Fisch 1
Nick Fisch
ENG 326
Dr. Susan Stone
16 May 2013
“The Awakening” of “A White Heron”
The late 19th century in American literature provided
insight into how gender roles were constructed and executed.
Traditionally, women were considered to be the “angels of the
house” in that they couldn’t go outside of their domestic
sphere. Men wanted women to maintain limited class mobility, and
limited their activities outside of the domestic realm. Men
wanted to be the “man’s man,” in that they were sole economic
providers for the women. Women were viewed by men as no more
than a complimentary piece in the relationship, who were
supposed to look nice and please their husbands. Kate Chopin and
Sarah Orne Jewett both provide examples of two authors who were
able to defy the social norms established by men. Two stories, A
White Heron and The Awakening provide examples using images of
birds, to represent how women can escape the domestic realm
established by men in the late 19th century.
A White Heron describes the story of Sylvia encountering a
boy in the woods who is in search of a white heron. The boy
describes the heron to Sylvia as, "A queer tall white bird with
Fisch 2
soft feathers and long thin legs. And it would have a nest
perhaps in the top of a high tree, made of sticks, something
like a hawk's nest” (Jewett). Sylvia reacts with excitement, as
Jewett writes that her “heart gave a wild beat” (Jewett). What
this interaction signifies is a shift of women from the domestic
sphere to a woman able to explore nature and make discoveries.
Jewett demonstrates that women are eager to break free, like a
bird from a cage and express their individuality.
One critic who addresses the bird imagery in A White Heron
is Joseph Church. He says that while this story is classified as
realism, that there are elements of the romantic present. Church
proves that while Sylvia has doubts about disobeying the norms
Sylvia’s grandmother established, Sylvia was able to be
successful in her breaking of the norms by passing on defending
the stranger in search of the heron, but instead defending and
searching for the heron. Church says that the heron represents a
shift away from a man’s control, but while the heron can’t be
controlled by the man, the woman still admires the heron.
Another passage from A White Heron, which demonstrates the
use of bird imagery would be when Chopin writes what Sylvia is
observing: “a company of shouting cat-birds comes also to the
tree, and vexed by their fluttering and lawlessness the solemn
heron goes away” (Jewett). Another critic who would agree that
Fisch 3
bird imagery demonstrates how women are caged, and then able to
break free would be Kelley Griffith Jr. Griffith says in her
essay that Joseph Campbell, who wrote in his book called The
Hero with a Thousand Faces about the many types of heroes that
are represented throughout fiction writing. Campbell believes
that Sylvia represents three different types of heroes. The
first type of hero he says that Sylvia represents is a literal
hero, a hero who despite searching for pleasure from many
different people throughout the story, Sylvia ultimately finds
something more as she ascends to the top of the tree. Sylvia
finds moments like watching the sunrise, observing the sea and
the countryside more pleasant and pleasing to her than a
relationship with the hunter. In that example, Jewett doesn’t
directly use the bird as an image, but when Sylvia is in search
for the bird. The second type of hero Campbell argues for is
that Jewett created the character Sylvia similar to herself, in
that Sylvia can reject the norms established by men during this
period, and with rejecting those norms, she is therefore
rejecting all men. Campbell points to the moment in the story
where the stranger says that he: “would give ten dollars to
anybody who could show it (the heron’s nest) to me,” (Jewett).
With Sylvia ignoring this offer, she instead searches for her
own individual pleasure and ignores the stranger’s offer of ten
dollars. Campbell believes that Sylvia is a hero because she
Fisch 4
does what a majority of other people wouldn’t do. Campbell says
that when Sylvia does this, she is not diminishing her
experience in searching for the heron. Sylvia is using her quest
for the heron to demonstrate that she has indeed escaped the
realm of domesticity by not disclosing the location of the heron
to the hunter.
Bird imagery is also used in The Awakening, which is a
story about a woman, Edna Pontellier who struggles through the
caste system of New Orleans to find her identity. One place
where women go in this novel is a place called, Grand Isle,
which is a resort where women typically go during the summer to
get away from their troubles and perhaps find someone to love
there. Chopin uses the bird imagery to describe the women of
Grand Isle who are “fluttering about with extended, protecting
wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their
precious brood” (Chopin, 9). What this quote signifies is a
shift of women from the domestic sphere, only able to please
their spouses by staying at home and being their accessory, to
being able to go to a place where their independence is welcomed
and accepted.
Not all literary critics agree that The Awakening was able
to provide women opportunity for escape from the domestic realm.
Mou Xianfeng wrote in her essay, "Kate Chopin's Narrative
Fisch 5
Techniques and Separate Space in The Awakening,” that while
Chopin uses bird imagery in the text the bird imagery doesn’t
represent a breakthrough of women through their interior sphere
and into a sphere beyond the domestic realm. Xianfeng uses this
passage to prove her point. “The bird that would soar above the
level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.
It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted,
fluttering back to earth.' "Whither would you soar?" (Chopin,
79). What this quote signifies is that while women are able to
eventually break free from the domestic realm, that their
freedom from that is not sustainable.
Another passage in Chopin’s text that suggests that women
aren’t able to break free from the domestic sphere, is when
Chopin writes that the Lebruns lived in a “home from the outside
looked like a prison, with iron bars before the door and lower
windows. The iron bars were a relic of the old regime, and no
one had ever thought of dislodging them” (Chopin, 57). What that
passage signifies is that women weren’t able to escape the
domestic sphere, and that the places that women lived in were
considered prisons. Women remained marginalized in regards to
what they could do outside of the domestic sphere.
One final example in The Awakening where Edna escapes from
the norms of domesticity with bird imagery is when Chopin writes
Fisch 6
that Edna is pleased by the pigeon-house, because it relieved
stresses that plagued her in daily life, and it added to her
individuality and wasn’t forced to “feed on opinion” any
longer(Chopin, 89). The significance of that passage is that
while pigeons are considered dirty birds in literature and
history because of their ability to carry diseases, this passage
still signifies ability for Edna to escape from the rigors of
domesticity, and provide her with the opportunity to escape the
realm of domesticity. Edna visits the pigeon-house later in the
novel with Robert, and when he is with her, she doesn’t ask him
to come into her room with her (Chopin, 101). This passage
demonstrates that while Robert still accompanied Edna to the
pigeon-house, Edna was able to transcend the domestic sphere of
gender roles, being able to go to her own room, choose her own
clothes, and please Robert by her own standards, not the
standards established by Robert.
The purpose of this paper was to demonstrate how women were
burdened by the restrictions placed upon them by men in the late
19th century. While most women didn’t have the ability to get
their works published, Kate Chopin writing The Awakening and
Sarah Orne Jewett writing A White Heron, both authors used bird
imagery in their works to demonstrate how women were caged, but
Fisch 7
the female characters in their novels were able to break free
from the domestic sphere at some point throughout their novels.
Fisch 8
Works Cited:
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. London:
Fontana, 1993. Print.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Second ed. New York: W.W.
Norton, 1994. Print.
Church, Joseph. "Romantic Flight in Jewett's 'White Heron.'."
Studies in American Fiction 30.1 (Spring 2002): 21-44. Rpt.
in Short Story Criticism. Vol. 110.
Detroit:
Gale,
2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 May 2013.
Griffith, Kelley, Jr. "Sylvia as Hero in Sarah Orne Jewett's 'A
White Heron'." Colby Library Quarterly 21.1 (Mar. 1985):
22-27. Rpt. in Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale,
2013. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 May 2013.
Jewett, Sarah Orne. "Jewett Texts." Coe College - Cedar Rapids
Iowa.
N.p.,
n.d.
Web.
14
May
2013.
<http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/awh/heron.htm>.
Xianfeng Mou. "Kate Chopin's Narrative Techniques and Separate
Space in The
Awakening." The Southern Literary Journal
44.1 (2011): 103+. Literature
May 2013.
Resource Center. Web. 15