Twitter Group discussion

Hello all.
As you dive into the Awakening I was hoping you would share your thoughts about the book.
What are your initial feelings about Edna?
What are other feelings you have about the book any thoughts you have share them.

"But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing."
I found this poignant. In my personal re-creations I've struggled for order and new defininitions early on, only to eventually become discouraged. This statement is a comfort and it also makes me think of cosmic creation. I love how it places our emotional growth in the same bucket as the rest of existence.

Hammock scene was very good and important. But the following trip to the Cheniere is scaring the crap out of me for her at the moment. Anyone right around there?

I'm not at that point yet. I have read this book before when I was in my very early 20s. I I do remember and still feel the same way that I loved how emotional growth and existence were one in the same.
Something that didn't occurred to me in my twenties but occurs to me now is the coldness in her indifference towards her children.
I understand why she feels that way, being a mother was forced was basically upon her because she was a woman, obviously she didn't have children because she wanted them. I can relate to that in a way, I am in my thirties and I do not want children and that's a decision that I am making. I'm finding myself a little less sympathetic towards her than I was when I was younger.
What does her relationship with her children make you feel towards her?

The distance between mothers and their children is a common theme that I see in stories of people with means around this time period. Downton Abbey, for instance. It seems that it was perfectly acceptable for a mother to almost never look after her own children. That said, it still pangs me. And Edna definitely is not very intetested in them at all. Maybe it's because she's going through a metamorphosis, maybe she's always been this disintersted? Leone seems to indicate the latter.

And "quadroon"!! I had to look up that racist term!

I had to look that up too.

Yes it's very common and logically I can understand her feelings. As her actions progress I am starting to see her as a bit selfish.

I just finished and need to digest before I comment. Also I don't wish to spoil anything for you, or for many of the 99 others who, I'm assuming, are diligently yet silently participating in this group.

This book changed me! Hearing the word Feminism ... My first thoughts were struggle, power, rights, etc. After reading this book I think of my own thoughts and feelings and emotions and needs. My feminism is defined by me, because, only I know what makes me whole.

Donna wrote: "This book changed me! Hearing the word Feminism ... My first thoughts were struggle, power, rights, etc. After reading this book I think of my own thoughts and feelings and emotions and needs. My f..."

Love this! I think this is the key to our healing and the healing of our society. Through many things going on in my life and the world, my eyes have been opened over the last few years and I've come to honor my wants and needs more and more. And, perhaps surprisingly, this has also made me more understanding about the needs of others. I believe that allowing ourselves to define ourselves, sometimes necessarily shedding rules and expectations that no longer serve us, will allow us to be whole. We will reclaim our personal power, with or without permission from anyone else.

(OK --- now for a momentary tangent:
The Dalai Lama says we're the ones that will save the world. I think that he is right in that once we heal ourselves by honoring our anger and love and passions and our history of oppression, then we can reject injustices (especially those injustices our training has caused us to perpetuate). And once we no longer participate in the destruction of ourselves and others, it will have to stop because those in power need us to function.)

Do I believe we can know ourselves to be whole in a more harmonious way than Edna's experience? Definitely. But she was from another time and place (and as a side note had an enviable amount of idle time and money). Also, I would have probably enjoyed the story a bit more if Robert were a dog or simply a muse, but that's just because I'm old and bored with the idea of all the most worthy passions needing to be sparked in one's vagina. I did really like the book and also related to Edna a great deal.