Awakening from a Snow-Bound State

 At first glance, Whittier’s Snow-Bound and Chopin’s The Awakening present two distinctly different messages, Whittier’s being the reinforcement of home and hearth and Chopin’s the tragic liberation of a woman from this same hearth. Whittier wrote Snow-Bound in 1866 shortly after the end of the Civil War, and its function, besides being a dedication to his family and then recently deceased younger sister, was as a healing mechanism, designed to reinforce the power of family and nation. Because American culture at the time was unstable, this stereotyping type of literature was popular, as it aided in the discovery of an American normative reality. Chopin’s work on the other hand is a deliberate rebellion against this very "reality." The Awakening is a story that shocked and disturbed those who believed themselves a part of the cozy world of Whittier’s poem, as the heroine of The Awakening, from their very ranks, flies into the face of traditional notions of family and gender, preferring an alternative reality and disrupting the established. Despite their apparent differences, the works contain a common element—they both present a woman who chooses to deliberately reject the traditional gender role of woman and disrupt the staid existence of those within the accepted bonds of gender and family. Harriet Livermore and Edna Pontellier are tragic heroines, figures that burn with intense individuality and therefore cannot possibly be a part of any whole nation or community. They provide a revealing view not only of the rebellious woman but of the dangers presented by the acceptance of a normative reality, a reality that numbs its members into becoming blind automatons.

 Although Whittier’s Snow-Bound is often considered fireside poetry, indulging its audience with the author’s quaint tale of a time gone by sitting beside the warm family hearth while a blizzard roars outside, it betrays a keen sense of the volatility of its times in the revelation of the feline and alien Harriet Livermore. This figure, who strays into the settled domestic sphere painted by the narrator, brings flashes of bright color to an otherwise idyllic setting, disrupting the flow and tone of the poem as a whole. Livermore’s presence forces us to question Whittier’s motives for interrupting a poem that is most often recognized for its reassuring aesthetic with a woman obviously outside the mainstream. If the readers of America’s fireside poets were to "find themselves" through the words revealed to them on the page, if they were to be calmed by the orderliness of the poetry’s form and given a sense of nationalism by its function, then Harriet Livermore has no business in Whittier’s poem, for she represents rebellion against the system the poem "should" expound. However, the message revealed by Livermore’s presence is not so straightforward, as she answers Whittier’s call for a break from "old forms."

 Instead of revealing his somewhat misplaced heroine suddenly, Whittier works his way into the appearance of Harriet Livermore, and in order to illustrate this an evaluation of the poem’s general outline is required. At the beginning of the poem, it is nature’s ominous severity that drives the family inside, where they seek the warmth of the hearth, offered to appease both physical and mental anxiety.

Nature’s fury takes over outside the family home, but the strength of the family and the bond between its members is illustrated by the fact that it is only "Beyond the circle of (the) hearth" that we find nature’s dark presence manifest. Whittier therefore begins his tale with the entire family gathered as a unit about that which provides them warmth, the fire of the fireplace, and the closeness of one another. After Whittier settles the family down, he relates the passing of time by recalling the stories told by the different family members, and it is here that we first see the hierarchy of the nuclear family at work. Whittier calls each elder family member forward in their turn to tell stories to the youngsters, and the order of this presentation is worth special note.

 In the traditional family, the father is at the head, the primary provider and bread-winner, the mother’s work is to be a nurturer and caretaker of the domestic affairs. After the father and mother, children would be required to honor the other elder relatives, such as the uncle and aunt. Whittier follows this pattern of respect within his poem, presenting first the father’s tales of exploration and adventure in lines 212 through 255. Next follow stories of life among the "Indian hordes" in New Hampshire, told by the mother, who, true to her role, also relates religious parables. The mother’s words are followed by those of the uncle, "innocent of books, / But rich in lore of fields and brooks" (307-08). The uncle brings us back into the realm of the adventurous man, telling not moral tales, but simply

The stories serve as escapes from the reality of the harsh weather outside, and in these lines, the stories go so far as to cause an alternative reality for the listeners—although they are bound inside, their minds are like the pigeons that fly with full stomachs from the ripening corn. The unmarried aunt proceeds after the uncle, and her presence draws us back into the comfort of home:

The aunt’s very presence reinforces for us the woman’s role as a pillar of support within the home. Even though the aunt in Whittier’s story is the "sweetest woman ever Fate / Perverse denied a household mate" she does not require a family in order to carry with her the comfort a woman brings to the home. This is an important observation to note, as now we begin escaping from the traditional domestic sphere into an outside, uncontrolled world.

 Whittier describes Fate as perverse when referring the unmarried status of the aunt in the poem, and it is this same perverse Fate that has taken Whittier’s sister from him in real life.

Whittier’s painful lament pulls at our own hearts with its anguish over the permanency of death. The grass that covers the sister’s grave is a "green tent / Whose curtain never outward swings", and Whittier’s pining makes us question along with him the perversity of Fate that would abruptly take away a beloved sister. This type of loss leads Whittier to question larger issues, but he checks himself from moving too far from the family and has some words first about his schoolmaster, a playful man whose actions are inviting for a young child. But shortly after these lines Whittier takes us further away from home to issues of the nation.

 Up through line 479 in Snow-Bound Whittier has not strayed from the hearth of home, its warmth and comfort provided by fire and good company. In the volatility of the nation "America" in the nineteenth century, however, it was imperative that every home was considered a part of a greater whole, and poems such as Snow-Bound were read to strengthen the family and a sense of nationality. Whittier leaves the home behind and faces the issue of abolitionism with a call to national unity:

Whittier’s call is more than simply a call to national unity and an attempt to bring people’s attention to the need to abolish slavery; it is a call to break the "Old forms" and honor instead "the freeman’s will" and "wise-handed skill." This gives Whittier the opportunity to introduce within the confines of his poem a figure which does those very things. Ironically, in introducing this figure he appears to challenge the very foundation of home and hearth he propounds earlier in the poem. This introduces a strange dichotomy into the form of the poem and brings out the significance of its title. If Harriet Livermore is to be introduced as a liberated or liberating figure, then those who remain within the confines of the nuclear family are truly "Snow-Bound."

 The figure of Harriet Livermore is not a figure that fits within the domestic sphere described early in the poem by Whittier, and she is not reflected in the stories told by the family members. Yet she is a guest in the house, and so we must recognize her as one that has entered the realm of the traditional hearth and home. However, even though she is within the family’s walls, she is still an alien:

Harriet Livermore is a figure of paradox. She is "Unmarked by time, and yet not young." Her words are "honeyed music", yet they also hide "A nature passionate and bold." She invades the comfort of the nuclear family and disrupts the ease of conversation and warmth of human contact. In creating herself as a different kind of woman she has taken an old form and recast it into a new shape, and in so doing has acted as the free man with free will. Yet Whittier is unsure of this figure, and presents her on an even deeper paradoxical level. The very fact that Whittier works us slowly up to the point where Livermore makes her appearance leads us to believe that her introduction and presence are deliberate and meant to be studied seriously. If this is so, then her figure, one that has broken certain accepted bonds of society, is a liberated figure and should be regarded as a model. Whittier describes her will as "majestic," giving her royal attributes. Yet many words used to describe Harriet Livermore are not charming. She is "pard-like" with "treacherous grace", raising the image of a crouching, feline figure that moves stealthily toward its prey with teeth that show a "dazzling flash."

Harriet Livermore is one that will not act in accordance with the rules of others, and those who either love or hate her are "condemned," supporting her stance as a true individual. The heat of the fire is overwhelming when coupled with the presence of Harriet Livermore, and she causes us to seek fresh air although she is that very breath Whittier seems to expound. She acts deliberately to forge for herself a life not bordered by generally accepted bonds, and this is the escape from blind routine spoken of earlier. Harriet Livermore then emerges as a troubled kind of heroine; troubled because Whittier appears not to be able to back her, yet is compelled to display her as an example for change. He offers her at once as a liberating force, and perhaps a catalyst for social change ("And the sweet voice had notes more high / And shrill for social battle-cry." (544-45)), yet at the same time confuses her role with descriptive words that raise for the reader a disruptive, volcanic figure.

 The farming community’s recovery from the blizzard is accompanied by the reader’s recovery from Harriet Livermore, and Whittier sends off her wayward soul with a blessing, "Where’er her troubled path may be, / The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!" (563-64) These final words are just as troubled as the figure of Harriet Livermore, and although they appear simply to return the family to a more stable existence, cleansing the household of the Livermore character, they nevertheless ask for the "Lord’s sweet pity" to go with her. Harriet Livermore is a figure to be pitied because she refuses to exist within accepted social boundaries, but the words also act as a sincere benediction to this liberated woman. Shortly after we see the last of Harriet Livermore, the uncle covers the burning embers of the fire, and the mother offers up a short expression of relief and gratefulness which we must not only accept as relief from the sting of the storm, but the bite of Livermore.

The mother’s words reflect her Quaker sensibility, which calls for her to live simply and not seek wealth on earth, but look toward the reward that comes after death. The reader receives a like reward, as does the family, within the life of the poem, for at the conclusion there is a resurrection from the death of being snow-bound. The families held inside by the grip of the storm are freed from their winter idyll by the teamsters’ plough, and the strength of family is reinforced by "Nature’s subtlest law:"

Whittier here returns to level ground from the treacherous spires traversed with Harriet Livermore. There is joy and happiness in the lines, which provides reassurance and an uplifting ending to the poem. The pictures of these people are so perfect that Whittier frames them within the doorways, yet being framed, they become almost unbelievable, and we must ask why they stand at the boundary between the home and the freedom offered by nature. If Whittier’s subtle duplicity has carried over from Harriet Livermore, then these are liminal figures, poised yet unwilling to escape from the domestic sphere. As figures within a fireside poem, they are figures painted outside the bounds of reality, reality where figures such as Harriet Livermore exist. But Whittier’s apparent purpose is fulfilled with his "merry girls" receiving "compliments" from the passing boys, grounding the feel of the poem in doctrines of home and family.

 At the conclusion of Snow-Bound Whittier leaves us in a renewed state of domestic ecstasy. The home and hearth are challenged by the brute force of nature, yet the family as a unit prevails against not only the chilling embrace of the blizzard but the fiery stares of Harriet Livermore as well. The paradoxical nature of the poem’s message, the dual role of Harriet as both bound yet free, leaves us on unstable ground, however, and it is this same type of uncertain footing we find at the end of Chopin’s The Awakening as Edna sinks into the aromas of her childhood. When Edna is first introduced, she is presented as a woman who has, up to this point in her life, fulfilled all the proper duties known to the "mother-woman." She is married, has birthed two children (both boys), and attends to social events as prescribed by society (the family vacations as it should with others of similar class distinction). As Edna describes her past to Mme. Ratignolle, Chopin gives a foreshadowing of Edna’s emergence from the shadows of society’s limiting expectations of her as a woman into the light of freedom as an individual.

Edna is speaking of her childhood, but Chopin intends this explanation to serve as a history of Edna’s married life as well, in which she once blindly filled the role of mother-woman, but now begins to hear the bells of freedom. Edna describes herself as an unthinking child, yet it is after religion had got hold of her that she became truly unthinking, "just driven along by habit." Religion, being an institution that makes much ado about ritual, is also symbolic of the ritual of the society in which Edna lives and Mme. Ratignolle believes. Mme. Ratignolle responds to Edna’s minute confession with a "poor dear" type of reassurance, which confuses Edna because she has become excited by her new thoughts and believes that Mme. Ratignolle should share in her revelation. However, Mme. Ratignolle’s role in the story is to play the role of the traditional mother-woman, therefore, she is unable to relate to these thoughts of Edna’s and can only think to console her.

 Mme. Ratignolle’s attempt to console Edna recalls the blessing placed by Whittier upon the wayward Harriet Livermore. Mme. Ratignolle is unable to understand Edna’s new thoughts and so she takes the action she knows best, which is to do what is "right" and console her friend, whose thoughts venture into dangerous territory. Whittier’s narrator is likewise unable to relate to the figure of the liberated Harriet Livermore, and bestows upon her the Lord’s blessing. Both Edna and Harriet are no longer part of the defined role of woman, however, and subsequently these reassurances from Mme. Ratignolle and the invocations from Whittier lead to nothing.

 Edna’s own childhood is one of the underlying forces beneath her awakening. Since her mother died when she and her older sister were quite young, Edna never had an adult woman teach her the "art of mothering." Edna is as different from Mme. Ratignolle as she was from the other girls when she was younger.

Edna awakens to the clues in her life that allow her a role only as a second-rate human being. Léonce treats her as a child and an object, and she resents his treatment of her as a lower class human. Mme. Ratignolle’s behavior as the model mother-woman turns ever more unappealing, and Edna recognizes that the model family and society’s expectations of the woman in that model stifle her personally. This stifling grasp is not a heated discomfort, however; it is actually the very same icy grip that holds the family members within their house in Snow-Bound. These people are numb to the blind lifestyle they lead, and the figure of Harriet Livermore is dropped into their presence as a burning ember into pristine snow. While Harriet is "tropical" and "intense" Edna gathers her power to remove herself from the role of mother-woman while vacationing in the balmy Gulf of Mexico. Like Harriet, Edna denies the mother-woman role and learns that by stepping beyond the confines of her gender she is able to enjoy that which brings her liberation, a case in point being her painting, another being the time she enjoys with Mmslle. Reisz, who, unattached to a man, has the freedom to express her individuality and does so in a number of ways, not the least of which is through her music. However, Mmslle. Reisz is shunned by those in society who see her actions as aberrant and subsequently unacceptable. It is the frank expression of Mmslle. Reisz’s thoughts and feeling that attracts Edna into her company and aids Edna’s journey to freedom.

 Edna travels from the realm of mother-woman to liberated individual, and having the choice of either world she rejects the former and embraces the latter. We do not see the same experiences paralleled in Harriet Livermore, as she is presented as a figure with no history, already separated from the traditional. Yet the similarity is that both characters make a deliberate decision to lead life in an alternative reality, and this is not accomplished without a certain transformation. The transformation that takes place is expressed in the words of Whittier and Chopin, and can be best illustrated by examining the attributes of these heroines. Harriet is described as a tropical jungle cat, with flashing teeth and eyes; she is out of her element within the walls of the home, and the heat of her presence discomforts the reader and family beyond the comfort of the warming fire. Harriet is no longer a human being; she has become an alien being, a feline representation of an overheated soul. Edna likewise snaps back at Léonce with the force of an untamed creature, and rejects the "kittenish" wiles employed by other women to capture the attention of men.

Instead she acts independently, like the matured cat that walks away indifferently from its adoring "owner."

 Both Edna and Harriet follow in the footsteps of Thoreau, who set out to live deliberately such that the soil of life within the confines of "society’s" boundaries would not stain his being and conscience. Instead of blindly following the crowd and adhering to the generally accepted views, perhaps fale constructs in and of themselves, Harriet and Edna strike out to find their own ground on which to stand. Their roles in the respective works function similarly in that they both serve to disrupt the norm, and accomplish this feat by consciously taking actions alternative to conventional wisdom. They allow us to look upon the "normal" in a new light, and what we find is that those who remain within the rules of civilization are bound by that civilization. This is not the extent of the evil of civilization, however, as Harriet and Edna burn with intensity while their contemporaries have been numbed by their automatonic lifestyle and are held within the icy clutches of a normative reality. The will of society is like the cold grip of the blizzard in Snow-Bound, and these two figures are the hot embers that refuse to be bound by its icy grasp.

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