birth. The sea and bathing motifs are prevalent throughout the novel, and I found it convincing that a mother's womb is filled with--not exactly water--but fluid, nonetheless. Liquid. Perhaps the sea is Edna's mother, and she is experiencing birth once more. Or perhaps she was never born. I pull out my hair thinking of theories; there are so many! Chopin even alludes to Edna's death-birth when she describes Edna's naked form as a "new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known." It is interesting, however, that the word is "familiar," yet Edna, this "new-born creature," had never known it. Perhaps this was Edna's grand awakening. Perhaps Edna's awakening did not regard her place in society, nor did it regard her role as a wife, or even a woman or mother. Perhaps Edna's awakening was that she could never escape her roles, that the only way out was truly death.
On another note, if Edna's death is her birth, I found it interesting that she is awakening to birth. Sleep is an important motif throughout the novel, and I have been wondering whether sleep is really necessary for Edna to awaken. Sure, for most people, awakening only occurs after sleep, but I often felt that Edna slept for the purpose of awakening. She comments to Doctor Mandelet, "perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life." Though Edna realizes that her awakening(s) often giver her more emotional turmoil, she is willing to sacrifice this turmoil for a chance to better understand her world.
After this lengthy discussion, I still cannot firmly state that Edna died. Her wandering into the ocean could just have been another of her periods of sleep and turmoil, and she may finally awaken and go on with her life. Get her act together.
The last chapter can certainly be read both ways, and perhaps Kate Chopin intended it to be so. Maybe, in her view, both are one and the same.

Choice

I found our discussion in class today very enlightening and, dare I say, awakening. The one thing that struck me particularly was the comment that this was a coming of age story. I had never thought of The Awakening like that before. To me, it had been more of Edna's rebellion against society, her shrugging off of the confining shackles that the Victorian society of that era had placed on her. I had seen the text as more of her journey to finding her real place in society, to finding herself. The image I had of her was a masculine woman marching with the women's rights activists of the 1960s. But looking back at the text, I realize that she is coming of age in so many different ways. As Edna begins to uncover who she really is, she becomes more irresponsible, even childish. She does the unthinkable: neglects her callers, essentially shunning the society in which she lives. In some ways, I can't help but admire her blatantly disregarding spirit. Even when placed in such a confining community, with rules for everything from what kind of clothes to wear to swim to who to confide in, she is able to shirk it off. She actually has the mind to be able to think for herself and understand that she doesn't necessarily even want to be a mother-woman, let alone a perfect wife. Yet, I can't help resenting her for her childishness. She is a mother, after all, and a wife. Sure, she can have her awakening and find herself; she can do whatever she wants to do, but I often feel that she is so childish and immature that she seems in a dream-like state. She just simply cannot seem to choose between her two worlds: the world in which she lives and the world in which she wants to live. Although "a certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her," I feel that Chopin emphasizes that Edna is not even ready to see the light, as the light itself "forbids it" (13). Though Chopin seems to be encouraging Edna's awakening, she hints that the awakening itself--the light that is beginning to allow Edna to be cognizant of who she really is--is paradoxically preventing her from awakening. This leads me to question: what is awakening in Edna? Why must she have this awakening? Is it even necessary?
I can by no means answer those questions. I am still swamped by the profundity of Edna's journey: what she notices, how she acts, even how others act towards her. But what I do know is that sleep has something to do with it. To awaken, one must sleep. The Merriam-Webster's definition of sleep is "the natural periodic suspension of consciousness during which the powers of the body are restored." If I think of sleep as the precursor to awakening, then Edna must be in an inactive, unconscious state, and her body powers must be being restored. Edna seems to rebel in a dream-like state. When she rebels, she rebels. When she conforms, she doesn't quite conform, but at least makes the appearance that she is. I gasped when I came to the passage where she stomped furiously on her wedding ring and tumbled the vase. While the wedding ring obviously symbolized her marriage to Leonce, I felt that the meaning of the vase was more complex. The vase seemed to me to symbolize the perfect mother-woman, the woman Edna can never--and does want to ever--be. Like the women surrounding Edna, the vase is glass; it is transparent. The intentions of the other women in the novel are clear: to conform absolutely to the norms and expectations that society has set out for them, and to do their job well. Their greatest desires are to be good wives, to be good mothers. Yet Edna is opaque, almost cloudy. She is unclear of who she wants to be, or even who she does not want to be. Although she appears to not want to be like the other women of the story, why does she become friends with Mme. Ratignolle and put on the airs of being a proper lady? Why even bother? Ah, Edna, please. Choose a future, choose a path. Choose something.

Bird...Woman?

I've heard so many different descriptions of women. That women are snakes. Coy, sly, manipulative. That they are tigers. Protective of their young, quiet at times, but vicious at others. But...a woman...a bird? A novel idea for a new type of woman.
Edna is not your typical "Grand Isle mother-woman." First of all, she's not even originally from Grand Isle; how can she be considered "one of them"? How can anyone expect her to blend in completely? Her situation reminds me of mine. I was born in the U.S. In California, actually, but I am always looked at not as simply "American," but as "Asian" or "Asian-American." No matter what I do or say, I will never really fit the completely "American" stereotype. And believe me, there is one. Edna is almost the same. Though she tries to "assimilate" into the small society that Grand Isle is, she doesn't really put much effort into it. Sure, she takes up sewing winter clothes for her children, but only halfheartedly, and while commenting on its uselessness.
Bird imagery is packed throughout the first few chapters of the novel. The parrot in the cage struck me in particular. The woman's colorful pet seems devoid of attention. Wanting love. Desperate, even. Desperate enough to call out to those near, but proud enough to deny wanting love, pushing others away. That's how I see that parrot. To Chopin, it might have just been a parrot. But there I am, with my AP Lit magnifying glass, trying to see the small details of each cell that makes up the organism, the work.
I found it funny--no, maybe not funny--but definitely interesting that Madame LeBrun caged her poor love-seeking parrot. If the parrot represents the woman...then she just caged woman. Herself. 
But why is woman a bird? What made Chopin decide to characterize woman as a bird? On page 8, she describes a mother-woman as "fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened [her] precious brood." When reading this, I got the idea of a plump momma bird flying around from child to child, feeding each child this, cleaning up after the other...basically, a hectic "ideal" mother. So maybe I do understand why Chopin chose a bird. Because birds always come back to their nests. Even after flying far away, facing toils and troubles to look for food for their children, the mother bird always comes back. Always. So is this foreshadowing? Edna's hands are "strong" and "shapely" and in no way bird-like. Edna is not a bird. Therefore, she is not a mother-woman. Hence, she will not return after taking her adventurous flight...
Speaking of returning, I found so much symbolism in the scene in which Edna takes back the rings she had given to her husband before leaving to bathe. Could anything be more symbolic of Edna's pact to return? Her property-like state in her husband's view? She had to give him her rings, a symbol of his ownership of her, to him. And take them back when she returned. 
Whenever I think of birds now, I think of Wing Biddlebaum and his fluttering hands. While I felt that Wing's hands were described as somewhat feminine, caressing and gently touching, Edna's hands are described as almost the opposite. So if Edna isn't a bird, what is she? If she is not a "mother"-woman, then what kind of woman is she? Is she even a woman?