I really would have liked to know what happened to Robert in the end of the book, after Edna seemingly drowns. I think I can relate more to Robert than I ever could to Edna. Robert cares about her, but at the same time he is responsible enough to leave because he knows that Edna could never be his (in body, although she apparently already is his in mind or spirit or whatever) and he doesn't want to create unnecessary difficulty in her life because (unlike Edna herself) he understands that she has certain duties to her husband and her children. Really, I can't understand Edna's character at all - she always seems to be looking beyond this life for something else, which I can't understand and I have no idea what she could be looking for, unless that thing is freedom. Speaking of which, I'm a feminist, and I do believe in the social equality and freedom of women, but I don't think Edna's relationship with Robert (or Alcee What's-His-Name...Arobin) has anything to do with equality or freedom, but more that she's just bored with her life as it is and wants some excitement.
The book reminds me of a Bollywood movie (Bollywood is Hindi cinema - come from "Hollywood" and "Bombay") called "Bewafaa", which literally means "Unfaithful". Like in the book, there is a woman who is married, has two kids (technically they're her stepdaughters since she married her sister's window by her parents' urging, gross), and a husband, but she was already in love with some other guy before she was forced to marry her current husband. Later, of course, since Hindi cinema is all about romance and predictable twists (well, not always, but there are several movies with plots that are completely predictable), she meets the guy she was initially in love with and has an affair with him since her husband is immersed in his work and she has nothing going for her in her life, but then, unexpectedly (not for a Bollywood movie), she feels bad for cheating on her husband, who, in turn, has come to respect her as a person and is planning on devoting more time to her, and she leaves the guy she was in love with to take care of her stepdaughters and her husband (I don't know if she actually told him about the other guy or not since I didn't actually see the movie - Bollywood movies usually tend to be over two hours long, some up to three, and I wasn't willing to sit through a box office failure for that long) and then there's a happy ending! Sheesh, no wonder that movie was a flop. Anyway, the point of my whole rambling on is that it ends on an entirely different note than the book, and I wonder why Edna couldn't do the same (move on with her own family, that kind of thing) other than the fact that the book would have been significantly less powerful if she had, although she could get Leonce to see her as his equal...or not, since he's a skunkbag. And I'm not supposed to say that about anyone, but I'm not counting it here because Leonce isn't real...unless Kate Chopin based his character on a real guy in her life, in which case, they're both jerks. I'm guessing it wouldn't have been socially acceptable and Edna would be suppressed by everyone around her, which makes more sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment