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Ecclesiastes - Episode 2 - Hevel, Sukkot, Justice and Joy!

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Ecclesiastes - Episode 1 - Wisdom, Vanity And Chasing After The Wind!

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This is our second episode discussing Charles Dickens and his classic Christmas tale, A Christmas Carol. Last episode we began our discussion talking a little bit about Dickens’ life and the early experiences in Victorian England that shaped his career and his understanding of the world in general- in particular, the year he spent at the age of 12 as an outcast on the streets of London working in a blacking factory. We talked about the governmental report on the conditions of the over 30,000 urban poor children that inspired the tale. Finally, we discussed the blended choice of genres in which he chose to communicate his message of social responsibility and personal redemption- a carol, in prose, as he called it, but also a ghost story- an unusual combination.  We ended where we want to start today, talking about the man who has charmed the world with his miserly ways, Ebenezer Scrooge.   

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Nature

Self Reliance

Explore how Ralph Waldo Emerson shaped American Transcendentalism — a bold spiritual and philosophical movement that redefined freedom, nature, and the self.

Discover the core ideas behind Self-Reliance, the power of the individual spirit, and Emerson's lasting influence on American thought.

To know more, visit our YouTube channel || https://www.youtube.com/@howtolovelitpodcast6453/videos

Emerson Transcendentalism

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What is Transcendentalism

American philosophy podcast

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Nature and spirit

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Emerson podcast episode

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

And I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. Today we begin our first of two episodes on Ralph Waldo Emerson, arguably America’s first distinctively American literary voice. He extraordinarily influenced and inspired some of the most notable and productive writers this continent has produced. Some were disciples, others totally rejected and sought to dismantle his ideology, but none of his generation ignored him, and some of America’s greatest writing was produced. 

The names of his contemporaries are recognizable heavy hitters in the American canon, names like Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. American icons were motivated not only by his ideas, but by his enthusiasm and his energy. He had and still has an uncanny ability to imbue his listeners and/or readers with personal confidence, not in him, but in themselves. 

And it wasn’t just writers, or even mostly writers, countless Union Soldiers took Emerson’s essays with them as they packed up to fight the Civil War; they were encouraged by Emerson’s words to fight onward for what was morally right. It is said that leaders as far away as Russia kept his essays on tables next to their beds. For some they have had the authority of Biblical text or Oracles. Philosophers like Nietzsche and William James found inspiration in him. Literally millions from all over the world have put his quotes on decorative walls, bathroom mirrors, and calendars. He’s everywhere- Etsy jewelry, Instagram posts, inspirational candles, if a quote can be stuck on it- Emerson’s in the mix. I’ve heard him quoted in numerous graduation addresses. His optimism is contagious even if his philosophy or theology is complicated, difficult to understand at times and even controversial. 

Yes, I have found the best way for most of us to read Emerson is not to get mired in trying to understand all of his philosophical musings- he’s not really an accepted philosopher. 

No, he isn’t, and this is ironic, Emerson is an alumni of Harvard University, and today, Emerson Hall holds Harvard’s Department of Philosophy. Now what is ironic about that is Emerson is not an accepted philosopher and he is not taught in any class in the building that carries his name, nor on any college campus as a philosopher, not just Harvard’s.

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Keywords

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“Listen to Part 2 of Winston Churchill’s historic ‘The Sinews of Peace’ speech, famously known as the Iron Curtain Speech.

Explore Churchill’s powerful words that shaped post-World War II history. A must-hear for history lovers and political enthusiasts!”

#Keywords: #WinstonChurchill, #IronCurtain, #SinewsofPeace, #ColdWarspeech, #Churchillpodcast, #politicalhistory, #historicspeechespodcast, #Sirwinston, #leadership, #WeShallFightontheBeaches, #WorldWarIIhistory, #famousspeeches, #Dunkirk, #motivationalwartimespeech,#Britishhistorypodcast, #ColdWarhistory

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Listen to Winston Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech, also known as the "Sinews of Peace.

" Learn how the Cold War and world politics were influenced by this 1946 speech.

Ideal for those interested in politics and history. Check our website, How to Love Lit podcast, and YouTube channel for more episodes.

#Keywords: #WinstonChurchill, #IronCurtain, #SinewsofPeace, #ColdWarspeech, #Churchillpodcast, #politicalhistory, #historicspeechespodcast, #Sirwinston, #leadership, #WeShallFightontheBeaches, #WorldWarIIhistory, #famousspeeches, #Dunkirk, #motivationalwartimespeech,#Britishhistorypodcast,

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We examine the historical background of the speech, Churchill's excellent use of language, and how his remarks motivated a country during the evacuation of Dunkirk. Perfect for students, history buffs, and anybody else looking for timeless leadership and motivational lessons. Check our website, How to Love Lit podcast, and YouTube channel for more episodes.

Subjects discussed:

Complete audio recording of Churchill's speech

Dunkirk evacuation during World War II

Leadership insights and rhetorical strategies

Why this speech is still important today

Thanks for watching

#Sirwinston #Churchillspeech, #WeShallFightontheBeaches, #WorldWarIIhistory, #famousspeeches, #Dunkirk, #motivationalwartimespeech, #leadership, #Britishhistorypodcast,  #Dunkirkevacuation, #historicspeechespodcast

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I'm SmarTune Music, as the author of 'Irish Tale' www.melodyloops.com/tracks/irish-tale/, grants Melody Loops and it's licensees, including How To Love Learning , permission to use this Music. This Music may be used in commercial and personal projects and in monetized videos (such as Youtube or Vimeo) without paying additional fees or royalties to author. The Music must be used in accordance with the Melody Loops End User License Agreement https://www.melodyloops.com/support/full-license/ License #: 14467268443 CONFIRMATION SUMMARY Here are a few details of this Grant and Permission: It is conditional upon full receipt of payment; The Music may be used in various multimedia applications including as video games, educational software, powerpoint and keynote presentations, television advertisements, radio spots, documentaries, institutional and corporate advertising, hold on, jingles, websites, flashes, banners; The Music may be modified but may not resold or redistributed outright by licensees of Melody Loops, although it may be included as part of a production; and The Music is being licensed not sold. 'Melody Loops' referred to above means Melody Loops LP, operators of www.melodyloops.com (the 'Site'). SmarTune Music 2025-04-29

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And I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This week, we want to turn our attention to the words and ideas of peace advocate and Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi.  Her story is set in Southeast Asia.  A region that includes the nations of Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.  It is the most diverse region of Asia and includes hundreds of different cultures, religions, racial make ups and languages.  Just politically there are nine different kinds of regimes represented in this region of the world, ranging from military juntas, like Myanmar to monarchies like Brunei to democracies like the Philippines. Freedom House, a non-profit that monitors democracies and indexes freedoms around the world, does not rate a single country in the region as “free”.  Countries such as The Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia are rated as partly free, but Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam are not.  Of course, there are many variables that create barriers to freedom in the region, and each country has its own unique story.  This week, we want to explore the story of Myanmar and of a woman who has devoted her life to its survival.   

Many people may know Myanmar by its other name, Burma.   

Yes, and that is confusing.  Up until 1989, it was called Burma, but in 1989, the military dictatorship changed the name of the country claiming it was more historically accurate to call it Myanmar instead of the British-derived Burma.  However, there was no public referendum on that, and many opposed the change, including Aung San Suu Kyi.  She, along with many others continue to refer to the country as Burma.  This is just one indication of the many political problems that plague this nation.   

The country is large, over 55 million people life there.  It’s natural beauty ranges from pristine beaches to the Himalayan mountains where many tribal groups live in relative seclusion.  Myanmar has cool wildlife like tigers and leopards and elephants.   It’s full of of buddhist temples, in fact, there are thousands pagodas in Myanmar earning the country the nickname, the land of pagodas, just the ancient Bagan city has over 2000 still standing.   Almost any landscape picture of Myanmar will showcase the glittery golden pagodas that dot the landscape, reminding us that this is a with a deep and rich history. 

But before we get too far into politics or religion, let’s situate it geographically.   It is bordered by India to the West, and by Western China, Thailand and Laos to the east.  It is also the largest nation in continental Southeast Asia. Remember India is considered Southern Asia, and China is considered Eastern Asia, so Mynamar is between the two.  

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#keywords : #howtolovelitpodcast #christyshriver #teachingliterature #learnenglishthroughstory #literature #englishaudiobook #rhetoric #gcse #internationalbaccalaureate #apliteratureproseessaytips #literaryanalysis #examprep #poetryanalysis #poetryanalysisstructure #shortstoryanalysis #genrestudies #aplitexam #collegeboard #classicaleducation #teachingrhetoric #abrahamlincoln #abrahamlincolnbiography #abrahamlincolnbestquotes #abrahamlincolnquotes

Abraham Lincoln - The Gettysburg Address - The Great Task Remaining Before Us.

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver.  We’re here to read works that have changed the world and have changed us.

I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  If you’re listening to this in real time, we are in the second week of December 2020- and have just finished the excrutiatingly brutal book Wuthering Heights.  So, as a sorbet to our spirits, for the next three weeks we will be doing a little light reading with traditional Christmas narratives.  This week we are going to feature O Henry and his wildly popular short story “The Gift of the Magi”.  Next week we feature “A Visit from St Nicholas” or better known as “Twas The Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clarke Moore (both American authors, btw), and finally, the week of Christmas we will rebroadcast our analysis of the Sacred Text from the book of Luke in the KJV of the Bible. 

But before we get into O Henry’s plot-twisting life story- let’s remind you that it is the month of giving- and we would like to give to you, our listeners, by featuring and promoting your small business on our social media platforms.  Send us a picture of your shop, café, restaurant, school, whatever you do, we want to give you a shout out-wherever you live in our world.  During this season of worldwide struggle, let’s help each other out by recognizing those so make our individual communities unique and identifiable - each as best we can.

Well, highlighting working community builders is certainly in the spirit of O Henry.  This famous short story illustrates this a little but the larger body of work by O Henry definitely features the working man- he identified with many of us and spoke to and for us- I guess this was a reason for his crazy success- but before we let loose and venture into the hills of North Carolina to meet the young Will Porter (and yes, his name wasn’t actually O Henry- let me ask all of you, if you’ve enjoyed our work, please continue to support us by sharing an episode of ours with a friend, visiting us on our social media and or giving us a rating.  It really helps us grow. 

And now- after all of that ado- let’s chat about O Henry or, as he was born into this world William Sidney Porter on September 11, 1862. 

Not an awesome time to be born in the United States of America- for one thing, we were still in the throws of the American Civil War.  There were massive casualities on both sides and no end in sight.  But there were other deadly forces moving across the world, and not just in the United States and Europe namely and in this case- Tuberculosis- a deadly terrifying life-threatening plague- as it still is today in much of the world.  At the time of O Henry’s birth it was more deadly than even the Civil War, (today it is still in the top ten killers on planet earth and has killed more humans on earth than any other single disease- but in O Henry’s day it was killing 1 of 7 people living in the United States- something we also saw in the Poe episodes.  At that time there was no known cure.  There was nothing anyone felt they do about this illness, and Porter’s mother died of it when he was 3 years old. 

Ironically, Will Porter’s Dad, was a doctor- except during the Civil War that meant a lot of work, but very little income.  No one had money and this included the Porters. Dr Porter moved in with his mother, so she could help him take care of his three boys.   But Dr. Porter had personal demons and soon became an alcoholic- a problem that would eventually get O Henry too.  But for his part, Little Will Porter did okay as a kid, his aunt provided for him a pretty impressive education.  He read a lot.  He worked as a pharmacist at a local pharmacy- normal stuff- his big change came at age 19 when he was invited to accompany a couple that was moving to Texas.  He was thrilled and embraced the change.  In fact, typical Texan-style- he learned the ways of cattle ranching and speaking Spanish!!!  Yeeehawww!!

And it seems Texas was a good spot for him.  He did well, in fact, he did well enough that by age 24 he was earning $100 a month working a job at the Texas Land Office.  And that meant he was well off enough to elope with the 19 year old Athol Estes.

Exciting as that plan sounds-  this is where things started to take a bit of a bad turn- no fault to Athol, I might add.  Sadly,she also had tuberculosis- which was why they had to elope- it seems, her parents didn’t feel comfortable with her getting married with this problem.  Anyway, here’s the short version, short, thereafter Will took a job at a bank.  His wife had two children, the first died within hours of his birth almost killing the mom, the second survived, but not without taking a toll on Athol’s health.  Between those two child births and the tuberculosis, she just couldn’t recover and the medical bills started piling up.  Porter, encouraged by his wife, still pursued his writing career, while also working at the bank.  He started his own news paper called the Rolling Stone- and wrote the articles for it- it was actually really popular- and Will was a really funny writer.  The paper was well-received and sold well- but not well enough..the paper lost money.  So, here’s how Will found himself- he was bleeding money with the newspaper.  He was bleeding money with Athol’s medical bills-and then there was an incident at the bank which resulted in a problem that would define him for the rest of this life.  In 1894, an examiner found a shortage in his bank register.  To this day, no one really knows what actually happened to that money- but it was missing.

Well, it’s understandable why he would be stealing money.  But it’s also very conceavable that someone else did as well.  At this time period especially in places like Texas, the supervision at banks was more akin to turning in money in a middle school on field day- chaotic and unsupervised- it was very common in fact- for people to borrow money from the register if they needed it and then pay it back- no harm no foul was – and people just turned their head.  I’m just saying, he may have stolen the money, but it’s also not just entirely possible, but very easy to see how someone else could have done it- and absolutely no one would have known.

Well, it was quite shocking when they accuse Will.  He had an absolutely inpeccable reputation.  Everyone loved him and no one thought he would do such a thing.  The idea that Will Porter would embezzle thousands of dollars was shocking- even to him- When he was accused of embezzling the $4,702.94- he panicked, guilty or not, though, he gots on a train from Houston to Austin (where he was supposedly going to visit his wife- she’d been staying with her parents since her illness had gotten so bad)- but never arrived at Austin- he changed directions headdd to New Orleans at first but eventually wound up in Honduras.  His plan was simple if not less than brilliant.  The plan seems to have been to stay there until the statute of limitations on embezzlement ran out.

Not the most well-thought out plan- apparently- he did write Athol and tried to convince her to move to Honduras- but she was very sick.  It  just was  not physically possible for her to do something like that.  In fact, she was going to die.  When he understood this was the reality, To his kind-hearted credit, he came back to the US and was with her all the way to her death.  Right after that, though, he had to face the courts- and this is where historians really don’t agree on what to do with O Henry’s guilt.  Did he do it or not?  Henry claimed even in prison that he never stole it.  One time medicine went missing in the hospital where he worked in the prison.  They asked him if he took it and he said this, “I am not a thief and I never stole a thing in my life.  I was sent here for embezzling bank funds, not one cent of which I ever got.  Someone else got it and I am doing time for it.”  So who knows if he had a hand in the embezzlement or not.  It seems that courts were not totally convinced: The end result of his trial was that most of the charges were dropped, but he was still convicted of stealing $299.60- which isn’t near as large a sum of money as the original accusation- but there was still the problem that he fled.  He received the minimum sentence possible but on April 25, 1898, the day the Spanish-American war started- was also the day he started his five year sentence in the Ohio Penitentiary. 

This period in prison, it seems to me, is what changed Will Porter into O Henry, although he had used the pen name before, and although we haven’t brought it up yet- this whole time since arriving he Texas he had already done quite a considerable amount of writing – he’d even sold work to be nationally syndicated.  But- his time in prison changed the person of Will Porter- the man who went into that prison was not the man who came out.  For one thing, he had quite a bit of free time inside, and he used it to hone his skills.  It was in the penitentiary that he came up with his unique style – the which we’ll talk about here in a minute.  But he also comes up with a perspective. 

Well, as far as life in prison goes, he had it as good as you could have it.  He was immediately assigned to the prison hospital because of his experience as a pharmacist (know that that job didn’t require the years of education back then that it does today)- but he lived there- he ate and slept there- he was trusted as a bookkeeper (ironically)- so he was kept entirely away from the general population of prisoners and the harassment of the guards that was a common problem in the prison.  So, it was never the physical hardships of prison that got to him so bad- in fact, so badly that threatened suicide shorting after arriving.

No, first of all, it was the shame of being in prison.  And he was going to keep those years secret for the rest of his life.  But secondly, and I believe this is what fueled the endless stories he could come up with in his career after prison, as the pharmacist- he saw, new and listened to hundreds and hundeds of prisoners.  He heard their stories, saw how they were treated in an impersonal prison system, and this moved him.  This is a quote from a letter he wrote his father in law from prison, “There are four doctors and about 25 other men in the hospital force.  The hospital is a separate b uilding and is one of the finest equipped institutions in the country.  It is large and finely furnishes and has every appliance of medicine and surgery….the doctor goes to bed about 10 o’clock and from then on during the night I prescripbe for the patients myself and go out ant attend calls that come in.  If I find anyone seriously ill I have them brought to the hospital and attended to by the doctor.  I never imagined human life was held as cheap as it is here.  The mean are regarded as animals without soul or feeling….he then goes to describe the brutal living and working conditions of the inmates- their 13 hour days, the way they were viewed by the outside world and the institution at large compared to how he saw himself and the other men within the system.  O Henry gets out after 39  because of his impeccable behavior in prison.  The story goes that he told a fellow prison, “I will forget that I ever breathed behind these walls.”

Well, Will Porters starts over- at age 40 going to New York a town he would call “the four million”, an ex-con, a widower, his daughter living with her grandparents

-but this time he won’t be Will Porter- he is O Henry.  He won’t use that name until his gravestone, sadly only 9 years later. 

He lived in a cheap hotel.  He lived in a community he called “Baghdad by the Subway”- this is the material for all of his stories.  He wrote about the common person. In his writings he tells their stories. And this brings success.

 He said this, “I would like to live a lifetime on each street in New York.  Every house has a drama in it.” His first year he publishes 17 stories, but it won’t be long til he’s publishing 66 stories a year.  He makes money. He gives urban life- the kind that is so easy to dehumanize- a human  face.  The people in the tenement houses aren’t just dirty masses- they are individuals with stories, hearts, personalities.   

 He mae a name for himself and finally started making real money.  He started making $500 per story- that’s a long way from the $100 a month back in Texas.   But the drinking was a problem.  He was drinking at a rate of two bottles of whiskey per day!!  Nobody can sustain that.  It made him shiftless as an employee- he produced great stories, but they would be late, he’d be hard to track because he spent his days wandering the streets moving from one cheap hotel to another.  He really frustrated his bosses, one of which was Joseph Pulitzer. 

Late in 1905, O Henry agreed to write a Christmas story.  But he never got around to doing it.  The due date for the story came and went and no story-  the illustrator for the story trudged through snow to track down o Henry because he needed to get started.  O Henry said this, “I’ll tell you what to do, Colonel.  Just draw a picture of a poorly furnished room, the kind you find in a boarding house or rooming house over on the West Side.  In the room there is only a chair or two, a chest of drawers, a bed and a trunk.  On the bed, a man and a girl are sitting side by side.  They are talking about Christmas.  The man has a watch fob in his hand.  He is plahing with it while he is thinking.  The girl’s principal feature is the long beautiful hair that is hanging down her back.  That’s all I can think of now.  But the story is coming.”  The illustrator took that, but the story never came…to the desperation of the editor.  It was just a few hours before the absolute deadline.  O Henry told the editor to lie down.  He pulled out a bottle of scotch and three hours later delivered “The Gift of the Magi.”  It has been reprinted in magazines every year for the last 115 years. 

Well, not just that.  It’s inspired countless movies- there’s a muppet version, a sesame street version, a mickey mouse version, a Rugrats version, a SNL version and that’s just here in the US- there’s even a Family guy parody.  Internationally it’s been translated into languages and cultures all over the world- those that celebrate Christmas and those that don’t.

Well, before we read this ubiquitous Christmas story, we should finish out the story of O Henry’s short life which is so many ways mirrors a lot of his stories.  One of the key features of O Henry’s stories is their dependence on irony and surprise endings.  He was known for this.  Yet, the real irony is that he spent lots of energy keeping his life a secret while writing stories that were often based in fact, sometimes autobiographical. Not even his daughter knew until after his death that he was a convicted felon.  He never tried to clear his name.  He never wrote anything that resembled bitterness.  His stories weren’t known for their deep characterization or important complex themes- they were all plot.  They for formulaic; they were fun- he wanted to provide casual entertainment- and that was what he did.  He married again in 1907 to a childhood sweetheart, Sara Lindsey Coelman, he moved her and his daughter to live with him in New York.  He bought a really fancy house on Long Island as well as an apartment in Manhattan.  By this point he was making gobs of money, but spending it at a faster rate than he was making it.  He bought fancy clothes, he gave away money to poor people he ran into on the streets or in restaunts.  Sometimes beggars would approach him asking for pennies and he’d give them large wods of cash.  One critic called him, “gay, irresponsible, impudent, hoaxing; no writer in the language seems clever immediately after one has been reading O Henry. What does a comment like that mean?  Do you think?

Well, it means he’s a genius, but like many geniuses not unhaunted. And the secrets or demons that were tormenting took a toll.   His marriage was short-lived.  Sara his ex-wife later said, “No one could manage that man, he was a law unto himself.”  In the summer of 1910, he collapsed in his hotel room.  A friend called an ambulance.  He checked himself into the hospital under the alias Will S. Parker.  He joked as they checked him in that he was going to die only worth 23 cents.  Right as he was losing consciousness he said this, “Turn up the lights, I don’t want to go home in the dark.”  In the morning he died by cirrhosis of the liver and diabetes. 

And yet again- the final irony, after he died his reputation grew, his stories made a fortune for his wife and daughter.  Five million copies of his book sold, and 8 years after his death the Society of Letters and Arts established the O Henry Memorial- and began awarding prizes every year to the best writers of short stories in America or Canada.  The Society Sold to doubleDay the rights to publish the O Henry Prizes stoires, and the O Henry Prize has been award to writers ever year since  then.  In 2019 the O Henry Prize printed it’s 100th anthology of the year’s greatest short stories.  In his lifetime, O Henry wrote over 250 short stories.  Many critics have called them sentimental-and that’s not an unfair criticism- but most of us don’t care that they are.  That’s what we like about them.  Others have said he wrote to keep his spirits up- that may or may not be true- because no matter why he wrote them- they have kept all of our spirits up for over 100 years. 

In that spirit, let’s read The Gift of the Magi- it’s simple- the narrator is omniscient- there are only three characters- a man and his wife and a woman who cuts hair for a living.   The plot like many of his stories forms a cross-pattern- two people are following paths, the story will intersect, and these two characters cross paths.  This causes the story to have an unexpected twist and creates the big situational irony- remember that’s when a situation is the opposite of what the characters or even we’d expect.  So…look for it…it’s not easy to miss though in this one- so let’s go- this story is set in a New York City apartment on Christmas Eve. 

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to love Lit Podcast.  Today we are finishing up our series on Shirley Jackson.  Last week we concluded our discussion of her most famous book, the one that inspired the Netflix series by the same name The Haunting of Hill House.  Today we are going to read the short story that made her a household name, “The Lottery.” 

It has had its share of movie inspiration.  Anyone who has seen the opening of The Hunger Games would not be shocked at the plot of “The Lottery.”  It’s inspired a bunch of other stories and movies besides that one; I think you mentioned the Stephen King one last week.  I’m sure there are way more than that if we sat here and thought about it. 

True, and maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was actually surprised as to how scandalous this story was when it was first published.  If we’re talking solely about violence, by today’s standards, it’s mild.  There is no blood or gore, it’s definitely no Squid Games. 

I agree- and I believe that is why this story- so deceptively simple and relatively tame- is actually taught in the eight grade in many school systems.  It’s disturbing for reasons beyond the fact that someone is killed at the end- kiiling a main character is just par for the course in a standard English curriculum- in fact, that’s the big joke among English teachers- we don’t teach a story if we don’t kill someone at the end.  “The Lottery” reads and feels so simple.  And it is…so why the sensation?   

  Let’s talk about the sensation, it’s definitely worth noticing how big a stir it actually created. 

For starters, the story generated more negative letters and subscription cancellations than anything the New Yorker had ever published.  Jackson herself received over 300 letters just the summer it was published.  In her own words she said this, “I can count only 13 that spoke kindly to me.” 

I want to point out that her mother, the ever-inspiring Geraldine could be counted on for a comment.  She wrote her daughter with this to say, “Dad and I did not care at all for your story…it does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days.  Why don’t you write something to cheer people up?” 

Dear Ole’ Geraldine- at least she’s consistent.  But Jackson refused to explain the meaning of the story.  She did once tell a journalist, “I suppose I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the readers with a graphic demonstration of the pointless violence and general inhumanity of their own lives, but I gather that in some cases the mind just rebels.  The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washer at the end would amaze you.”   

Ha!  Well, I don’t know how pointless violence and general inhumanity could have surprised anyone in 1948 when it was published.  That was right after world war 2, especially the United States, had to stare the reality in the face that we had stood by and turned a blind eye for almost a decade to the atrocities committed by Hitler, and there was no one more cultured or sophisticated than the German people.  

I guess that’s true, but of course…for Americans that was always…over there…we, self-righteously could always claim we were not capable of such things... 

we after all were the victorious winners in that struggle between good and evil. And yet, Jackson’s simple story does seem to be pointing an accusing finger at someone. 

Yes, I totally think it does, and I do want us to take a different direction than many people who read this story.  At first pass, and this is how I’ve most often heard this story discussed, this is a story that rails against tradition, against not questioning authority, specifically religious authority, against patriarchy…all very easy things to attack and very common in the American canon. 

 Well, not just in the arena of literature either.  We’ve been attacking cultural norms in one form or another since American invented baseball as its own American sports ritual over the sport of the British Empire- football or better known here as soccer.  

HA!  I guess that’s true.  We also have a  way higher tolerance for gore than this story evokes- I mean we were comfortable with the headless horseman and the tell-tale heart.  There was something personal about the Lottery that went beyond attacking traditions or killing an innocent victim.    I also don’t think many of us would cancel our subscription to our favorite media streaming service (which would be the modern day equivalent), or take the trouble to dig up someone’s personal address and write them a personal letter if we did not feel personally attacked.  “The Lottery” got under people’s skins because it was personal.  So, that’s the question I want to ask?  If this story is about pointless violence and general inhumanity, and if I’m offended because I feel personally accused, how?   

So, let’s start- Christy, we talked about if we should read the entire story and then discuss it or if we should stop and start.  We’ve decided to stop and start, but hopefully we won’t stop and start too much to be confusing, but just enough to be helpful- a difficult balance to strike.   

True- Garry- we may fail, but let’s give it a go.  Let’s start with the first three paragraphs and then we’ll interrupt.  

Paragraphs 1-3 

What are your thoughts? 

Well, the thing that strikes me here is tone.  Look at the imagery and word choice- it’s summer, there is fresh warmth- there are flowers blooming- there’s not just grass there’s richly green grass- this is the language of birth and beauty.   There is also a deliberate attempt to characterize these people as organized and civilized- the lottery is annual, it takes less than two hours, they eat a noon dinner- the children don’t gather, they assemble- assemble is a formal word.  There is a reference to school. They are being instructed and civilized so to speak deliberately – the word “liberty” is thrown around here.  And yet what are they doing, they are stuffing their pockets full of stones- even the very small children.  They assemble as family units, the very bedrock of civilization across time and culture- they stand together- united- and for a purpose that is upsetting to no one. 

Let’s read the next four paragraphs and learn about the culture and traditions of this place. 

Next four paragraphs  

One funny thing that Jackson does in this story is play around with names.  The names are all carefully selected- look at who’s conducting all of this, a man by the name of Summers- such a happy name associated with youth, strength, growth, life, all of it.  But look at the other guy- Mr. Graves- he also is responsible for making up the slips of paper and putting the names in this black box.  It’s a pun- a grave is a place where we put a dead body. It also means serious- like if you are in grave danger.  The black box one time spent a year in Mr. Graves barn, but that’s not the only place it lives.  He is not solely responsible for this black box.  It’s spent a year in the post office and also in a grocery store owned by Mr. Martin.   

Another thing that people have pointed to is all the possible symbolism in this story.  It does seem that this box is a symbol, the three-legged stool is a symbol, the black mark is a symbol, even the stones are symbols.  But for what?  We should always annotate and follow the symbols, but I usually withhold judgement on what they mean until I’ve had time to think about the story as a whole.   

And we’ve got more names- a lot of names actually.  One that showed up earlier, but we didn’t address is name Delacroix- we’re even told the correct pronunciation of this name-  

Dela-Croix- as in French for of the Cross 

Yep- except they mispronounce it- they don’t say Delacroix like you’re supposed to say it- they say delacroy- a corruption of the original.  And that sets up for me another a pattern that I see as you read through all these traditions.  Traditions are not fixed- like people think they are.   

No, They evolve like everything else on planet earth.  We keep what we want and discard what we don’t like.  On my wall, I have a poster that says all behavior is goal- directed- and that goes for entire cultures as well.  No matter what we say, our behaviors speak for us- and they are all goal-directed.  This is true for traditions as well- be it religious, ethical, or civic. 

Jackson is very ambiguous about her relationship with religion here.  I want to point out that this is not a religious ceremony, and she could have very easily and understandably made it one.  Mr. Summers could have been Pastor Summers or Father Summers or Rabbi Summers, but he’s not any of these, he’s a businessman.  I want to suggest what I think here about-that three legged stool- I do think it represents what holds up society in general-  three aspects of societal authority or control- religious, civic and commercial- these three legs hold up the black box.  They are working together, but none is running the show exclusively.   

Well, if we’re going to guess at symbolism, I want to make a suggestion of my own. 

Oh-okay- what do you want to suggest? 

That black box.  It’s power, it’s control.  It’s black because fear controls.  It’s dynamic in that it moves.  It evolves over time, as power does.  It’s cloaked in secrecy, it hides behind tradition, but we see that that isn’t necessarily true- they went from chips to paper when they wanted to.  What they wanted to uphold was the black box of power.  I also want to point out that somehow Jackson subtly connects her ritual with this black box and three-legged stool to the harvest, which I found to be a particularly interesting connection.  It’s a link to survival and it’s at the heart of human existence.  The ancient Athenians, the Aztecs, the Incans on this side of the world just to name a few, but many cultures have connected human sacrifice to crop fertility. In fact, and this may be a point of irony, if you just look across human history from the Egyptians to the Chinese, what we see is human sacrifice correlates directly with a rise in a more sophisticated culture and social stratification than the other way around, contrary to what Old Man Warner suggests.   

What do you mean by that? 

I mean that we can see, historically, as societies got more sophisticated and organized, we saw more and more links to human sacrifice.  

Well You’re right  That is counter-intuitive- you would think it would be just the opposite.  Of course, closer to home, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is what Jackson was most familiar with and what is reflected most obviously in her story, there is a very deep tradition of sacrifice but not human.  This story is not a direct attack on Christianity by the way, but there is a lot of Christian imagery here- not just with the name Delacroix or delacroy.   There is also the connection with publicly sanctioned and even religiously sanctioned public stonings.  This is a ritual we see in the Old Testaman of the Bible, and one we see Jesus referencing directly in the New Testament in the Bible.  There is a particular story, one of the more famous stories in the New Testament from the 8th chapter of Saint John where a group of men want to stone a woman because they caught her in the act of adultery.  They take her outside; they all gather stones and are ready to murder her when Jesus intervenes.  He takes a stick and starts writing something in the sand which we are never told what they are,  but he famously says, “He who is without sin cast the first stone.”  The men slowly but surely as they read whatever he was writing, dropped their stones and went home.  Of course, we don’t know what he wrote, I like to think it was the names of their paramours, but that’s just me enjoying the irony.  The story ends with Jesus looking at the woman and asking where her accusers had gone because by that point there were none left. 

So, you see that story connecting here-  

Yep- I do.  There are more Christian references too- Mrs. Adams, that’s the name of the first man.  There is an Eva- and then Old man Warner- his name isn’t Biblical but there’s a biblical connection.  Again, back to Jesus in the New Testament.   These Biblical references, btw, are not obscure- these are super-famous passages that every red-blooded American in 1950 would know.  In the New Testament there’s another story where  a follower of Jesus asks Jesus how many times a person was responsible for forgiving another person- the follower offered a suggestion- he said, should we forgive a person seven times- something he finds to be generous- to which Jesus responded- you should forgive a person 70 times 7 – I think what is important about Old Man Warner is not his name but his age- and the link to this archetypal number.   

What’s the connection- I don’t think this story is talking about adultery or forgiveness,  is it? 

Not directly, it’s talking about values and core values and hypocrisy for sure- and we’ll flesh it out when we get to the end, but what I want to point out- is that people have somehow found their value in surviving this tradition.  Mr. Warner brags that he’s survived 77 of these without getting picked- his importance comes from this.  Warner also makes a claim that is literally a great example of a post hoc fallacy- an error in logic which you believe that just because something comes before something it means that thing necessarily causes it- he is literally saying that the harvest comes as a direct result of the lottery.  He doesn’t invoke any diety for believing this- he just throws it out there.    He’s resistant to change because he’s validated by this social order. 

Well, I can see why lot’s people think this story is about accepting things just because they have always been done.  Warner clearly makes that argument. 

Of course, that’s obvious and there- it’s just not the heart of the story.  I want to bring up one more name before we finish and get to the punch line.  The name Tessie Hutchinson- if we look to history there is one Hutchinson woman who stands out- Anne Hutchinson- she showed up in chapter 1 of the Scarlet Letter too- btw- which has a connected theme to this story- 

 but anyway- tell us who this person is- for those less familiar with early American history. 

Anne Hutchinson- we’re going way back now- she was born in 1591- she was banished to the  colony of Rhode Island after being excommunicated from Massachusetts bay colony for teaching among other things that women should read and be in leadership but mostly her teachings about the Bible were considered heretical.   She ended up being murdered by Indians in 1643.  It’s a sad ending.  She was definitely cast out of the group.   

So, let’s finish reading the story, and see where we land with all these ideas swirling around in our heads.   

Finish the story 

Well, Mrs. Hutchinson doesn’t win a Bendix washer.  You know  the psychologist Carl Jung, as you know I like his work, stated that even more or less civilized people remain inwardly primitive.  We don’t like thinking this, so we can justify with this “mass psyche”.  The group becomes the hypnotic focus of fascination and we can allow ourselves to fall into some sort of spell.- that’s the word he used.  The group experience lowers the level of consciousness like the psyche of an animal so we don’t have to take responsibility for our actions on an individual level.  It’s not a murder if it’s a ritual.  How could it be? It’s sanctioned by the group. 

And yet, it is murder, isn’t.  And where I see all of Jackson’s ambiguities emerge.  Her story can be interpreted so many different ways. For one thing, no one sees any moral conflict.  Any psychological explanation for that.  I mean they do this every year. 

Talk aboou the Milgram experiment 

 It’s a nameless village, full of tradition, likely corruption, so civilized, so warm, the people were so nice to each other…all the way until Mrs. Delacroix picks up the largest stone she could find with which to pelt her good friend Mrs. Hutchinson.   

Jackson downplayed her story.  In an essay she wrote about it she had this to say, “I had written the story three weeks before being published.  The idea had come to me while I was pushing my daughter up the hill in her stroller- it was as I say, a warm morning, and the hill was steep, and beside my daughter, the stroller held the day’s groceries- and perhaps the effort of that last fifty yards up the hill put an edge to the story, at any rate, I had the idea fairly clearly in my mind when I put my daughter in her playpen and the frozen vegetables in the refrigerator, and writing the story I foud that it went quicly and easily, moving from beginning to end without pause, I’ll skip a little to we get to this line….it was just a story I wrote.” 

Except it wasn’t.  It was her lived experience in Bennington.  Everyone was so nice to each other; centered on civic contribution, religion, family structure- and yet ready to pelt each other with the largest stone they could find, given the psychological pass to do so with impunity. 

And that’s what made people angry.  We are nice people, but we’re not kind people.  We are civilized, but we are not forgiving.  We are religious but our religion has been molded not out of the old sacred texts, but out of the box of power that sits on that three legged stool of our conveniently created social structures remolded over the years as it goes from house to house.  We are not good, we are what we always have been- ready not just to hurl that first stone, but ready to bring out children along, get them to fill up their pockets with stones, all on a beautiful summer day.   

Wow!  That hurts.  Well, we hope you enjoyed our discussion of one of America’s most famous short stories.  Next week, we will find the anecdote to such raw exposure to humanity through the writings of another American native son- Walt Whitman and selections from his wonderful masterpiece- Leaves of Grass.  We hope you stick around to see what that great American has to say.  As always, please support us by pushing us out on your social media- facebook, instsagram, twitter, tiktok and/or linked in.  Text an episode to a friend.  If you are a teacher, visit our website www.howtolovelitpodcast.com to find listening guides to all of our episodes.   

Peace out 

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is episode two in our three part series over Ibsen’s explosive play A Doll’s House.  Last week, we looked briefly at the life of Ibsen, his early origins in Norway, the beginning of his career all the way to this play- the one that launched him into stratosphere of Theater greats- It still amazes me that his plays are only outperformed by those of William Shakespeare.  Crazy!!!  We also looked at the very very beginning of this play- we entered the doll house by meeting Nora as she came back from a shopping trip.  We talked about her unique role in this play- she is the entire focus of the play- Nora IS the doll- but we also began to expand the metaphor a little bit because we are also introducing the idea that Nora is not the only person playing a part- maybe she isn’t the only doll in the house. 

No, I don’t think she is- although she’s the most interesting and the focus, no doubt.   This play is fascinating because there are so many subtle details that leave subtext about so many psychological and sociological ideas- this is, to a greater or lesser degree- a play about someone we all know- if not about ourselves.  To what degree do we all play parts and to what degree do we want to?  Do we use people?  Are we used being?   Are we in a relationship where both parties are using each other? What are the moral implications of this?  Does an arrangement like this bring happiness? What are the inevitable consequences- and are these consequences  different for men and women because of the different roles we absolutely can’t escape either sociologically or biologically on planet earth?  And it is that last question that we will start discussing today.  Because, if you google this play at all, the unanswered question that has plagued this play- to the chagrin of Ibsen himself for over 100 years is this- IS or is this NOT a feminist play?  Is Ibsen advocating for women’s rights?   

HA!! It’s really amazing that so many books that have staying power over the centuries end up landing on gender politics?  From Antigone to Wuthering Heights to The Scarlet Letter and the Great Gatsby- gender politics is absolutely inescapable at one level or another. 

Well, it absolutely IS- and speaking of gender politics in the 20s, Hermann Weigand a notable literary critic of that time period once said about having watched the doll’s house that “he was, like all men, momentarily shaken by the play.  He said this, “Having had the misfortune to be born of the male sex, we slink away in shame, vowing to mend our ways.” 

Ha!  That’s funny.  I get the feeling since I’ve also had that very same misfortune that I’m supposed to feel that way after watching a lot of things.   

Indeed, and, that of course IS the goal of most things women write (I’m kidding- I’m not trying to insult anybody, just having a bit of fun), but having said that, Henrik Ibsen absolutely ran from this “feminist” label.  So much so that in May 1898, he gave a speech at a banquet held in his honour by the Norwegian Women’s rights league and this is what he said at the speech. 

“I am not a member of the Women’s Rights League.  Whatever I have written has been without any conscious thought of making propaganda.  I have been more the poet and less the social philosopher than people generally seem included to believe.  I thank you for the toast, but must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the Women’s Right’s Movement. I am not even quite clear as to just what this Women’s Rights Movement really is.  To me, it has seemed a problem of mankind in general. And if you read my books carefully you will understand this. True enough, it is desirable to solve the woman problem, along with all the others; but that has not been the world purpose. My task has been the description of humanity.  To be sure, whenever such a description is felt to be reasonably true, the reader will read his own feelings and sentiments into the work of the poet.  These are then attributed to the poet; but incorrectly so.  Every reader remolds the work beautifully and neatly, each according to his own personality.  Not only those who write but also those who read are poets. They are collaborators. They are often more poetical than the poet himself. With these reservations, let me thank you for the toast you have given me. I do indeed recognize that women have an important task to perform in the particular directions; this club is working along. I will express my thanks by proposing a toast to the League for Women’s Rights, wishing it progress and success. The task always before my mind has been to advance our country and to give our people a higher standard. To achieve this, two factors are important. It is for the mothers, by strenuous and sustained labor, to awaken a conscious feeling of culture and discipline. This feeling must be awakened before it will be possible to lift the people to a higher plane. It is the women who shall solve the human problem. As mothers, they shall solve it. And, only is that capacity can they solve it? Here lies a great task for women. My thanks! And, success to the League for Women’s Rights [6].  

Well, Christy, what should we say about that.   That seems pretty clear. He is obviously distancing himself from Women’s Rights- are we not to take him at his word? 

I know, and it seems a bit ironic coming from me because I am always insisting that we take people at their word- but in this case, I’m sorry- I have to say- bull malarky- Henrik Ibsen- you are full of it- like it or not- you, darling are a feminist- I don’t care what you say!!!  This man was absolutely a feminist- and why would you even accept an honor from a women’s rights organization if you weren’t?  What a crazy thing to say while accepting an award- now having said that-  I do take him at his word- in the literally since.  Meaning if you listen to his words and what they actually mean, what he says here is actually literally true.  I do think he doesn’t want to be writing propaganda for the women’s rights movement.  Propaganda in and of itself is the opposite of art.  It’s not even honest, by most definitions.  Ibsen wasn’t trying to do that.  Also, there is no doubt that   he is interested in humanity.  But none of those things are mutually exclusive.  He’s also interested in how sexual politics defines our humanity.  

Well, as I said before- nothing is more interesting on planet earth than humans and there is no doubt how men and women relate is a “problem” to use his language that we cant really solve..   

 Well, there’s no doubt.  But Ibsen because of his interesting friend group in the theater, had a different perspective on gender politics  than most men living traditional Scandanavian lives at the turn of the century.  The women in Ibsen’s world were extremely strong women.  They were building careers in the theater; involved in creative endeavors, highly educated.  We know this from reading his biography, but we also know that by reading his work.  Ibsen creates stories where the women outshine their male counterparts over and over and over again.   He was almost drawn to stories where women were grappling with patriarchial societies and the imbalances of power within them.   

The women who filled Ibsen’s world really are a fascinating subgroup.   

Well, that’s a whole tangent, and don’t think I’m not tempted to go down it, not all of those stories, though, reflect super-well on Ibsen.  As far as his relationship with his wife, Suzanna goes, their son weighed in on that relationship later on his life and basically credited his mother for Ibsen’s entire career.  Apparently there were many times when he wanted to give up- he didn’t have the stamina for it in the early days- and it seems to me that even his personality was much weaker than hers.  Sigurd said this, “The world can thank my mother that it has one bad painter the fewer and got a great writer instead.”   

Suzannah was for sure a strong influence obviously, but beyond his wife, Aasta Hansteen, was a very famous and outspoken advocate for women’s rights in Norway at that time, and I know she was a good friend of Ibsen.  I may want to circle back to some of the history of women’s rights next week after we get to the conclusion of the play because it is certainly something to think about in the context of the play’s ending.  But  there is no downplaying the realities that being a single or divorced woman in Scandanavia or really anywhere in the Western World was not the easiest path to take in life at that time. 

No doubt, And I think how this affected women’s psychology really fascinated Ibsen on an personal level as well as a professional level.  On a different occasion when talking about laws, Ibsen can be quoted as saying this, A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society; it is an exclusively male society with laws drafted by men, and with counsels and judges who judge feminine conduct from the male point of view” , and then my favorite Ibsen political quote was when they asked him about property rights for married women.  He said that men should not even be consulted in drafting this law because and I quote, “to consult men in such a matter is like asking wolves if they desire better protection of the sheep” [7].  

Okay, so back to the question of whether ibsen was a feminist, I think there is enough indicting evidence to suggest that Ibsen was involved at least in sympathy with the imbalance of power in a patriarchial society.  However, I would like to point out that women are not without power in every generation. 

And I think that’s a very nice way to say that, he did see the disadvantages of a society where distribution of power was so unevenly distributed between the sexes, but having said that, I think Ibsen , at least in this plays, does not see women as necessarily powerless even in this unequal society- and it is this dynamic that he highlights.  I’m not even sure, Ibsen would suggest that if society was unequally balanced and the balance of power favored women, women would be less tyrrancial then men- but that’s a different question altogether- a play yet to be written, I think.   

Where I want us to land, as we open our discussion of the play today, is to take a position on this issue before we even read the play.  I want to come down on the side that sees this play as a feminist play.  

I agree.   I absolutely don’t think we can escape that. 

Having said that, writing a play where the theme is men are bad is not interesting.  It’s been done over and over and over again.  In fact, I’ve ready high school creative magazines filled with poems that pound that theme to death.  No play will stick around in popularity for over 100 years if that’s all it has.  There has to be more. 

This play is focusing on women-but in particular- one woman- and it’s looking at several things as we look at this one women- one of them is how this imbalance of power between sexes affects a marriage and a homelife in general. But there are other things as well. 

 A Doll’s House is a such a personal play in some sense.  As Thorton Wilder tells us in Our Town, most people choose to go through life with another person.  So, this is about how some people live that life- a way that’s slightly cynical maybe.  This play pulls back the curtain on this couple and their love affair.  Two people who think they are in love.  But we are left to question this reality- what is the basis of this love?  What is the basis of this marriage?  Their lives are great.  They have had lots of fun.  They’ve traveled.  They have children.  He has a good job.  She spends her days shopping.  But Ibsen is asking- okay- so now- what is the basis of the relationship between these two people- what is it really?  Could it be something besides a devoted commitment to walk through life together?  Could it be something like societal expectations, competitive relationships with people outside the home, personal narcissism or simply the objectification of another person?    

Ibsen exposes a marital reality that way too many people see in their own lives and relationships and wish they didn’t.  He asks questions that many people ask years into a marriage after they’ve tried one way of living and are now questioning the wisdom of those choices?      

So, Christy, are we ready to open up this text and walk through the rest of Act 1-2? 

I think so, last week, we read a little bit of this dialogue between Torvald and Nora.  It’s so awful. He’s so condescending.  He calls her by animal names and not even cool animal names like Flying Phoenix or Cunning Fox- he goes with little squirrel.  

For the record, Christy hates Torvald’s names, if you can’t tell.  And just so you know, I have not been able to resist the temptation to call Christy my little skylark and my little squirrel for the last two days- and every time I do it, if I’m within strking distance I pat her on the top of her head.  I may as well tell you, I’ve been enjoying it, but I’m not sure that she appreciates it in the spirit that is intended. 

The pat on the head is particularly awful.   It highlights my height impairment.  Since this is a podcast, you don’t know this about me, but I’m a full 11 inches shorter than Garry- so patting me on the head is particularly awful. 

It’s awesome.  And it’s not just the animal terms- although I find those hilarious.  Using the dimunuitive by adding the word “little” all the time and then the possessive adjective “my” multiples the level of condescension.  I can feel it as I say it and as I pat you on the head, my little squirrel. 

Good Lord.  

 Ibsen leaves absolutely zero room for doubt that Torvald views Nora as his possession- his prized and most expensive possession, and even one that he loves dearly- but clearly a possession.   That is premise number one in Ibsen’s argument. 

Having set that up, though, he switches gears and immediately proceeds to paint Nora very unglamorously.  She condescends to Mrs. Linde almost as much as Torvald does to her, albeit it’s way more passive aggressive.    Some people really think Mrs. Linde is supposed to represent some sort of a feminine ideal, but I don’t know about that.  In fact, I know I don’t think she is.  She is most certainly at this point in her life an independent working woman.  She is more authentic and self-aware than Nora.  She’s been exposed to life and has not had the insulation money buys.  She’s suffered and had to figure things out for herself.  She wasn’t raised with money and as a woman in a patriarchal society, has incredible challenges in getting some.  When she arrives to talk to Nora we find out these two haven’t seen each other for years.  Nora has made good because she landed a good. Husband.  Kristine married well too, but her sugar daddy died and left her broke.  Nora knows this about Kristine, so she does what so many girls do when confronted with an old girlfriend who’s fallen on bad times- she hijacks the conversation and brags on herself- making sure in the most sympathetic of ways, that the other person knows, she’s done quite well for herself.   

Oh my, girls would never do that to each other. 

Ha!  And I can hear the irony in your voice as you say that.  Garry, btw, has worked in a girls school for the last five years, so he’s seen this play out more than once.  That’s the entire game we play. 

I’m a smart enough man not to comment here, but let’s read the passage.   

Read page 1814  

I know a man who’s wife did something similar to what Nora is doing here, and let me say, this woman at the time was in her 50s.  She had invited a friend to stay with her because her friend’s husband had left her and she was entitled to no alimony.  The woman had no real career but had lived a pretty nice lifestyle now she had nothing- and was falling from a comfortable life to a dubious one.  Well, the woman I know invited her to stay in Memphis in order to “console” her, but two days before she came, she bought all new outfits complete with brand new jewelry- for each day of her friend’s visit. She also bought fancy food they usually didn’t eat and prepared elegant desserts.  She pulled out fancy china and for the duration of the visit used them pretending that was the normal course of daily life.  I remember the event because it seemed particularly cruel to subtextually brag on how great your life was in comparison- but it was done so nicely.  

Oh yes, female aggression can be so subtle- and we all feel it even if it’s nice- we just know we’re uncomfortable.  It’s very different than how men treat each other or even treat women.  And I guess that’s what we see here because Kristine fights back- also subtextually, of course, She mocks Nora for being so naïve and having lived a sheltered life.  She turns all that bragging about being pampered, and changes it to an accusation of being sheltered and basically stupid.   And so, not to be out done and to prove to Kristine that she’s as sophisticated as Kristine, Nora brags about her little financial tryst and we learn about this debt she has incurrred- and it’s a  big debt- Nora has recklessly taken  enormous debt to fund an entire trip to Italy for a solid year and she did this with absolutely NO ability or plan as to how she would ever repay it. In some ways it seems it didn’t even occur to her at the time she did it, that that was a thing that would eventually have to be done.  That’s the side of Nora that is unattractive and makes me not feel bad for her being called a little squirrel. 

Well, that’s true, but in another very real way, you have to feel a little sympathy for Nora.  The text never questions her motives.  She did it for love.  She did it to save her husband, and although nobody knows about it, she has pride for having saved her husband’s life.  He is her provider and the provider of her children, and he was unable to provide, so she managed it- and she did it all without wounding his pride- something she KNEW would kill him.  There is nobility in that.  She’s been carrying around a huge secret burden for a decade- working secretly and all of this knowing it was the only way at her disposal to save her husband’s life.  Ten years is a long time, and if you take her at her word which we have to do- and compare her to Kristine- she has something to be proud of, she saved Torvald’s life.  She did what she had to do to keep from becoming Kristine- or even worse because she has three children to provide for.  Kristine does not. 

Of course, I can concede that.  You know, I was going to mention, Ibsen got the plot for this story from a real person.  Ibsen had a protégé by the name of Laura Petersen Kieler.  She was a Norwegian journalist and he was extremely fond of her. 

Another one of his strong female friends? 

Exactly, anyway, she was married to a man who was extremely paranoid about debt.  Laura, as his wife, did what Nora did, and secretly borrowed money to finance an Italian vacation for him to recover from tuberculosis.  She worked frantically to repay the loan, exhausted herself, turned in hackwork, but still couldn’t pay back the debt so she forged a check.  Her husband found out, used her crime as grounds to divorce her, claimed she was a unfit mother and had her committed to an insane asylum.   

That’s terrible. 

Well, it is and it really upset Ibsen.  He told Suzannah about it as well as several friends.  One friend wrote him back and said this about the entire thing, “She has committed a forgery, and is proud of it; for she has done it out of love for her husband, to save his life.  But this husband of hers takes his standpoint, conventionally honorable, on the side of the law, and sees the situation with male eyes.” 

And so we see the inspiration for this play- the legal part anyway.  Torvald is not like that guy in the sense that that particular man in real life was obviously mean.  I don’t see meanness in Torvald, but Ibsen is making a much larger point that would have been lost had Torvald been obviously cruel and abusive.  This play is not about cruelties and abuses.  It’s about using people, even if it appears to be consensual.  It’s about the lack of intellectual and emotional intimacy in a marriage. 

And that brings me back to Nora because, she IS the deal And although the bigger point of this play is the marital relationship- as a way of understanding this complex thing which is the marital relationship between a man and a woman from the vantage point of a woman, Ibsen surrounds Nora with other relationships.  The Nora of Act 1 projects perfection.  She has a wonderful husband who adores her, three beautiful children and a nanny to take care of them.  The only thing that is keeping her from total perfection is money- enter Dr. Rank.   

Oh yes, the rich old man dying of congenital syphilis without any dependents who comes over every day, oh and by the way- who is in love with Nora.   

Nora’s relationship with Dr. Rank is another one of those things that we’ve all seen play out in real life and makes us uncomfortable.  Here it doesn’t make Nora look very good either.  Nora is keenly aware that her physical appearance is sexually alluring to Dr. Rank.  They have never acknowledged this with words, but the sexually charged subtext of their relationship allows her to be seductive and he to be seduced without anything physical ever really happening.  It’s an obvious and open game.  In Act 2, she hits him lightly over the ear with her stocking that she’s been dangling before him with the pretext of displaying part of the costume she will wear at the dance.   

It is an open game so much so that  Mrs. Linde, when she finds out about Nora’s debt, erroneously assumes that Dr. Rank was Nora’s lender.  It’s the obvious assumption.  And all that playful secret keeping between Nora and Dr. Rank in front of Mrs. Linde just enhances this idea of fake intimacy between the two, she even cusses in front of Dr. Rank- something she doesn’t haven’t permission to do with her husband.  Dr. Rank encourages her to say the D word just as she’s hiding more macaroons from Torvald.  Torvald prohibits cussing and macaroons in his little skylark.    

Ugh- There is so much awful there.   Ibsen cleverly imbeds the idea that there is a possibility Rank will leave his fortune to Nora.  I know we’re jumping ahead but in Act 2 when they chat in the darkening living room, and she reveals her flesh-colored stockings, Dr. Rank expresses a desire to leave for Nora, to use his words, “some poor show of gratitude” as a guarantee he will be remembered fondly… 

Yes, and since were jumping to Act 2 and that discussion between Nora and Dr. Rank, Nora demonstrates nobility when she shuts down the game between them.  She let the opportunity slip by to get the money from Dr. Rank- although I do think she considers it.  In fact, she considers it all the way until he says out loud what they both had known to be true about his feelings for her.  He would have given her whatever she wanted for just a little sexual cajolery.  Nora rejects him and tells the maid to turn up the light.  She is not going to add what would feel like prostitution to her list of indiscretions.  In other words, she’s creating her own sense of moral boundaries and rejects the easy way out. 

So, let’s drop back a little back to Act 1 and introduce the man who is bringing all these ambiguous moral choices to the surface- Krogstad.  This is the man who has been fired by Torvald, who has lent Nora money, who has blackmailed Nora to convince her husband to give him his job and AND who, as we have found out, was the man in love with Kristine back in the day and who she dumped for the rich guy who she married and who is now dead.   

Krogstad, according to Dr. Rank is “rotten to the core”, and Rank doesn’t even know about his blackmailing of Nora or any of that other stuff.  The general understanding of Krogstad is that he is a man with criminal record for having committed forgery.  Torvald wants him gone from the bank because he doesn’t feel Krogstad has publically paid for his indiscretion PLUS and this is the worst part as far as Torvald is concerned- Krogstad was a childhood friend and this association is embarrassing.  

Let’s read the part where Torvald tells Nora about his feelings towards Krogstad.  

Read 1831-1832 

Torvald’s speech is remarkably strongly worded and unwavering.  It’s not even the way he usually talks to Nora. None of the playful childlike condescension.  She’s always known that if her husband found out what she’s done, the relationship would be problematic at least at first, but this speech seems particularly stern.  She even voiced a hope that maybe one day when it’s all over and she’s old and unattractive, knowing the story might be something he could appreciate after the fact. 

Yeah- that dream is dead.  I also think it’s terrible that he makes this connection to historical “sin”- as if this is something that is passed down through families.   I’m really unsure what to make of it, but Ibsen imbeds the generational thing one way or another into every character in the story.  Nora’s dad apparently was a negligent father.  Dr. Rank’s father left his the gift of syphilis, Kristine’s father was such a negligent father that she married a man she didn’t love FOR money forsaking one she did and who loved her back.  And here, Krogstad is accused of being an unfit parent although we find out over the course of the play that the reason he wants to regain his respectability is so that he redeem himself as an honorable man for his sons- to become a good father.  It certainly adds a little of a spiritual dimension into a play that is set at one of Christianity’s two holy days or high holidays – This play actually demonstrates two views Christmas, if you want to take it even further.  Christmas has a secular dimension in every household.  That’s why many people celebrate Christmas who are not Christians.  It’s an end of the year celebration- parties, gifts, and it is in this sense that the tree is at the center of the Helmer house- but that is not the redemptive story of Christmas that we will see play out later in Kristine (another word which has its origins in Christ and Krogstad).   Torvald and even Rank’s worldview leave no room for Christmas redemption, as Rank reminds us that nothing is ever free and Torvald reminds us that our personal flaws are things that we can pass down generationally to our children- our mistakes can ever be reclaimed- generational curses.  

Nora’s comments at the end of this Christmas sermon show us that she’s conflicted, maybe for the first time in her life, in accepting Torvald’s worldview at face value.  She doesn’t feel like a mother corrupting her children, but maybe she is- maybe she is toxic like the man he’s described.  Maybe her “sin” can ever be redeemed, no matter how many years she sits of doing copying work and paying back her debt.  She’s not sure about that, but she is sure that Torvald must NEVER know the truth about her because HE believes it is.  Another very interesting thing that happens, and we see this in people who are in relationships with people who live in relationships that are unequal- - Nora, seemingly for the first time in her life, questions whether the man she has always seen as infallible, may not have truth.  She is emerging from a fog, if you want to understand it like that.  When we have unequal relationships like this, be it for any reason, when one party begins to question this inequality, things often burn to the ground.   

And there is no doubt Nora is questioning the status quo, the game she has played, even enjoyed.  There is a lot of hide and seek in this game and in this play.  The children are physically playing hide and seek, but they are supposed to be playing they’re children- it’s a childish thing to do.  But it’s not a fun game as an adult.  Nora and Torvald play hide and seek.  Even Kristine has to hide in the room away from Torvald.  Nora is questioning the game. The first Act of this play is about society.  The Helmers project domestic happiness to everyone they know.  The central metaphor is the Christmas tree.  It’s decorated with innocent material secrets, wrapped gifts.  Nora wants to wrap money on it.  It is the expression of the good life: the good job, the good house, the good children, the beautiful wife- everything Torvald wants to project to the world.  Krogstad threatens all of this, and in Act 2 we see this shift.  Notice that the Christmas tree in Act 2 is stripped, bedraggled and with its candles burnt out. The values of Act 2 shift from material, physical and social to invisible and psychological ones.  Nora confides in Christine the nature of her relationship with Rank and the strange fantasies that go with that- that game is exposed.  The dialogue between Nora and Krogstad in Act 2 shifts to a discussion from the social nature of Nora’s crime to a much darker one- the psychological ones.   Krogstad leaves a letter in Torvald’s box.  That secret will be exposed too.  Nora and Krogstad talk about her consideration of suicide as a way out.  Krogstad is the one person in the world, ironically that understands her.  The major metaphor for the scene also shifts.  In Act 2, we are no longer going to talk about Christmas trees, we are moving to the tarantela- the dance of the spider.  And learning about the tarantela is where I thought we would end today with Act 2, but time has got the better of us, so let’s pick up with the tarantela next episode.  Next episode we will start with the end of Act 2 and talk about what’s so interesting about the tarantela, which by the way is the music from the intake and outtake in case you wanted to know what it sounds like and haven’t actually seen a performance eof the play.  After that we’ll follow through to the end of the play and its famous ending.  If you haven’t read this play in a while, read it, watch it, or listen to a version on an audio version.  It never gets old. 

There’s a lot to look forward to.  I hope you’ll pick back up next episode.  Thanks for listening and as always we invite you to connect with us any way you like: Instagram, facebook, linked in, twitter, our website howtolovelitpodcast.com.  Also, and most importantly, please help us grow by talking about us and texting an episode to a friend. 

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  Today we begin our series on Henrik Ibsen and his great play- A Doll’s House.  Ibsen was born in Norway, a country that shines a bright light on our view of the world more than most of us realize because it’s such a small place geographically. 

.  

Haha- shines a light- is that a pun- Norway is, after all, the land of the midnight sun!  Where in the summer, the sun literally shines at midnight.  

Well, there is that, but I was actually thinking about the tremendous influence of the Nobel committee and the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize the famous committee that grants  every year since 1901 on December 10th, from Oslo City Hall.  There they announce which human, in their estimation, on planet earth has conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.  What an amazing designation.   

Oh, that’s pretty important too.  I know this is a tangent, but why IS the Nobel Peace Prize selected by and given out by Norwegians instead of the Swedish people, since Alfred Nobel was Swedish and not Norwegian.   

That’s a really good question, and I’m not sure anyone knows- but it was definitely stipulated by Alfred Nobel at his death that although the other awards would be awarded in Stockholm, the Peace Prize would be awarded in Oslo, Norway and it has been ever since.   

Norway is a country that has established itself for many years at the top of the lists of “best places to live on planet earth”- a designation it won again in 2020.  It has the highest life expectancy in the world, (82.4 average) in case you’re wondering, second place went to Ireland, btw.  It’s population on average is one of best educated in the world, and the gross national income is ranked third behind Switzerland and again Ireland. 

Wow, and yet Christy, I wonder if you would like living there- let me remind you that the average temperature in the summer is 65 degrees Fahrenheit or 18 degrees Celsius. 

I know, growing up in tropical climates where the average summer temperature is in the 90s or high 30s Celsius, I would definitely have to buy a new wardrobe, but that’s not always a negative. 

Ha!  No, I guess that’s true.  Norway is also a land we generally think of for its striking outdoor beauty characterized by those magnificient fjords. 

Fjord is one of the few Norwegian words that almost everyone knows.  It literally means where one fares through- and if you see pictures of them, that makes sense why.  They are fairy-tale like, truly and can be hundreds of miles long.  Of course, Norway isn’t the only place where they exist, but they have over 1700 of them and two are featured on UNESCO’s world heritage list.  Garry, describe what a fjord is for those of us, which includes me, who have never seen them. 

Well, I’ve never seen them in person either..yet…but I will.  They are long narrow inlets of water with steep cliffs on both sides that were created by glaciers thousands of years ago.  They are astonishingly deep, often thousands of feet or meters deep.  They say one of the best ways to seem them is on a cruise ship, so that’s my plan.  

Ha!! Sounds like a great plan.  Of course, right after Fjords and the Nobel Prize, the next thing that comes to mind when we think of Norway is still not Ibsen but-  Vikings.   

Oh Vikings for sure have put their mark on northern Europe, and many of us have a very specific image in our minds of raiding warriors arriving in those amazing ships that could move around 15-17 knots.  And although, the Vikings are mostly known for colonizing and conquering, which could be viewed negatively, you would be happy to know that women’s rights date back to before the 1100s among vikings.  Women had the right to divorce, own property and were protected by law from sexual harassment. 

Well, there you go, and I guess that’s a good Segway to the reason for our interest today in Norway- because after those things- when we get to famous Norwegians, it’s hard to find one more well known then their native son, Henrik Ibsen, who was also quite the feminist- although as we will talk about next episode- he fought that label as he fought all labels.     

Yes- I guess he did.  But let’s jump back just a little before we talk about Ibsen specifically,  to talk a little more bit about Norway,  because this little country has made such an important impact on the world but it isn’t a country that necessarily and deliberately draws a lot of attention to itself.   

I guess that’s true.   Are you talking about Lasse Matberg- the real live version of Thor- Instagram and basically the internet has gone nuts over.   

Okay- Christy- no drooling.  I was thinking King Harald the fifth. 

 Most of us don’t even realize it is a constitutional monarchy with a very active monarch, Harald V who is 84 years old is known as a symbol of consolation and support; he and his beautiful queen Sonja- enjoy an 80% approval rating.  Which is incredible! 

 Well, it IS incredible- I’m not sure even Disney World enjoys an 80% approval rating.   

Anyway, the modern, the highly educated and urbanized nation of Norway is not the Norway Henrik Ibsen grew up in- at least according to Ibsen.  His world was much more rural -and to hear him describe it, backwards- although, that’s probably how people describe Memphis if they compare us to other more glamorous parts of the world. 

True, he was born in is the city of Skien in the Telemark region of southern Norway.  It’s a port city.  Today the municipality boasts a healthy 54 plus thousand residents and is famous for being the birth place of Henrik Ibsen.  During Ibsen’s day it was one of the largest and  oldest cities in Norway  The Ibsen family was a solidly middle-class family apparently well respected and prosperous.  Both sides of his family tree were well established, they had worked and made their money in the trade and shipping industry.   

Which was all well and good until something happened in his father’s business and the family lost everything.  Apparently it was pretty bad and when Henrik was 15 he dropped out of school, moved out of the home and over 100 miles away to work as a pharmacist  assistant for basically just his room and board.  By age 18 he had fathered a child out of wedlock, which would ultimately be raised by his mother’s family, and although he supported the child financially until the child was 15, I’m not sure they ever even met.  

Well, so far, there’s nothing in the story you’re telling that would indicate to me that this is the man that is going to revolutionize theater as we know it and become the second most produced playwright in the world after William Shakespeare. 

Exactly, he did not have a charmed childhood, but I will say, even as a child he dreamed of greatness.  His sister Hedvig told a story after he became famous about a conversation she remembered they had one day as they walked walked up Bratsberg hill in Telemark.  He told his sister that what he wanted to do in his life was  "to achieve 'the greatest and most perfect of all possible forms of greatness and perfection'."  

 HA!!  Well, I would laugh at that, but there’s a real sense that he came close to doing something akin to that with the theater.  

And so it goes to show you that should never count yourself out- even if you feel like you have no privilege in this life or have screwed everything up with what you do have.  You’re never done til you’re dead!  It’s a nice thought. But back to ibsen, it’s looking rough for little Henrik-at age 18- he’s got no education, a child to support and a couple of plays that he wrote in his spare time stashed away. So he decides to do what a lot of us do- he left the little town of Grimstad where he was the pharmacy assistant and moved to the big city- Oslo, although at the time the name of Oslo was Christiania.  He’d been in the health care business so it’s not shocking he’d decided to go to university and get a degree in medicine.  Unfortunately for him at the time, although maybe not for the world, he failed his college entrance exams.  And even though you’d think that would be a low point, I’m not sure it really was because it was around this time he cut a break in a field that he enjoyed far more.  So, I mentioned he had a couple of plays that he’d written in his spare time in Grimstad, well one of them got staged!  So after all the missteps up to that point,  by age 23 he’d had his first play performed- pretty incredible.  After this  a few more doors opened, and now instead of being an assistant to a pharmacist- he became – basically with zero experience, the assistant director to Bergen’s main theater.    

This, of course, is the moment his life changed forever because he clearly found his calling.  He no longer wanted to be a doctor- he would become a playwright.  But what is even more interesting is that he found himself at a particular historical junction for the history of Norway – as far as theater goes is not radically different than what we saw with William Butler Yeats.  Norway, like Ireland had an interest in creating its own unique theater tradition.  While Ireland had been colonized by the British; Norway had been ruled by Denmark for over 400 years.  But now there is this movement to start a true Norwegian theater company that will produce Norwegian plays- that would help shape a unique Norwegian identity.  

 Many of us don’t really understand that  Norway had even been a part of Denmark for 400 years, which, of course,  is quite a long time.  And we certainly don’t understand how that affected culture, but of course it would.   Denmark had asserted a lot of cultural and language influence.  But at this point in the story, there was a real interest in establishing a Norwegian identity eparate from the Danish one, and so the interest in establishing an original Norwegian theater came along at this time fortunately for Ibsen.   

True, and although The Theater in Cristiania had finanicial problems and Ibsen wasn’t particularly super-successful at making a go of it- now that we know his style- he would never have been a good fit for creating patriotic pieces, but nevertheless, because  He was involved in writing, directing, staging and producing over 145 plays- he learned a craft- and that is the legacy that created the opportunity for his art to take off on its own.  

He also met and married Suzannah Thoreesen in 1858 and shortly after, they had their only child, Sigurd, who btw- grew up to become the prime minister of Norway in Stockholm- another story but worth googling.  Christy, I know you’ll probably point this out later but Suzannah was quite an independent and intelligent woman, and many credit her for Ibsen’s ultimate success.   

I know!!  And I think we should talk about her, but I’ll table it, at least for the moment.  The theater in Crisitiania went bankrupt; Ibsen was sued for incredible amounts of debt and he almost got himself thrown into debtors prison literally escaping the country.  He swung a government writing grant and moved his family to Italy.  Although he never stayed in one town very long, he would stay away from Norway and in this sort of self-imposed exile for 27 years.  When he finally returned to Norway,-he would go back as a hero- a celebrity- albeit a controversial one. 

It’s amazing to me that although, his body was physically out of Norway, it seems Ibsen’s mind never left the place- even if he did insult it from time to time.  His plays, including A Doll’s House, are set in Norway and what is even wilder, they are written in Dano-Norwegian- the common written language of Denmark and Norway.  And they were published by a Danish publisher, Gyldendal.  In fact, they were performed first in Sweden- not Italy or Germany where he was residing.  

True, it’s kind of a roundabout way to success and really an unlikely success it seems.  Most People watching his performances were watched translated pieces- usually that doesn’t work well.  But in his case, the emotion, the appeal translated cross-culturally- and really still does.  Also, Ibsen was a far cry for a self-promoting influencer like we think of today.  He was kind of Ibsen a shy and antisocial dude.  He had no privileged family from a famous place to create buzz.  He was from this relatively small and undistinguished town, writing in a relatively obscure language-but all of a sudden he emerged and became an icon.  Like you said, today, his plays are the second most performed plays in the world- only behind William Shakespeare’s- as you mentioned- incredible.  They are translated today in 78 different languages and performed all over the world. Nevermind the fact that he literally changed the way theater would be done from that point onward, and in fact is still done to this day. 

Okay, I’ve heard people say that before, but I’m not sure I understand what you mean.  And even after reading A Doll’s House, I don’t understand how it’s revolutionary besides the content being obviously controversial for the period.  In many ways, the plot and the characters seem so ordinary. 

And that, darling, is exactly the genius of it.  Here’s what was going on. And think about Shakespeare for a moment.  UP to that point, the theater had been a place where people went to get away from the world- and maybe it still is to some degree.  The plays produced were otherworldly.   They were about fairies and monsters; they were about kings- all the things Shakespeare writes about-  perhaps the things Marvel studios gets excited about- obviously there is nothing wrong escapism- that’s a big part of performing arts.  And  In fact, that’s where Ibsen started, he wrote about Vikings , monsters and all those things we enjoy in commercially successful movies today.  Except he chose not to stay in that vein.  He studied his craft; he began to pay attention to some key changes in what they were doing in theater in Moscow, Germany and other parts of Europe.  And those things appealed to him.  So, he made a shift- instead of writing stories that took us out of the world- he would write stories that reflect the world.  He would write the story of our lives.   He began writing plays that were realistic.  And when I use that word, I mean the theater movement called realism.  The plays he’s most famous for start with the twelve he wrote between 1877-1899.  Some people call them his sociological plays; other people just call them the Ibsen cycle.  Either way, Ibsen began writing about middle class people- not kings, queens or fairies.  He wrote about problems- real life and difficult problems, and he wrote in prose.  He didn’t use iambic pentameter or verse of any kind.   He wasn’t going to have his characters give long soliloquies or speak with all these cheesy asides.  They weren’t going to expound on philosophy in obvious ways- although these plays are extremely psychological.  The would be filled of short exchanges between characters.  They would say the sort of things we say and do the sort of things we tend to do- whether we admit it or not. Now to us that seems normal or maybe even obvious because that’s how most of our television and movie experience is- but we got that idea from this movement.   

And what’s more, the staging was going to be different.  And again this may seem fairly obvious to us, but it was new when it happened- with realism the stage is going to have a box set- that means there are three walls and the pretend fourth wall which faces the audience.  The audience, or us watching, would pretend we are looking into someone’s lives.   The drama would appear ordinary, maybe even bland, but the idea would be that the play would be psychologically driven- the plot would not be  

the thing- the interior lives of the people involved would be the thing.  The protagonist would rise up not against dragons but against something much more complicated, more internal- the sort of things we rise up against- things like syphyllis- the disease Dr. Rank inherited from his father.   

Oh my, so what about A Doll’s House- 

Exactly, what exactly IS a Doll’s house about. BTW- even that title is controversial- in Norwegian it’s really a Doll House- which isn’t quite the same as a Doll’s House- anyway- When it came out- it absolutely rocked the world- almost as much if not more than syphyllis.  

It premiered in Copenhagen in December of 1879 to a packed house.  The applause was incredible and every one left the theater scandalized.  When it played in Germany, the lead actress, a famous actress, refused to perform the ending as written and forced Ibsen to rewrite the ending to her liking.  She was a storng enough voice that she threatened  she’d get someone else to rewrite the ending for him if he didn’t change it- and since there were no copyright laws back then, she got her wish. 

In Victorian England, the play was censored and forbidden to be performed, and America didn’t perform it until 1889- a full ten years later. 

The Americans are always slow.   

I know- aren’t we? 

So, are we going to just talk about what other people thought about it, or is it time to find out what the scandal is all about? 

Let’s do it.  The setting is very simple.  It’s set in an unnamed fairly average Norwegian town in an upper middle class home.  The whole thing from start to finish only occupies three days of Christmas.  It  opens with apparent harmony and confidence- a happy feeling and we soon understand that this family is a lot like a lot of middle class families- the family is comfortable but not not conflict free- and conflicts revolve around money-  

Oh my- it doesn’t get more real than that   

One thing we have to bring up when we talk about live theater is that we have to remember that when it comes to plays- the creative experience involves more than the writer.  A drama is more than a written text- much more.  That’s the beauty of live performances.   In fact every single performance of every single play by definition cannot help but be unique- even audiences affect how a performance goes.  No actor will ever perform exactly the same two nights in a row.  But beyond that, every actor who plays a role will interpret each character in his or her own way.  For example, Kristine could actually be a good character or a bad character depending on how the actress understands her and portrays her.  Every character will always be like that- bur especially in an Ibsen play.  Even the details of the set will never be the standardized.  Ibsen in his stage directions for A Doll’s House, says and I read that the set is, “a comfortable, tastefully but not expensively furnished room.”  What does that look like? Every set will be different.  Every director will choose different things to enhance- from the set to the costuming to the lighting.  All of these collaborative choices affect how we understand and interpret what is going on. 

True- but isn’t there something of the intent of the creator and should that be respected- and make each performance mostly the same? 

It’s not that simple.  Let me give you an example, in 2007, in Edinbough, the director cast Torvald the husband as a four foot tall man- on purpose for a thematic reason.   

In China, once the play was staged with a Western woman marrying into a Chinese family. All of this is allowed in the theater. 

So, this play centers around Nora.  The character of Nora is widely considered one of the most challenging roles in the Western Canon and Deciding what to do with Nora is not a simple thing.  Who is this woman?  This will be a huge discussion between any director in charge and the actress charged with performing the role. 

Why is that?  Again, she seems ordinary.   

And in a sense, that’s it exactly.  She is ordinary.  Her life could be my life.  Her home could be my home.  It is the fact that she seems ordinary that makes her so tremendously complicated.  Because no human is ordinary, not really.  No life, no matter how pampered, is care-free.  Sooner or later we all innately understand this, but then we don’t know what to do with this understanding.  Well, Ibsen isn’t going to answer that question for us.  In fact, that’s exactly what is wants to NOT do.  Ibsen famously said, that a dramatist should never answer questions- only ask them.  And so, what we are left with is  questions- and this play for the last 100 years has created nothing but arguments and questions as to who is this woman?   

So, let’s ask the most basic of all questions about Nora- What is so enamoring or interesting about an ordinary, upper middle class Norwegian woman named Nora? 

For one thing, if you’re an actress given this role, you may immediately notice that Nora never leaves the stage.  The stage is the doll house and Nora is the Doll. Nora is always on display- she is always in view- she has no privacy- she has no breaks- and neither does the actress.  Everyone comes and goes- but Nora never has the freedom to breath- and this is the point of it- there is total claustrophobia in this performance-based life of a doll- there is no privacy in this life- this actress, as Nora, will experience the thrill and exhaustion from start to finish of the life of a doll in a doll house.   

And how is a theater-viewer supposed to know to notice that?   

Well, you likely won’t- it’s one of those things you intuitively feel even if you don’t consciously think about it.  To get back to your question though?  For me, the first question I ask myself when I watch this play and honestly, I’m not sure I ever answer it- Do I like this woman?  Then I find myself asking a series of rambling questions: Is Nora a good person?  Is she a victim?  Is it right to like a doll in a doll house, and if a person likes that life, who am I to judge or dislike her for it?  Is it her exposure and lack of privacy that makes her unlikeable (because honestly, I usually land on the idea that I don’t like her really- but I know some people do- in fact Ibsen himself adored her) 

Oh my your mind runs wild!  Why would living like this in your mind make someone unlikeable? 

 Well, you tell me, do humans need privacy? Psychologically, that is.  Does a lack of privacy not to mention autonomy- but let’s just stick with privacy- does that change a person in a negative way.   

Well, you know I feel about this topic.  When it comes to development of children, it is Absolutely fundamental.  Children need to have secrets.  It gives them autonomy and where they find their humanity.  Parents, the cliché is mothers but dads can be bad about this too, who read their kids cellphone, track their kids ever move, determine their children’s friend groups, and basically do their best to control their children’s every decision- even if their intentions were pure, almost always raise children who are dysfunctional.  These are often the kids who have secret facebook pages, secret phones, secret boyfriends across the ocean years older, maybe even entirely secret lives.  It is just absolutely critical.   

And so we meet Nora- and Ibsen does go a little into her personal history- maybe she’s emotionally stunted in her development for being so patronized and controlled, maybe she’s just deceptive and manulative by nature- maybe she’s both- I guess I see what you mean- Ibsen asking questions but not giving answers.   

Let’s read the first line of the play,  

“Hide the tree carefully, Helene.  The children mustn’t catch a glimpse of it until this evening.” 

And there you have it- Nora’s entire world in the first word- there is something hide. 

As we look at Nora we see that she, like many of us, achieve privacy through deception.  But what we don’t know and what the  actress has to decide how to communicate to us is WHY is she doing this and what is she trying to achieve by all this?   Is Nora role-playing on purpose in order to get the life she wants?  Is Nora aware that she is a plaything for Torvald- his squirrel, his skylark?  Is this pretending instinctual?  When her deceptions become rather serious, does she even realize this?  Is she aware of the difference between secretly eating macaroons and forgery- I’m really not sure. 

But even before we get there, the first scene for me really highlights a high level of deceit and inauthenticity.  The first action on stage is Nora paying a porter twice the cost of the service which wouldn’t have stood out really except it’s not long after that we begin to understand that one of the themes of the play is the real cost of fiscal irresponsibility, what does it mean by this little detain in the opening act? 

I don’t know what it means, except to help us understand that Nora lives in an imaginary world.  She pretends and overpaying is just a way to set all of this in motion.  The second action of this play is this business with the macaroons.  Let’s read this part of the text?  For me it’s hard to read.  It’s SO patronizing.  

HELMER. That is like a woman! But seriously, Nora, you know what I think about that. No debt, no borrowing. There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt. We two have kept bravely on the straight road so far, and we will go on the same way for the short time longer that there need be any struggle. 

NORA. [moving towards the stove]. As you please, Torvald. 

HELMER. [following her]. Come, come, my little skylark must not droop her wings. What is this! Is my little squirrel out of temper? [Taking out his purse.] Nora, what do you think I have got here? 

NORA. [turning round quickly]. Money! 

HELMER. There you are. [Gives her some money.] Do you think I don’t know what a lot is wanted for housekeeping at Christmas-time? 

NORA. [counting]. Ten shillings—a pound—two pounds! Thank you, thank you, Torvald; that will keep me going for a long time. 

HELMER. Indeed it must. 

NORA. Yes, yes, it will. But come here and let me show you what I have bought. And all so cheap! Look, here is a new suit for Ivar, and a sword; and a horse and a trumpet for Bob; and a doll and dolly’s bedstead for Emmy,—they are very plain, but anyway she will soon break them in pieces. And here are dress-lengths and handkerchiefs for the maids; old Anne ought really to have something better. 

HELMER. And what is in this parcel? 

NORA. [crying out]. No, no! you mustn’t see that until this evening. 

HELMER. Very well. But now tell me, you extravagant little person, what would you like for yourself? 

NORA. For myself? Oh, I am sure I don’t want anything. 

HELMER. Yes, but you must. Tell me something reasonable that you would particularly like to have. 

NORA. No, I really can’t think of anything—unless, Torvald— 

HELMER. Well? 

NORA. [playing with his coat buttons, and without raising her eyes to his]. If you really want to give me something, you might—you might— 

HELMER. Well, out with it! 

NORA. [speaking quickly]. You might give me money, Torvald. Only just as much as you can afford; and then one of these days I will buy something with it. 

HELMER. But, Nora— 

NORA. Oh, do! dear Torvald; please, please do! Then I will wrap it up in beautiful gilt paper and hang it on the Christmas Tree. Wouldn’t that be fun? 

HELMER. What are little people called that are always wasting money? 

NORA. Spendthrifts—I know. Let us do as you suggest, Torvald, and then I shall have time to think what I am most in want of. That is a very sensible plan, isn’t it? 

HELMER. [smiling]. Indeed it is—that is to say, if you were really to save out of the money I give you, and then really buy something for yourself. But if you spend it all on the housekeeping and any number of unnecessary things, then I merely have to pay up again. 

NORA. Oh but, Torvald— 

HELMER. You can’t deny it, my dear little Nora. [Puts his arm round her waist.] It’s a sweet little spendthrift, but she uses up a deal of money. One would hardly believe how expensive such little persons are! 

NORA. It’s a shame to say that. I do really save all I can. 

HELMER. [laughing]. That’s very true,—all you can. But you can’t save anything! 

NORA. [smiling quietly and happily]. You haven’t any idea how many expenses we skylarks and squirrels have, Torvald. 

HELMER. You are an odd little soul. Very like your father. You always find some new way of wheedling money out of me, and, as soon as you have got it, it seems to melt in your hands. You never know where it has gone. Still, one must take you as you are. It is in the blood; for indeed it is true that you can inherit these things, Nora. 

NORA. Ah, I wish I had inherited many of papa’s qualities. 

HELMER. And I would not wish you to be anything but just what you are, my sweet little skylark. But, do you know, it strikes me that you are looking rather—what shall I say—rather uneasy today? 

NORA. Do I? 

HELMER. You do, really. Look straight at me. 

NORA. [looks at him]. Well? 

HELMER. [wagging his finger at her]. Hasn’t Miss Sweet Tooth been breaking rules in town today? 

NORA. No; what makes you think that? 

HELMER. Hasn’t she paid a visit to the confectioner’s? 

NORA. No, I assure you, Torvald— 

HELMER. Not been nibbling sweets? 

NORA. No, certainly not. 

HELMER. Not even taken a bite at a macaroon or two? 

NORA. No, Torvald, I assure you really— 

HELMER. There, there, of course I was only joking. 

NORA. [going to the table on the right]. I should not think of going against your wishes. 

HELMER. No, I am sure of that; besides, you gave me your word— [Going up to her.] Keep your little Christmas secrets to yourself, my darling. They will all be revealed tonight when the Christmas Tree is lit, no doubt. 

NORA. Did you remember to invite Doctor Rank? 

Read this part. 

Nora hides macaroons from her husband.  He wants to control her to every level, but she does seem to like the pay off of being taken care of.   We also see that he moralizes.  We see that his pet grievance is debt.  He is going out of his way to condemn it and she goes out of her way to supplant him. 

 It’s a complicated co-existence.  Who are we to judge here- Nora for being a liar?  At this point, I feel sympathy for her.   I would even say the way this reads to me is that this man, Torvald doesn’t want to control Nora, he believes he OWNS her.  She is his property.  His pet.  He loves her, but as a pet- an expensive hobby- I’d say, Christy, don’t take offense to this, but he loves Nora in the way a guitarist might love his favorite Stratocaster.  

Oh dear- that’s getting close to home.   

 But, they have worked out a deal.  Do we let either party off the hook?  She lies and deceives, but she has no concerns in the world but to be a doll.  She loves stuff- she loves buying- she loves money- they have made a deal- she is a play thing- but she is also an expensive past time.   

And- again- we are smacked with life- these kinds of deals are made all the time.  One of the more famous philosophical statements on that topic springs of course from the mouth of Marilyn Monroe when she sings, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”  I’m really not sure Ibsen wants us to pass judgement on her- but he does seem to be questioning the deal they’ve made.  Is this the deal we should be making?  It seems obvious that Torvald and Nora do not have any real communication or human relationship with each other- they manipulate each other, play with each other, even enjoy each other, but they are not connecting on any real and human level.  Is this comfortable life coming at the cost of their humanity?  What is that cost? 

 And to think that all that has happened is that she’s bought macaroons.   

I know- it’s in the subtext of those macaroons!!! BTW- when I hear someone talk about macaroons I think of this cooking show the girls and I used to watch when they were living called “Sweet Genius”.  It was the first baking show I’d ever watched, and they were always making macaroons.  We don’t have those really in Memphis, so when went to Paris and saw all those macaroons, we did exactly what Nora did and stuffed our mouth with them. 

Hahahaha!  I can see you three, staking out the macaroon counters on the Champs Elysee- 

That’s exactly what we did!!!!  They’re truly amazing and not easy to bake.  I tried and failed. 

Well, I don’t think Nora bakes.  And we see that Helmer disapproves of macaroons.  But more than that- They don’t share  a life like we would understand healthy couples to do.   

Yes- there is so much that is being introduced right here at the beginning- we meet the children and see that they are dolls too.  There is nothing in this text to suggest Nora is a nurturing mother.   We don’t see her building with them anything different  than what she has built with Torvald- they have fun- but it’s all very distant.  We also have a hint that this style of relationship is established by her father, perpetuated by Torvald but also extended to the next generation.  The nurse seems to take care of the children.  Nora plays with them when she wants to, but it’s established early on, and then it will be explicitedly stated in Act 3, that as Nora is to Torvald so the children are to Nora.    

Everyone plays a role it seems?  And I’m not sure Ibsen is endorsing this way of life.   

Like I said, the man likes to ask questions and to not answer them.   

And so I guess we will for the next two episodes.  Next time we will finish discussing Act 1 and move through Act 2.  The final week, we will look at the concluding scene that has scandalized the world for 100 years.   

And yet, it is all so ordinary!!! 

And yet not-  thanks for listening!..... 

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I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our second episode over that great American classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.  Last week, we introduced our author and both of her published books.  We compared them briefly, looked at the titles of each, and then focused more specifically on the origins and inspirations of Mockingbird.  We looked at Lee’s historical moment and argued that Lee’s novel, although set in the 1930s was far more interested in the world of the 1950s than the 1930s- a world struggling with civil rights.   We will develop the theme of racial injustice in the second part of the book, of course, but today as we lay the ground work for that part, we will continue our focus on part 1.  Last episode we ended our discussion talking about Maycomb, the tired old town where Lee set her story, a town which could be seen more like a character than an actual place.   Maycomb is a broken place and this brokenness is on display in several ways.  Part one only hints at the racial division that is the focus of the second section but that doesn’t mean it isn’t setting us up for it.  Lee carefully introduces several major themes and motifs then she proceeds to developed throughout and beyond the trial.  These themes should be considered as we read the section part of the book, for one reason because they provide a framework from which we should understand the insanity of the trial and its aftermath.  If you can’t understand Maycomb, you would not believe such a facade of a trial could even be possible.  So, Christy, can we say the primary role of section one is foreshadowing, then? 

No.  I would absolutely say not the primary role.  There is forshadowing, for sure, and it surfaces in many different ways, but it’s the the primary role.  Harper Lee is laying the framework for a larger discussion than race.  Race is the context, but she is framing the racial discussion that will come.  Maycomb is the microcosm of society at large- any society, not just the segregated South of her days.  The disease of racism, and she does call it a disease, has several causes, and it’s the cause of this disease that she’s exploring.  The first half is charming and disarming.  It’s less intense and emotionally jarring than the second.  The language gets more offensive the closer we get to part two, but she’s setting us up for how she wants us to understand the racism we will soon be exposed to, and what she thinks we can and should do to address it.   Her argument is nuanced and much of it is delivered through the words of Atticus and Calpurnia, although Uncle Jack and Miss Maudie weigh in as well.  It’s illustrated through the actions of the children as they interact with the different groups in their community: the Cunninghams, the Radleys, The Ewell’s and Mrs. Dubose.  Lee explicitly discusses man’s relationship with power, its use and abuse of it,  She blatantly spells out for us what a mockingbird symbolically represents and the principle protecting the innocent.  Atticus not only tells his children to learn to understanding the lived experience of those around them, but forces this lesson upon them in what comes across as a very cruel way to learn a life lesson.  The setting of part 1 is the playful existence of childhood innocence, but as we walk with Scout, we are to learn these same life-lessons before she forces us to apply them in this adult world of experience which is cruel and ruthless in many ways.   

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And I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  Today we begin our discussion on a deeply beloved book by many but at the same time one of the most censored books ever written on the American continent.  When it was published in 1960 it was an immediate hit with the public.  Critics called it melodramatic and over-simplistic but that hasn’t stopped people from reading it and loving it.  Harper Collins boasts almost 50 million copies sold, by latest count,  in over 40 languages.  It won the coveted Pulitzer Prize.  In 1962, it was adapted by Horton Foote into an Academy Award-winning film, admittedly diminishing the role of Scout and the story of the children but drawing considerable attention and acclaim for many reasons, one being the memorable and Oscar-winning performance of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.  The focus of the  movie is, of course, the trial of a wrongly convicted and clearly innocent African-American gentleman by the name of Tom Robinson.   The film is considered one of the greatest American films of all time and even Harper Lee liked it. After viewing she had this to say, “"I can only say that I am a happy author. They have made my story into a beautiful and moving motion picture.” 

 Of course, it’s the racial element of the book that has always kept this book at the center of controversy- from both sides of the political aisle. It has been held in contempt for its language which is extremely raw, and obviously, and for that reason alone, it’s been censored in many circles.  But that’s not the only problematic issue.  Many have drawn attention to the idealized characterization of Atticus Finch as a paragon of respectability and champion of for the oppressed.  Toni Morrison labeled him a “white savior”.  More recently, social advocates have challenged Lee’s characterization of the Ewells as feral animals depicting them basically as sub-human.  There is no doubt the setting is the segregated South of the 1930s; there is no doubt; Maycomb is a broken town; there is no doubt that the child Scout looks at her father in that way we hope all 9 year old daughters are afforded the opportunity to look at their fathers.  So, is this a dated sociological study or timeless classic?  Lee’s ability to stir so many emotions and raise so many questions is freakishly genius.   Through the eyes of a child, she questions our ability as humans to even understand of the role of time in our world, the place of human judgement, our ability to give and receive social acceptance, the causes of human cruelty and human kindness.  She goes a lot of directins- but what do all these things mean when presented as a whole?  How do they connect us to each other?  What did these things mean to the most provincial of people possible in 1935, what did they mean to a cosmopolitan American in 1960 and what do they mean to a world-wide interconnected globe today? 

I know you like to talk about timeless themes and universal truths and so do I, don’t get me wrong, but historically speaking there’s a lot here I think is important to discuss as well.  This book is not just regarded as sensitive because of its language and racial issues; it’s also considered one of the most revealing portraits of the American South to come out of that generation- and beyond issues of race there is a lot more to see.  The book is important historically.  Lee was born an insider to a very specific and closed cultural group, but she pulled out of her culture and tried to examine it critically in some ways as an outsider, but an outsider who understood the inside.  

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I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

And I am Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This is our third episode in this series discussing Dr. King’s leadership in the Civil Rights Movement most specifically in his iconic and historically important Letter From Birmingham Jail. Next episode, we will extend our discussion of King to the origins of his story. In Dr. King’s speech to American from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial he said this,  

 In a sense we have come to our Nation’s Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. 

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

This promissory note was again revisited during the days of Abraham Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation and then the Gettysburg address in 1863. Next week, we will discuss this great address which Dr. King recalls occurred 100 years before his days in that Birmingham jail.   

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This is our second week discussing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the letter that some consider today to be one of the most significant political documents to emerge from the American continent in the last 300 years, ranking with the founding documents, the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. Last week, we spoke a little, although very briefly, about Dr. King’s growing up years. We focused on his rise to political prominence through his political activism in Montgomery with the MIA and Rosa Parks as they led a community to boycott public bussing system for 381 days protesting the unfair bussing practices in Montgomery.  These efforts resulted in legislation that would begin the process of unraveling a 100 years of Jim Crow laws across, not just Birmingham, but the entire South.   

We also discussed Project C, C, btw, stands for Confrontation. Project C was the name given to the program that was designed to combine economic pressure with large scale direct action protest in order to undermine the very rigid system of segregation in place in the Southern city of Birmingham, Alabama. The project was multi-faceted and by that I mean, it had various moving parts. It consisted of strategic sit-ins, mass meetings, economic boycotts, and of course “parading” primarily without a permit because no permits would be given.   

Yes, and one significant component of this project was planned for Good Friday, April 12 1963. It would be on this auspicious day that two political and spiritual leaders, Reverend Ralph Abernathy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., would step out in faith in front of the Sixth Avenue Zion Hill Church to march down those prohibited streets. And, leading by example, proving that they would never ask anyone to do something they would not do themselves, they walked into what they knew would be a guaranteed confrontation with Bull Connor’s tightly controlled police force. As they marched, they were met by a police barricade, so they changed directions and marched a different way; however, it wasn’t long until they got to a second barricade. At this one, Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Conner’s clear orders could be heard and I quote, “Stop them…Don’t let them go any further!”  They were arrested, and let me add, this was not the first time these two were arrested, nor would it be the last.    Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy, according to Abernathy’s own words were closer than blood brothers.  There was a deep trust between these two men. If you remember, they had been leaning on each other since those early days in Montgomery, Alabama where Abernathy was pastor of Montgomery’s First Baptist Church. This support would continue even after Dr. King’s assassination where Abernathy would follow through with the support of Memphis’ sanitation workers that had brought Dr. King to Memphis on the day he was murdered. Abernathy and King eventually would be jailed together a total of 17 times. Both they and their families would be targets of multiple assassination attempts.   

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I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. Today we are going to start a three part series on a man who changed the landscape of political protesting- demonstrating that positive change can occur without massive loss of life. He won the Nobel Peace Prize when he was 35 years old, at the time he was the youngest to ever receive the award. His life became synonymous with civil disobedience- taking it farther than Thoreau ever dreamed possible. He radically and controversially claimed the role of a Christian political resister was not only the role to resist injustice. This was not enough, to be successful one must accompany resistance with love- loving the persecutor- a claim that would be put to the test over and over and for which he would be martyred. On Jan 20, 1986, the US Federal Government proclaimed a national holiday commemorating his life and message. Today over 955 (that number is likely small), but there are at least 955 major street, boulevards and thoroughfares that carry his name not only across the United States but across the world. If you haven’t figured it out yet, we are talking about the life, literature and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Specifically, the iconic letter that moved a nation from apathy to change, the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” It was written on April 16, 1963 and famously addressed to “My Dear Fellow Clergyman.”   

Indeed, and yet, so many students or really people, who hear that name know so little about the movement itself. Growing up first in our nation’s capital, Washington DC and then Brazil, I’d heard of Dr. King. I knew he stood for non-violence, but I ignorantly thought he literally just walked around preaching and protesting, carrying signs, singing and marching. I had NO idea how calculated the entire Civil Rights moment was. I had no idea the amount of strategy and genius that went into the planning and execution of one of the most effective non-violent movements in the world- or even how many years it was in the making. I just thought, Dr. King got up one day and just started protesting.   

Well, I think most people don’t, even people of good faith who try to mimic some of his basic strategies. It’s really difficult to wrap our minds around the complexity involved, not to mention the sheer power of King’s personal rhetorical charisma that carried the movement from a few thousand African-American Christian protesters in Montgomery, Alabama to 250,000 people of all ethnicities and faith and the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The changes in legislation and the implementation of laws that had been allowed to be ignored for a century were a direct result of this movement we are discussing over the next few episodes.  

So, let’s get started beginning with some terminology that we hear when it comes to Civil Rights, words that many of us who aren’t originally from the South may not be familiar with- for example what are Jim Crow laws. Who was Jim Crow and what are his laws? 

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I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  Today we conclude our four-part series on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; the world Huxley creates may be New but certainly it is not brave. Michel Houellebecq in his 1998 novel The Elementary Particles references Brave New World in an unusual way.  Instead of seeing it as a warning of an evil to be avoided, he, or at least his characters find it a world to aspire to.   Let me quote him, “everyone says BNW is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment on our society, but that’s just hypocritical bullshit.  BNW is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the war against aging, the leisure society.”  

  It’s a conversation, Huxley thought we should have as a society: what constitutes a real human world?  What is human society? Are we individuals living together; or are cells in a single organism called society with a small collection of men as braintrusts running it all?  In BNW Revisited, he says this, “In spite of the Id and the Unconscious, in spite of endemic neurosis and the prevalence of low IQ's most men and women are probably decent enough and sensible enough to be trusted with the direction of their own destinies. “  

The World Controllers in BNW disagree., Mond, in part 4, describes a world where men and women are NOT to be trusted with the direction of their own destinies. And as we reach the end of the book, we listen to Mustafa Mond explain why.  And in a nutshell the answer is instability.  “Independence was not made for man. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness.  “It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own.”  These are the arguments we read at the end of the book, but their meanings are illustrated  throughout starting in chapter one.   

After reading the dialogue between John and Mond, so much of what we’ve seen illustrated makes more sense.  Really, this is a book that needs to be read twice because when you read those first chapters, you’re overwhelmed and confused.  In episode 1, we tour with our omniscient narrator that Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center in the year of stability AF 632.  We learn that vivaparous reproduction (or birth as we know it) has been replaced by the assembly line; babies are manufactured in bottles.  The director explains to us that world is divided into castes, and everyone is conditioned to believe they are equal and equally valuable- albeit, they certainly are not equal in the way we think of equality today. We are introduced to a new set of values and the value that prevails is happiness.  The World State has solved man’s happiness problem, and we are shown how this is achieved.  The way the director describes makes it seem flawless.   Caitrin Nicol in her famous essay “Brave New World at 75” describes it a different way, “there is an unholy alliance of industrial capitalist, fascist, communist, psycho- analytic, and pseudo-scientific ideologies has brought about the end of history. The past is taboo - "History is bunk," as "Our Ford" so eloquently said - and there is no future, because history's ends have been accomplished. There is no pain, deformity, crime, anguish, or social discontent. Even death has no more sting: Children are acclimatized to the death palaces from the age of eighteen months, encouraged to poke around and eat chocolate creams while the dying are ushered into oblivion on soma, watching sports and pornography on television.” 

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I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love lit Podcast. This is our third episode in our four part series on Aldous Huxley’s negative utopia Brave New World.  In episode 1, we met Huxley and toured London’s Central Hatchery, covering chapters 1 and 2.  In episode 2, we discussed chapters 3-5 meeting two characters from the novel.  I want to point out that they are main characters, and when they were introduced, I expected them to be heroes, but these two are definitely not heroic- Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne.  Through the first five chapters we accompany them on an average evening, an average evening for everyone in the brave new world- not just for them- and average evening in this world consists of two things- soma-taking and sex.   Now in episode 3 we accompany these two as they cross the Atlantic to the American continent and then return in chapters 6-11.   They bring back with them a character who comes closest to being a hero, he comes closest to being us, John Savage from the reservation.  Our plan today is to explore primitive life on the reservation and the contrasts Huxley creates for us as well as watch John the Savage as he interacts with the Brave New World on his return.   

Christy, before we get into that I want to revisit a few important ideas from earlier episodes. As we think about how Huxley drew these standardized humans, and their lives, it’s more and more obvious that Huxley, himself, is not advocating for life a comfortable and happy life, at least in the way he defines these terms.  Comfortable meaning no anxiety; happy meaning full of distractions and entertainment. 

No, we have to read this entire book as irony- everything he is defending is the opposite of what he’s describing.  It’s what makes this book confusing to many readers. The farther we get into the chapters, the more bitter the irony- even positive words like hygienic and beautiful and happy are used by Huxley to make us question if even these are really good things at all.   

One place to pay attention is when reading how the characters talk to and about each other. What we see is that there is zero sense of what we consider to be meaningful relationship.  They talk about each other and to each other as if they were merchandise, or to use Huxley’s term- meat- dead or alive.  Huxley as a student of biology and psychology really pushes the scientific boundaries and even our imaginations to the limits.  He asks how far will society, or the power structure of our world go when it comes to psychological manipulation through conditioning?  Are there ethical limits or boundaries in the messages we hear from political or commercial leadership- and Huxley does not really see that there is a difference between these two.  And not just through repetition and peer pressure but also through government/cultural sanctioned drug use and sexual behaviors.  All of this, of course always expressed as being for the common good.  Not even the world leaders in a Brave New World have nefarious motives.  There is no obvious villain, no Hitler or Stalin out there murdering innocent people.  The government is doing everything in the name of general good, and yet, we, as readers are made to question if this is really the case.   

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I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is episode 2 of our 4 part series discussing Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  Today we will finish our discussion of part one of this book, chapters 1-5 and begin the transition into the second part.  In other words, we will explore a progressive world of perfect containment and stability before shifting to a primitive one of risk and possibility.  In episode 1, we introduced Huxley, the writer and thinker.  We toured Brave New World’s Hatchery in chapters 1-2- the beginnings.  The Hatchery is where they mass-produce humans- assembly-line style.  We see that the world is genetically and biochemically engineered into fixed classes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon.  For Huxley the political and economic leadership in our world has an interest in freezing the path for upward mobility, making sure all the political and economic power stays exactly where it is.  Whoever is at the top has an interest in using the power of science and technology to produce a controllable standardized man.  This standardized man would be a “perfect” man—or at least an artificially crafted perfect one, perfectly engineered for his predetermined role on this earth- Huxley uses a theological term- predestined.  The overarching metaphor that pervades the novel is inspired by Henry Ford.   In 1903, the Ford Motor Company was formed. The first product was the Model A, introduced in the same year. In order to produce a standardized car that everyone could afford, Ford introduced to the world the concept of assembly-line production.  Their most successful product ever, the Model T, came out in September 1908. In 1909 a new Model T cost $850, but by 1924 the price had gone down to only $260. The average assembly line worker could purchase one with four months' pay in 1914.  Everyone could drive a Model T.  Eventually 15 million model Ts were manufactured and sold.  It is estimated that 40% of American households owned one. 

 In Huxley’s world Ford is divine.  The assembly-line model is the template for life. Community, Identity and Stability are globally accepted ideals, and man is standardized- produced in the hatcheries like the one we’re visiting- the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre.   We observe the process of fertilizing the eggs, bottling them, putting the lower castes through the Bokanovsky’ process then finally decanting them- or preparing them for independent existence.  

We might call that birthing, but you can’t really be birthed out of a bottle, so I think the word decanting as a replacement for birthing slightly funny. 

 The Bokanovksy process in particular involves grotesque biological engineering.  It’s where lower castes are prenatally treated with x-rays then then are basically doused with alcohol and other poisons to be almost subhuman but capable of performing mind-numbing tasks.  It’s fetal alcohol poisoning scientifically administered for the purpose of subjugation.  But they don’t just poison the embryos, they also deprive the brains of oxygen during the assembly line process for and I quote the director here, there is “nothing like osygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par.”    This is not considered immoral because these epsilons are still perfect.  They are perfectly designed to do what they were designed to do perfectly.  Christy, I used a chiasmus there! 

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 It’s satire.  It mocks us, and the irony wears on us as we go through the story.  Remember, the word irony means opposite, in other words, we feel that things should be the opposite as how they are described as being. 

Christy, we talked about satire with Johnathan Swift, with Orwell and with Bradbury, but let’s define what that is.  If you say something is satirical, I immediately expect it to be funny, but there’s nothing funny in this book.   

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And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our third and final episode discussing Ismael Beah’s personal memoir A Long Way Gone, Memoir of a Boy Soldier.  In Week one, we discussed the first ten chapters of the book, introduced a very brief history of Sierra Leone, as a country, as well as a little background as to what started the civil unrest and why it lasted for so long in the country of Sierra Leone.  It came down to corruption on the part of the government, then of course, there were the diamonds, the ones everyone wanted, blood diamonds as the world has come to call them.  Last episode, we only discussed five chapters, but they are five brutal chapters, the chapters where Beah discusses his entrance into the army and just a few of his experiences as a child soldier.  These are brutal, tragic and unfortunately more common than we would like to admit.  

 I appreciated that he didn’t harp on these.  I assume he could probably have fiilled a volume listing one terrible atrocity after another, but he didn’t.  He carefully chose events that supported specific points that he was trying to make.  One point being how callous he and the other children became to the humanity of others, through the drugs, by watching and modeling the behaviors of the adults.  It was clear that child soldiers are braver and more expendable than adults and widely used by all sides of the conflict.    

This episode, we will discuss the rest of the book, chapters 16-21.  Here Beah explores his onw reintegration as a child soldier back into the world of real sentient human beings, the kind that feel empathy for each other and live peacefully with one another.  We only see the beginning of Beah’s journey.  We go with him as he physically escapes the war and Sierra Leone.  But before that happens, we watch his journey out of drug addiction and back into mainstream living, something not even the United Nations was sure was possible for child soldiers to do.  His particular case is an incredible miracle and one that is atypical of most child soldiers.  Not all soldiers end up being adopted by upper-class American parents, but truth be told, thousands have been able to reintegrate into schools and local communities.   The question people want to know is what can we do to create hope for them?   

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And I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is episode two in our three part series on Ishmael Beah’s national bestseller A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.  It is Ismael Beah’s first hand account of what he experienced as a child during Sierra Leone’s long armed conflict which completely ravaged the country and displaced a third of its inhabitants between 1991 until its official end in January of 2002. Last week we discussed the origins of the war and the fact that the violence endured for so long and was so bloody in large part because it was funded by what we call blood diamonds, those precious gems that were mined and sold by both sides of the conflict in order to buy weapons.    

 Beah’s account begins with an introduction dating in 1998 as a reflection.  From the beginning we know that Beah not only survives the war but somehow is writing his story from New York City, which is crazy to think about after reflecting on the chapters we discussed in the last episode, chapters 1-10.  We also can see by that introduction that he manages to escape the conflict before its official ending.  In these early chapters we meet an innocent group of boys living normal adolescent lives that are interrupted by murderous and senseless  killing sprees.  The boys run because that is the only thing they can do.  They run in a group so as to survive, but by the very nature of the war, they are not only threatened by all sorts of dangers, but they themselves are also perceived as threats.  They are the exact profile of the nation’s most deadly assassins.  They are on the run with no where to go and are totally disenfranchised for what is almost an entire year.  This week, we will discuss only five chapters, chapters 10-15.  These are the chapters that detail Beah’s relatively brief discussion of his two years spent as a soldier.  He is only 13 but he will serve as a soldier for two years in what is basically a terrorist squad victimizing in many cases innocent civilians.  Garry, before we read Beah’s individual story, let’s look at the concept of child soldiers in general.  It is obviously an inhumane practice.  What armies and terriorists do to the children to manipulate them into becoming killing machines is  immorale by any code of. Morality.  What these children do in the perceived service of freedom or liberation go far beyond international humanitarian law or acceptable standards of warfare conducted by  adult soldiers in armed conflicts, especially what they did to innocent civilians.  How could any leader on any side of any political concept justify this practice for any political or economical reason?   

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I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  Last episode we concluded our series on George Bernard Shaw, a man who believed art should be didactic.  This week we explore another artist, Mary Fisher, who also has something important to say.  Fisher advocates through her sculptures, quilts and textiles, but also through her speeches.  She has authored six books, received honorary doctorates and has traveled around the world as a Special Representative of the United Nations.  Fisher first emerged into the American national spotlight on August 19 in 1992 when she ascended to the podium in Houston, TX at the 1992 Republican National Convention.  She spoke for ten minutes in the middle of the day long before the famous keynote politicians of the evening.   She was not is a politician.  She stood before the crowd of partisan delegates as the daughter of a wealthy and powerful fundraiser.  She was an adviser to former president Ford, but that was not why she was there.  She was there to announce that she, like Rock Hudson, Magic Johnson and Freddie Mercury and thousands of others was HIV positive.  Her speech, “A Whisper of AIDS”, rocked not just the stunned onlookers from within the hall, but also the millions who watched the broadcast on TV.  It has been ranked by Oxford Press as one of the 100 Best American Speeches of the 20th Century.  Today we will read her remarkable speech, discuss the rhetorical situation in which is was delivered, and the impact Fisher has made on this important global issue. 

If you’ve listened to our discussions of other non-fiction pieces, you may have heard us reference Aristotle, the father of rhetoric in the West.  He has informed speakers and writers for thousands of years, literally.  According to Aristotle, all speakers must do three essential things do to be effective.  First, we must establish our credibility.  When anyone gets up to speak whether you realize it or not, you’re going to ask yourself why should I believe what you have to say?  Secondly, we must open the hearts of our listeners.  They must not just hear words but be moved to act.  Thirdly, we must create a line of reasoning that makes sense. Our reasons must connect with each other and add up to a conclusion that compels us to move forward in the direction provided by the speaker.  These three elements constitute what many call the rhetorical triangle.   It’s easy to understand what to, much harder to pull it off.  The Ancient Greeks called it ethos, pathos, logos, and the greatest practioners in the world have moved the human race, to do great things as well as to commit great atrocities just through words.  Today, especially as we look at this extremely impactful speech, we need to discuss another ancient rhetorical concept.  The term is “Kairos” or time.  The Greeks used it not to mean the clock as in chronology but to mean timeliness, the timing of the speech - the concept of timeliness of something.  Of course, we understand this all the time, how many times have you heard someone say, “I don’t know if this is the right time to tell you…and then they drop a bombshell”. We intuitively know that sometimes the timing of something makes or breaks the argument.  

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And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This episode we are wrapping up our three-part series on George Bernard Shaw otherwise known as GBS and his phenomenally successful play, Pygmalion.  In week 1, we introduced Shaw, some of his political ideologies, the Greek myth Pygmalion from where Shaw took his inspiration, as well as  ACT 1.  Last week, we discussed Acts 2 and 3.  We talked about Rosenthal’s revolutionary psychological discovery named the Pygmalion Effect.  We spoke to the symbolism of language, of clothes, of the gramophone, and mirrors.  We highlighted the parallels between Alfred Doolittle and Professor Higgins.  We allowed Shaw to preach at us as he humorously characterized the “undeserving poor”, and “middle class morality”, all Shavian terms, and finally we got to Eliza, the flower girl transformed into a duchess crashing through that point of no return otherwise known as the climax.  She fools all of good society into thinking she’s genteel getting away with declaring that it was “not bloody likely” she’d be walking home but would be taking a taxi. 

And of course, all of this is very didactic, a word he uses to mean moralizing, but it’s also very very funny.  We smile when Alfred Doolittle justifies begging for money to buy liquor by claiming that it couldn’t possibly ruin him.  It would all be gone by the end of the weekend.  He further claims (and of course this is Shaw’s voice moral judgement toward us theater attenders)  that anyone would be as immoral as he, if we were also the undeserving poor.  He’s simply too poor to afford morals; morals are luxuries of the middle class.  Shaw’s wit is on full display when he’s sermonizing which brings us to the final two acts of the play.  Of course, they sermonize the most, but also are arguably the most entertaining for the same reason.  We referenced the end of the play and that Shaw would never have endorsed the thematic license My Fair Lady took with the ending, but today we will make Shaw’s case for him as to why.  For a good long time, I was with the rest of the world and was highly irritated at Shaw’s anti-climatic ending.  Having said that, after reading his sequel, hearing his commentary, and understanding better Shaw’s purposes for having it end the way it does, I now completely agree with Shaw, there is no other way to end the play but for Higgins and Eliza to part ways.   

Well, there went that, I hope it’s okay we’re going spoil the ending at this point.  Well, let me put it this way, if you’ve watched My Fair Lady, or Pygmalion, you may think that Shaw think that Shaw spoiled his own ending because there is not a happily ever after ending to this romantic comedy.  People feel deceived when they get to the end because romantic comedies are not supposed to end in angst but especially one with the word romance in the title.  We haven’t brough it out yet, but there is a subtitle to this play, and many have claimed Shaw has misled us with what he’s attempting to do in the play through the subtitle.  The full title of the play is Pygmalion, a Romance in Five Acts.  He labels it a romantic comedy, and most people reading that reasonably assume certain characteristics that are usual to comedies, at least classically modeled ones.   For one, there should be a wedding at the end, and secondly, the lead man should end up with the lead woman, a love story gone right.  Everyone knows, comedies end in marriage; tragedies end in death.   

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

And I am Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our second week discussing the life of George Bernard Shaw as well as his most famous piece, Pygmalion.  Last week, we introduced this Nobel prize winning author, as well as gave some background as to his life, personality, and controversial views.  We discussed the Greek myth, Pygmalion from which Shaw took the title.  We also introduced the characters as we meet them in Act 1.  Today, our goal is to get through acts 2 and 3 which will take us through the climax of the play.  I hadn’t realized the climax was in the 3rd Act by watching the movie or play production; I’d always thought of it as the ball or garden party like in the movie My Fair Lady.  I also didn’t know how dogmatic Shaw was about everyone wanting to change his ending not just of the play but even more so for the movie production that won him an Oscar for Best Screen Play. He has particularly choice words to say for it, as only he can choose them.   He, like Higgins, in Pygmalion is a loveable often foul-mouthed bully at times.  

Charles Poore commented on this in the New York Times on March 23 of 1949, “The Greatness of George Bernard Shaw has often been obscured by his own blinding and enthusiastic appreciation of it.”   

Wow!  That sounds exactly like something Shaw would say about himself.  The way Shaw took this obnoxious prophet persona called GBS and made it into a global brand GBS.  Without it he might have just an obscure Irish music critic, failed novelist, semi-successful playwright.  With it, he became legendary.   

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver. We’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our final episode in our four-part series of Kate Chopin’s masterpiece The Awakening.  There is a lot layered in such a short book.  In episode 1, we discuss Chopin’s life, we introduce the concept of “local color” and we arrive on the colorful shores of a summer resort village in Grand Isle, Louisiana.  Episode 2 we spend time on Grand Isle.  We meet Edna, Adele, Mr. Pontellier, Robert Lebrun and Madame Reisz.  We watch Edna awaken to an inner awareness she had never understood before, and we see this awakening occur through a physical sensuality she has never experienced before.  She learns to swim.  Edna Pontellier leaves Grand Isle a very different person than how she arrived at the beginning of her summer. Episode  3 we start with chapter 18 as Edna arrives back home in New Orleans.  Nothing would be the same.  She cannot  conform to the roles she has previously played.  She does not fit into the culture; she doesn’t want to anymore.  She abandons almost all that she had previously identified with and experiments with different lifestyles: the arts, the horse races, men, ultimately she decides to leave the ritzy Esplanade street and take up residence in what she calls her Pigeon House just around the corner.  Today, we begin with chapter 26 and we follow Edna’s progression through the end of the book.    

Stylistically Chopin wrote what we call a realistic novel. The story, the settings, the characters truthfully represent the real world.  Grand Isle really exists and the resort there existed in the way she described it.  The same is true for Esplanade Street.  The details are accurate as Chopin represents the reality the great city of New Orleans at the turn of the century.  The French language, the customs, the way people behave, the races, the music, even the Song, “Ah, si tu savais”…is a real song. All of these things reflect reality.   However, as we get farther to the end of the novel, and as the reader gets more submerged into Edna’s perspective, things get more and more romanticized.  Objects that seemed liked just objects at the beginning are now understood to be metaphorical and are symbolic.  We notice that objects are repeating and evolving- they are motifs.   In other words, the objects are still what they have always been, but they have taken on to mean MORE than just what they originally meant.  We understand things to be symbols in two ways.  The first way is whey the author spends an inordinate amount of time describing something that maybe isn’t THAT important otherwise.  A second way is when we notice something to keep showing up over and over again.  Here’s one example  There is music in the beginning.  It’s described in detail, but notice just how much music there is in this book.  Notice how much time is devoted to describing it.   There is music in the middle and there is music at the end.  It means something, but of course it’s up to us to draw our own conclusions as to what.  The birds work the same way.  There are birds on the first page, they come back in the middle and there is a bird on the last page.  It means something.  Food and meals are often symbolic.  Meals are archetypal symbols for fellowship.   Chopin use meals as a way to sort track what’s going on with Edna and her relationships throughout the story.  Following the symbols helps us understand the universality of the story.  The biggest symbol is the sea, and by the end of the book it takes on mythic proportions.  The sea, as we pointed out in the beginning is personified.  It’s alive.  But by the end, if we look carefully, we see in the description that the ocean is described as a serpent- uh ohh.  That’s a Biblical symbol- but even in the Bible a serpent is not just one thing.  But it’s not just the Bible that that is alluded here in these ocean references.  Edna as called Venus, and Venus emerges from the sea. What is that about? Although everything is still realistic- there are no superheroes or magic or pirates or fairies of any kind, there symbols somehow feel allegorical; is Edna even a real person or is she a type?  I know that’s a little hyperbolic, but not by much.  Today as we end our discussion, I’d like to see this book as indeed political; there certainly is that side of it, but that is just the surface.  It goes beyond that to ask questions that are personal.  But before we can do that, we must first address the political.  Chopin was, by her very essence, a woman in the vein of what Europeans of her day called the “New Women” of the fin de siècle.    Garry, Chopin, was a well-read French speaker and reader very attune to the political, social and literary movements of her day, but we are not- although I will say, I’ve learned a lot about new women by watching them evolve in Downton Abbey, but what is a “new woman” and what does the term “fim de siècle” mean beyond the obvious translation of end of the century. 

The term “New Woman” was actually an invention of the British media- it’s not an American thing- and you’re right, it’s showcased in a lot of period pieces.  Here’s one tell, a new woman might be the one riding a bicycle as a display of her independence. 

A bicycle.  That’s funny.   

You’d have been the first to get your hands on one, I’m sure.  Think about it; just being able to wear clothes that would allow you to ride it would be liberating.  Anyway, the term first came out in the The Woman’s Herald in August of 1893.  To use the newspaper’s words, “woman suddenly appears on the scene of man’s activities, as a sort of new creation, and demand a share in the struggles, the responsibilities and the honurs of the world, in which, until now, she has been a cipher.”  This feminist vision, as you can imagine was highly controversial and threatening to the status quo.  Among other things, it involved a new definition of female sexuality.  Some considered this alone to be the beginning of the apocalypse- the world was certainly turning upside down.  The mainstream media portrayed the new woman as a mannish brute towering over men- someone who is extremely hideous and monstrous- something most women obviously would not want to embrace- very propagandic.  Opponents were making caricatures as negative as possible of these “independent women”  wearing masculine clothes and pursuing unwomanly pursuits like sports, politics or higher education.  

How dare they? 

There was a lot of cigar smoking in these pictures.  These were meant to be negative images; the women would have angry faces, maybe with their hands on their hips scowling at the reader.  But in the feminist media, the new woman was portrayed very differently.  The traits were the exact same but portrayed in a positive way.  The new woman in these publications  was portrayed as a social warrior defending her home, using her political positions, social standings to compliment traditional household duties.  The idea being a new woman didn’t neglect her family she was a better provider and defender of self and family because of it.  The main difference between these new visions of a new woman had to do with what you do with motherhood.   Femininist media created images of women incorporating traditionally male domains not necessarily excluding motherhood.   The big political interests that stand out were women’s suffrage and property rights. Women were interested in careers outside the home and higher education.   Women’s periodicals emerged with pretty large readerships, and not all of these readers were women.  Women were publicly and in writing asking other women to openly express their views on contemporary life- this was new.  The question of the era was “What is the role of the ‘new woman’?” I quote the North America Review here, “the great problem of the age is how to emancipate woman and preserve motherhood.”   In the 1890s, the new woman wanted to be what some called a “respected radical”.   

And of course, we don’t have to get far into The Awakening to see these political and social concerns embedded in Chopin’s work.  She is a voice speaking to this socio-political moment in time, and she’s commenting in a serious way on women’s struggle to speak- Edna struggles to speak for herself at everyone point in the book.  Interestly enough, Edna didn’t have a mother and doesn’t know what to do with motherhood.  She had no personal role model. 

I noticed that, and it matters psychologically when we watch Edna vacillate at the end of the book.  Chopin created a character of extreme economic privilege for her day, yet still, Edna has terrible trouble articulating even to herself what she feels or what she wants.   The reasons for this are not simply resolved.  Chopin seems to suggest to me that for sure there are political, social and cultural adjustments that must be made giving women more rights, but that’s just one part of it.  Chopin illustrates this from the vantage point of a woman.  There must be a redefinition of respectable womanhood that is not so polarizing.  Here there are only two versions of respectable women-  Madame Reisz and the other Adele Ratignole.  

By chapter 26 Edna clearly understands she is not one or the other, but there is an inarticulate lostness.  Where does Edna fit in?  She tells Madame Reisz that she’s moving out of her home, and for a brief moment you wonder if she’s got some sort of radical plan, except she doesn’t and her reasons don’t even make a lot of sense.  They’re emotional. She’s literally moving  “just two steps away in a little four-room house around the corner.  It looks so cozy, so inviting a restful, whenever I pass by, and it’s for rent.  I’m tired looking after that big house.  It seemed seemed like mine, anyway- like home.  It’s too much trouble.  I have to keep too many servants.  I am tired bothering with them.”  She goes on to say when Madame Reisz doesn’t buy that explanation, “The house, the money, that provides for it are not mine.  Isn’t that enough reason?” 

Obviously those are NOT reasons enough- what does she get out of this move? When Madame Reisz asks how her husband reacted to this plan this is her response, “I have not told him.   I only thought of it this morning.”   

Very impulsive. 

SOO impulsive.  I’m ashamed to say, I know people that do things like this, but this is not my vision of the real pioneers of the women’s movement- not today or from the turn of the century- women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Isadora Duncan, Clara Burton, Mary Wollstonecraft- they aren’t anything like Edna Pontellier. 

Well, no they are not, Edna has some deficiencies for sure, and they express themselves in various ways.  One of these is expressed through this confusion of passion with relationship like we see with Robert LeBrun.   She indulges in fantasy which is fun, of course, and the idea of Robert is a wonderful fantasy. 

This is something else that frustrates me, personally, with Edna. I keep wanting to say, “snap out of it, child!”  Chopin builds this tension but she never lets Edna snap out of it.  And even though the title of this book is The Awakening, and it is true is that Edna awakens continuously throughout the book, There is another sense paradoxically where Edna is always asleep literally and figuratively.  Edna is not a villain; Edna is not a pathetic character; Edna is a realistic character who vacillates all the time between this illusion and reality.  She’s continually uncovering things that haven’t been real, but then constructing things that are totally fake- like her life in this pigeon house or her relationship with Robert. Unpacking Edna is seeing a real life- a struggle. Chopin’s evolutionary character awakens from a very female - not a male one, not a neutered life; the complexity derives from realities that are unique to women, specifically those from the turn of the century, but the social and culture implications aside, in universal terms, what does it mean for Edna to be in love with Robert?  To love someone means something in a universal way.  People love in all cultures in all times all around the world.  For a woman to love a man as she claims to love Robert, what does she mean?  Is she saying she desires a life with him; does she want to take on any responsibility for his happiness or good?  That is what I find confusing, because Edna doesn’t seem to be doing that for anyone.  In what sense is Edna “in love” or should we not take her at her word on this?     

Ha!  Do we take anyone at their word when they are “in love”?  Of course, when she is asked to describe what she means, she describes the biochemical addiction we all feel when we can’t get enough of another person.  That experience is overwhelming for anyone; and Chopin has gone to a lot of trouble to show us that Edna has never been “in love” before.  Edna is a woman who recently just turned on her feelings.  Turning on our feelings is important, and it is very sad that it was so long in happening for her.  Contrary to popular opinion, feelings are good.  To experience feelings is not a sign of weakness. Not taking into account her feelings is what got her into a loveless marriage to begin with.  We have to learn to incorporate our emotions if we are going to live as a whole individual- a person with no dead spots.  Edna has lived from her childhood onward with lots of dead spots.  This has handicapped her in many ways.  In this case, what does it mean for Edna in Edna’s mind to love Robert LeBrun?  What does it mean if he loves her?  I’m not sure the relationship between these two is what is important for Chopin.  It appears to be the backdrop of a larger issue?  Love is not the end game for Edna; passion was the catalyst to her awakening, to be sure, but the relationship between Edna and Robert is not a Romeo and Juliet type story.  The Awakening is not a love story. 

Indeed, Madame Reisz recognizes that as well.  Madame Reisz calls Edna “Ma Reine” in chapter 26.  She then asks, “Why do you love him when you ought not?”    

And why does that term “ma reine” draw your attention? 

Because that term means, “My queen”, and that seems to be more in line what Edna wants instead of a relationship with Robert LeBrun.  What has Edna discovered in this world.  She’s discovered she doesn’t want to be woman-mother.  She discovered she doesn’t really want to be artist woman.  She’s trying out what it’s like to be a “man” in some ways.  But really what she wants is to be Woman-queen.  Which is a nice role- I’d like that to be that one as well. 

Ha!  Not a Disney princess. 

Heck no- I’m all for mother-queen.  But here’s Edna’a problem.  She’s not prepared nor does she seem creative enough to invent this role for herself in the actual real world in which she lives; she likely can’t conceptualize it.  This illusion of a mother-queen will be the model from here to the end of the book.  The thing is, it’s not real; Edna is creating an illusion.  In fact, this whole book is a discussion on illusion versus reality.  What did Edna awaken to, if not to the understanding that her entire life was an illusion- she was living an inauthentic life.  Except, look at what she does in response to that?  She’s building more illusion- exhibit A-  this relationship with Robert- if it is anything it is an expression of illusion.   

Edna doesn’t need a fantasy.  She needs hope.  She needs to see her own potential- a creative vision of what she can become, something she would like to become- if not mother, if not artist, if not horse-racer, if not socialite, then what. 

In chapter 27, Edna says this “Don’t you know the weather prophet has told us we shall see the sun pretty soon?”  The sun is a very ancient and universal symbol.  It represents hope.  It represents creativity; it’s a male archetypal symbol, btw, the sun represents energy.  If you remember, Edna can only paint in the sun, and that’s exactly right.  That’s all of us, we all can only create in the sun.  We can only move forward when we have hope.  The Sun gives us life and without it we live in darkness, without hope.  Edna is wrestling with finding hope, but that seems to be problematic because she can’t even decide if she’s a good person or a bad person.  Listen to what she says to Arobin, “I’m going to pull myself together for a while and think- try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly I don’t know.  By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilish wicked specimen of the sex.  But some way I can’t convince myself that I am.  I must think about it.”   

It is in that line that I think Chopin enraptures many female readers.  I want to read it again, “ 

By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilish wicked specimen of the sex.  But some way I can’t convince myself that I am.  I must think about it.”   

In other words, the world tells me I am a bad person because I’m not conforming properly.  I’m not doing the right things; but something inside of me defies that.  I don’t feel devilish.  But I’m told I am, and there is my disconnect. 

Indeed-and isn’t it interesting that it is here at this point that Edna revisits something Madame Reisz has apparently told her previously but we are only getting to see in this context after this confession, “When I left her today, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said, ‘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.” 

I agree, but what kind of bird is Edna?  Madame Reisz is not using language that suggest Edna IS this kind of woman.  She’s challenging her to be a certain way.  She’s saying if Edna wants to have a certain outcome, she must display certain characteristics.  But, notice the next thing that happens, Edna and Arobin kiss passionately.  “It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really responded.  It was a flaming torch that kindled desire.”  Chopin is very delicate in how she expresses the implied sex scene.  The entire chapter is very short- very different than how Shonda Rimes does these things in Bridgerton.  Let’s read it. 

Chapter 28 

I know this is not the majority view here, but this is not only Edna asserting independence.  This is Edna running into more illusion. From here, she immediately moves out of Leonce’s house, but not without running up a crazy expensive bill with a lavish dinner party.  Arobin calls it a coup d’etat.  “It will be day after tomorrow.  Why do you call it the coup d’etat?  Oh! It will be a very fine; all my best of everything- crystal, silver, and gold. Sevres. Flowers, music and champagne to swim in.  I’ll let Leonce pay the bills.  I wonder what he’ll say when he sees the bills.” 

This dinner party is very strange.  For a book so short, why should so many pages be devoted to a dinner party that is essentially meaningless in terms of plot development.   

It is long.  One critic pointed out that it’s literally, “the longest sustained episode in the novel.”  

So, why?  It does not develop the plot; it does not develop any characters; nothing provocative is uttered.  What is going on? 

Well!!!  Meals are never just meals- not in literature, not in the movies.  In fact, food is never just food.  It’s almost always symbolic of something.  Food is so essential to life, in fact it IS life,  but meals are essential to community.  They don’t just symbolize fellowship- they ARE fellowship.  This Thursday night we are going to celebrate our niece, Lauren,  graduating from Collierville High School, and how are we going to do this, we are going to eat together.  Eating together is bonding.  With that in mind, notice how many meals are consumed in this story.   

So, what’s with the dinner Edna holds?  Her family isn’t there.  Her husband isn’t there.  Adele, her closest friend, isn’t even there.  Many literary critics have suggested, and I honestly think there is validity to this, that Chopin is creating a parody of Jesus’ last supper.  Edna has invited a select 12 to join her on her birthday dinner.  There’s irony there.  In some sense, it’s not just a day where she is celebrating turning 29.  She sees herself as being reborn- her birth…day.  She is celebrating her departure, but unlike Jesus’ humble meal in the upper room before his crucifixion and resurrection- Edna goes high dollar.  She sits at the end of the table presiding over her dinner guests, who all have a magnificent time, btw. She wears a cluster of diamonds she had just received that morning from her husband.   There is a specially designed cocktail her father invented for her sister’s wedding that she didn’t attend; there are multiple courses, everyone has a special chair.  Everything was queenly.  Let me read the description of Edna, “The golden shimmer…. 

Page 103 

Madame Reisz on her way out at the end of the party again says this, “Bonne nuit, ma reine, soyez sage.”  Translated- Good night, my queen, be wise.” 

Well, you’ve made your case…she is playing the part of the queen. But who are the other people in this charade?  Specifically, why is  Mrs. Highcamp there who we know she doesn’t like, and why is she weaving a garland of yellow and red roses and laying it over Victor…according to Chopin transforming Victor into a vision of oriental beauty, his cheeks the color or crushed grapes and his dusty eyes glowed with a languishing fire. After that she drapes a while silk scarf on him. It’s just weird…and pagan feeling…nothing like the Lord’s Supper of the bible, if you were trying to make that comparison.   

No, it’s the very opposite. That’s why critics say it’s a parody of Jesus’ last supper.  It’s imitating but not recreating.  It feels pagan, doesn’t it?   Edna is Queen but she has no stated purpose; she is not Jesus sacrificing his life for the sins of the world.  Another moment of parody is when Victor, Judas’ like, quickly falls out of favor or betrays her so to speak by singing a song Edna associates with Robert.  But he is shut down. 

In the chapters that follow, we see Leonce saving face by remodeling the house as a way of explaining Edna’s odd behavior and moving out of the family home.  Edna feels happy about what she’s done.  Of course, these are all feelings but “Every step which she took to relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual.  She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life.”   Again, Chopin never gets far away from the idea that Edna is trying to understand for herself what is real and she is doing this by stripping down, an image we will see all the way to the end. 

And yet, the text never clarifies exactly what it is that Edna is learning about the world and herself.  She draws no conclusions, makes no provisions, takes on no responsibilities.  Reality is an immovable thing.  It is not something we simply escape- that is not possible. 

Well, I’m not sure Edna knows that.  She visits her children and weeps when she ssees them. Let me quote here, “She lived with them a whole week long, giving them all of herself, and gathering, and filling. Herself with their young existence.”  She tells then about the Pigeon house and the kids get real very quickly.  They ask her where they would sleep, where papa would sleep. Edna’s answer betrays her unwillingness to problem solve.  She says and I quote, “the fairies would fix it all right.”   

Edna rejects reality over and over again.  She responds with fantasy at every point.  Madame Ratignolle recognizes this.  In chapter 33 she pays Edna a visit at the pigeon house.  She asks about the dinner party.  She warns her about her behavior with Arobin, but she also makes Edna promise that when the baby comes, Edna would come be a part of the delivery.  Before leaving she says this to Edna, “In some ways you seem to me like a child, Edna. You seem to act without a certain amount of reflection which is necessary in this life.”   

Adele is referring to whatever is going on with Arobin, but really, the relationship with Robert is the epitome of her fantasy.  As long as Robert is flirting with no goal- like he did on Grand Isle, Edna is in love with him.  On Grand Isle they share a meal together.  They talk about spirits and pirates.  She loves that.  But here in New Orleans, Robert approaches Edna with a desire to be honest and she rejects that.  The text says that in some way “Robert seemed nearer to her off there in Mexico than when he stood in her presence, and she had touched his hand”.   After Edna’s birthday we see no more communal meals, Edna eats alone- there is no more fellowship at this point really with anyone.  Edna invites Robert to eat with her at a little restaurant called “Catiche”.  Edna requests a plate and puts food in front of him, but he doesn’t eat a morsel. He walks her home and comes inside.  Edna kisses him.  He confesses his love and how he is tormented because Edna is not free.  Let’s read this exchange. 

“Something put into my head that you cared for me; and I lost my senses.  I forgot everything but a wild dream of you some way becoming my wife.” 

Your wife! 

“Religion, loyalty, everything would give way if only you cared.” 

Then you must have forgotten that I was Leonce Pontellier’s wife.” 

“Oh I was demented, dreaming of wild, impossible things, recalling men who had set their wives free, we have heard of such things.” 

Yes, we have heard of such things.” 

There’s a little more back and forth until we get to this line of Edna’s, “You have been a very very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free!  I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not.  I give myself where I choose.  If he were to say “here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours, I should laugh at you both.” 

He of course responds with, “What do you mean?”  He has no idea what Edna’s talking about.   

Exactly, and here is where the a plot complication makes things interesting.  Their conversation is interrupted when Madame Ratignolle’s servant comes to say that Adelle is having her baby.  Edna leaves Robert.  She says this to Robert, “I love you.  Only you; no one but you.  It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream.”   

Robert begs Edna, as if she really were Queen Edna.  He begs her to stay with him- to not go to Adelle.  This is kind reminiscient of the stereotypical female damsel in distress begging her hero to stay- except in revere.  She pulls away, promises to return and leaves him and  quote the text here, “longing to hold her and keep her.”   

This Birth scene is symbolic in many ways.  It also is a return to the female reality.  Is there anything more real in this world than bringing life into it?  This birth scene reminds readers that this is a uniquely female story because this is one way men and women engage the world differently and there is no way around it. Motherhood and fatherhood are not the same.  Edna goes to Adelle and begins to feel uneasy. Let’s read this paragraph from chapter 37.  

Page 127 

On the surface, it seems that Adele is hoping to inspire Edna to resume her role as a Woman-mother.  On the surface it seems that Edna is battling social conventions and her own sensuality.   

Of course, the whole experience leaves her dazed.  The doctor walks her home, and I quote, “Oh well, I don’t know that it matters after all.  One has to think of the children some time or other; the sooner the better.”  Let’s read the rest of this dialogue between the doctor and Edna. 

Page 128 

Even at the end of the chapter, Edna cannot articulate her own thoughts, not even inside her own head.  Still she remembers Adele’s voice whispering, “Think of the children; think of them.”  She meant to think of them; that determination had driven into her soul like a death wound- but not tonight.  Tomorrow would be time to think of everything.” 

Of course, when she gets inside the pigeon house there is no Robert.  He left a note. “I love you. Good bye- because I love you.”  Edna grew faint; uttered no words and stayed up the entire night, apparently just staring at a flickering lamp. 

Again, may I point out- light represents hope and hers is flickering.   

Speaking just in a general sense, we are co-creators of our reality- our circumstances proscribe lots of things, but we create out of those circumstances and we know it.  And since we know this, no person can run away from his own innate moral obligation to live up to whatever potential we find inside of us.  Whatever we determine that to be.  We cannot run away from that reality.  No matter how hard we try to put it off until tomorrow, that sense of obligation to create something out of our lives is inside of us.  We can’t run from it because it is not coming from outside of us.  Edna, in all of her confusion, and she, is very confused about a lot of things at various points in the book, but she never wavers about that.  She clearly says early on in the book, that she understood herself to have an obligation first and foremost to herself.  But what is that obligation- it is for her what it is for everyone.  She must meet her own potential.  We cannot fail at that.  If we feel we are failing at that, that’s when despair sets in.   

Edna looks at certain realities in her life and awakens to an awareness she doesn’t want to face.  She sees obligations in her future- not opportunities.  She doesn’t want tomorrow to come, but not going to bed does not put off the morning from arriving.   

The end of the book circles back to where it starts- Grand Isle.  Except it is not the Grand Isle of the summer.  Archetypally, Spring represents new birth, summer represents youth; fall represents adulthood or maturity.  Grand Isle is still there, but the women from the summer resort are not.  It’s barren. The sun and the warmth is not there either.  Edna returns to find Victor there.  She arrives to find that he’s been telling Mariequita all about her birthday dinner.  He has described Edna and and I quote, “Venus rising from the foam”.  If you remember from your Roman mythology, Venus is the goddess of love and is said to have emerged full-grown from the ocean foam.  So read into that what you will.  Anyway Edna asks him to prepare a meal of fish.  She then leaves Victor for the beach for a swim.  If you recall, it was at this place where she had her first swim and experienced her first real awakening.  But now this beach is dreary and deserted.  

Let’s listen to the thoughts in Edna’s head, “She had said it over and over to herself.  “Today it is Arobin’ tomorrow it will be someone else.  It makes no difference to me.  It doesn’t matter about Leonce Pontelllier- but Raoul and Etienne!”  She understood now clearly what she had meant long ago when she said to Adele Ratignolle that she would give up the unessential, but she would never sacrifice herself for her children.  Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never lifted. There was no one thing in the world that she desired.  There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone.  The children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her, who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul’s slavery for the rest of her days.  But she knew a way to elude them.  She was not thinking of these things when she walked down to the beach.” 

There’s a lot of nihilism in those comments.  Edna has found nothing that excites her passion.  “There was no one thing that she desired” – that’s the line that stands out.  Desire is the fuel of human behavior.  It’s where we see our potential.  This is a huge expression of someone who has given up all desire to have responsibility for anyone or anything- and it is unthinking here.  She is completely detached to a degree that it’s actually shocking.  I see why this book unsettled so many people.  We don’t want to believe people can detach like this.  We know it’s dangerous. 

 She wades out into this ocean because the seas is seductive.  It whispers, it clamours; it murmurs.  It invites her soul to want in the abysses of solitude.  Edna looks up to see a bird with a broken wing beating the air above and falling down disabled to the water.  She then takes off all of her clothes and stands naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun with the waves inviting her to come in, and so she does.  Let’s read this final page. 

Page 133 

We notice right away the sea is a serpent about her ankle.  Most of us think of a serpent as a symbol for the devil, and that’s true in the book of Genesis.  But that is not the only time we see a serpent in the Bible.  In the book of Exodus, the Israelites in the desert look up to a serpent on a stick for healing.  Archetypally a serpent is a symbol of rebirth. 

Edna retreats into thoughts of her childhood which reminds me that Edna has no mother.  Honestly, this does not read like a suicide. I For one, think, Chopin leaves it completely open ended.  Can we be sure Edna even dies?  Chopin ends this book entirely unresolved.  It’s disturbing.   

It hinges on what you want to do with that ocean.  And scholars have come to zero consensus on how to understand this ending.  Oceans symbolically can be sources of self-awareness.  They can be places to find rebirth.  But, what’s jarring about this ending is that there is nothing in Edna’s characterization at any point in the book to suggest that Edna wants a beginning or even an ending for that matter.  Edna doesn’t search for closure not one time in this story- even the bedtime story she tells her kids there’s no ending.  Edna is not just rejecting society’s roles for her; she seems to be rejecting herself as an individual here.  Do these final images of her childhood suggest she wants to start over or does she give up up? 

When ending a good song, every musician knows you have to create closure at the end or you don’t resolve the tension in the music.  Non musicians may not know that but they feel it when it happens. Try ending a song on the 5 chord.  And for a woman with such a keen sense of music, it seems Chopin purposely leaves her song unresolved.  There is no funeral; nobody on the beach; not even any thoughts of exit in Edna’s mind.  There is nothing.  Instead, Edna is focused on all the repeating elements of her own life’s story.  It is a totally directionless ending. 

And that’s what people love about it- it’s messy and unresolved.  It’s realistic but also kind of mythical.   I guess, if we want to we can finish the tale in our own minds.  We can either kill her off or revive her.  She either sinks into further illusion, or she awakens one final time into a creative reality.  The central motif of this book is this sleeping/waking thing that goes on the entire time.  And maybe that’s where we find ourselves-- hopefully to a much lesser degree than Edna- the messiness of life sets in when we find ourselves oscillating between waking up and further deluding ourselves at some lost point in our lives.  We will make a mess of things (as Chopin says about Edna) – being a victim of forces without and forces within.  Yet what happens after we go into the ocean- or do we even dare?  I like to see this ending positively.  I like to think of Edna rising up and finding she CAN attach to other humans in a way where one does not consume the other.  She can find meaning in her children, in work, in art, in society.   She can find a way to make peace with her culture, her society, her limitations from without and within.  In my mind’s eye, she arises out of the foam-like Venus to rob a term from Victor. 

So, whether it’s realistic or not- In my mind, Edna comes back up- A woman- Queen.  I know I’m adding extensively to the text and that is a terribly bad no no, but hopefully while she was under water listening to all those bees she came up with a good plan.   

HA!  You do like to find the silver lining in every storm.  Well, thanks for spending time with us today.  We hope you enjoyed our final discussion on this very perplexing piece of literature.  Next episode, we move from Louisiana up the road to our home state of Tennessee to discuss the music and life of our own Dolly Parton, self-made woman of this generation, whose displays the very idea of local color in her music.  We would ask you to please share our podcast with a friend.  Email or text them a link.  Share a link on your social media.  That’s how we grow.  Also, visit our website at www.howtolovelitpodcast.com for merchandise as well as free listening guides for teachers and students of English.   

Peace out. 

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our third episode discussing Kate Chopin’s controversial novella, The Awakening.  Week 1 we introduced Chopin, her life and the book itself.  We talked about what a stir it made during her lifetime ultimately resulting in it being forgotten and then rediscovered midway through the 20th century.  Last week, we spent all of our time on the vacation resort island of Grand Isle.  We met Mr. ad Mrs. Pontellier, as well as the two women who represent got Edna, our protagonist, two alternating lifestyles.  Edna Pontellier, we were quick to learn, is not a happily married woman.  Her husband is outwardly kind to her, but readers are told outright that love and mutual respect was never part of the arrangement between these two.  Edna is indulged by Mr. Pontellier, for sure.  He gives her anything she wants in terms of money or material, but in exchange, she is his ornament, an expensive hobby, a pet even- something to be prized- or as Ibsen would describe it- a beautiful doll for his doll house.   

The story starts in the summer at the vacation resort town of Grand Isle, Louisiana.  While vacationing on the island, Edna Pontellier experiences what Chopin terms “the awakening”.  She awakens to the understanding that she is not a pet or a doll in the doll house, and just like Nora in the The Doll’s House, she decides she really doesn’t want to be one anymore.  

No, I guess if that were the only thing to this story, we’d have to say, Sorry Kate, Ibsen beat you by about 20 years.  In Ibsen’s story, Nora awakens when her husband, Torvald, turns on her over money.   

That’s a good point, what awakens Edna in this book is not a marital crisis over money.  It is a crisis that awakens her, and it totally informs how she views her marriage, but it is a crisis concerning her husband at all that is the catalyst.   She is awakened to her own humanity by discovering her own sensuality.  I want to highlight that this awakening isn’t overtly sexually provoked.  No man comes in and seduces Edna; she does not go off with a wild vacation crew.  She is left vulnerable, if you want to think about it that way, because of loveless marriage, but she is sensually and emotionally provoked through three  very different relationships- all of which affect her physically as well as emotionally.  The first is with a Creole woman, Adele Ratigntole, one with a younger Creole man, Robert LeBrun, and the third with the provocative music of Madame Reisz.  Experiences with these three awaken something in Edna that encourages maybe even forces her to rebel- rebel against her husband, against the culture, against the person she has always been, against the roles she has played, against everything that she has ever known.   

The problem is- rebellion only takes you so far.  You may know what you DON’T want, but does that help you understand what you DO?  And this is Edna’s problem.  Where do we go from here? 

 And so, in chapter 17, we return with the Pontellier’s to their home in New Orleans.  And, as we have suggested before, New Orleans is not like any other city in America, and it is in these cultural distinctives of Creole life at the turn of the century that Chopin situates our protagonist.  But before we can understand some of the universal and psychological struggles Chopin so carefully sketches for us, we need to understand a little of the culture of this time period and this unusual place.  Garry, tell us a little about this world.  What is so special about Esplanade Street? 

Well, one need only Google tourism New Orleans and a description of Esplanade street will be in the first lists of articles you run into.  Let me read the opening sentence from the travel website Neworleans.com 

One of the quietest, most scenic and historic streets in New Orleans, Esplanade Avenue is a hidden treasure running through the heart of the city. From its beginning at the foot of the Mississippi River levee to its terminus at the entrance of City Park, Esplanade is a slow pace thoroughfare with quiet ambiance and local charm.  According to this same website, Esplanade Street, during the days of Chopin, functioned as “millionaire row”- which, of course is why the Pontelliers live there. 

It actually forms the border between the French Quarter and the less exclusive Faubourg Marigny.  At the turn of the last century it was grand and it was populated by wealthy creoles who were building enormous mansions meant to compete with the mansions of the “Americans” on St. Charles Avenue. 

“The Americans”? 

Yes, that was the term for the non-Creole white people.  The ones that descended from the British or came into New Orleans from other parts of the US. 

 Esplanade Street was life at its most grand- there is no suffering like you might find in other parts of New Orleans.  The Pontelliers were wealthy; they were glamorous; these two were living competitively.   

The first paragraph of chapter 17 calls the Pontellier mansion dazzling white. And the inside is just as dazzling as the outside. Mrs. Pontellier’s silver and crystal were the envy of many women of less generous husbands.  Mr. Pontellier was very proud of this and according to our sassy narrator loved to walk around his house to examine everything.  He “greatly valued his possessions.  They were his and I quote “household gods.” 

The Pontelliers had been married for six years, and Edna over this time had adjusted to the culture and obligations of being a woman of the competitive high society of Creole New Orleans.  One such obligation apparently centered around the very serious etiquette of calling cards and house calls.  This is something we’re familiar with, btw, since we watch Bridgerton.  It was something we saw in Emma, too.  Garry, talk to us about the very serious social business of calling cards.  

Well, this is first and foremost a European custom during this time period. It started with simple cards designed to announce a person’s arrival, but as in all things human, it grew and grew into something much larger and subtextual- and of course, with rules.  During the Victorian era, the designs on the cards as well as the etiquette surrounding were elaborate.  A person would leave one’s calling card at a friend’s house, and by friend meaning a person in your community- you may or may not actually be friends. Dropping off a card was a way to express appreciation, offer condolences or just say hello.  If someone moved into the neighborhood, you were expected to reach out with a card, and a new arrival was expected to do the same to everyone else.   

The process would involve putting the card on an elaborate silver tray in the entrance hall.  A tray full of calling cards was like social media for Victorians- you were demonstrating your popularity.   

For example, if we were doing this today, we would have a place in the entrance of our home, and we’d make sure the cards of the richest or most popular people we knew were on to.  We would want people who dropped off cards to be impressed by how many other callers we had AND how impressive our friends were. The entire process was dictated by complicated social rules, and as Leonce explains to Edna, to go against these rules could mean social suicide.  

It could also mean financial suicide because business always has a human component.  The function of an upper class woman would be to fulfil a very specific social obligation and this involved delivering and accepting these calling cards.  Every woman would have a specific day where she would make it known she was receiving cards, and the other ladies would go around town to pay house calls.  In some cases, a woman might remain in her carriage while her groom would take the card to the door.  During the Regency era like in Jane Austen’s day, there was a system of bending down the corner of the card if you were there in person, and not if you were sending it, but by Chopin’s day, I’m not sure if that was still a thing.  

The main thing was that the card would be dropped off on this special silver tray. If it were a first call, the caller might only leave a card.  But, if you were calling on the prescribed day, the groom would further inquire if the lady of the house were home.  A visit would consist of about twenty minutes of polite conversation.  It was important that if someone called on you, you must reciprocate and call on then on their visiting day.   

Well, the Tuesday they get back, Edna leaves the house on her reception day and does not receive any callers- a social no-no.  In fact, as we go through the rest of the book, she never receives callers again. This is an affront to the entire society, and an embarrassment to her husband; it’s also just bad for business, as Mr. Pontellier tries to explain to his wayward wife, let’s read this exchange. 

“Why, my dear, I should think you’d understand by this time that people don’t do such things; we’ve got to observe “les convenances” if we ever expect to get on and keep up with the procession.  If you felt that you had to leave this afternoon, you should have left some suitable explanation for your absences.   

One thing I find interesting.  Mr. Pontellier assumes that Mrs. Pontellier is on the same page on wanting the same things as he wants, and what he wants is to keep up with the procession.  They’d been doing this for the last six years, and doing it well. 

Another thing I notice is that he doesn’t rail at her for skipping out. Mr. Pontellier, unlike her father, even as we progress through the rest of the book, is not hard on her at all.  In fact, he’s indulgent.  The problem in the entire book is not that he’s been overtly abusive or cruel.  Read the part where he tries to kind of help her fix what he considers to be a serious social blunder. 

Page 60 

Well, if taken in isolation, this exchange doesn’t seem offensive, and I might even have taken sides with Mr. Pontellier if it weren’t back to back with this horrid scene of him complaining about his dinner then walking out to spend the rest of the evening at the club where he clearly spends the majority of his time.  You have to wonder what is going on at that club, but beyond that.  Edna is again left in sadness.  “She went and stood at an open window and looked out upon the deep tangle of tea garden below”.  (On an aside, if you’ve read Chopin’s story, the story of an hour, you should recognize the language here and the image of this open window).  Anyway,, Here again we have another image of a caged bird, or a person who is looking out in the world but not feeling a part of it.  “She was seeing herself and finding herself in just sweet half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars.  They jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid even of home.  She turned back into the room and began to walk to and from down its whole length, without stopping, without resting.  She carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from her.  Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet.  When she saw it there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it.  But her small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the little glittering circlet.  In a sweeping passion she seized a glass vase from the table and flung it upon the tiles of the hearth.  She wanted to destroy something.  The crash and the clatter were what she wanted to hear.” 

She’s clearly angry…and not just because Mr. Pontellier complained about the food and walked out of the house.  She’s angry about everything.  

Never mind the fact that we are never told what goes on at this club, but there are several indications in different parts of the book that Mr. Pontellier may be doing other things besides smoking cigars in crowded rooms.  Adele even tells Edna that she disapproves of Mr. Pontellier’s club.  She goes on to say, “It’s a pity Mr. Pontellier doesn’t stay home more in the evenings.  I think you would be more- well, if you don’t me my saying it- more united.”   

Although I will add, Edna quickly replies, “’Oh dear no!’ What should I do if he stayed home? We wouldn’t have anything to say to each other.”  - the fact remains that MR. Pontelier does not see any need to nurture any sort of human or intimate relationship with Edna- theirs comes across as a cordial business arrangement, at best, with Edna in the position of employee.   

True, and although I don’t know if this is the right place to point this out, but in terms of the sexual indiscretions that may or may not be going on when Mr. Pontellier is at the club, there is likely a lot in the culture at large going on under the surface that a person from the outside wouldn’t immediately be aware of.   Edna is naïve at first to all that goes on in her Victorian-Creole world.  There just is no such thing as “lofty chastity”  amongst the Creole people, or any people I might add, although Edna initially seems to believe that in spite of all the sexual innuendo in the language, nothing sexual was ever going on.  There are just too many indications otherwise in the story that that is not the case.  The reader can see it, even though Edna cannot.  

True, and if you didn’t catch it on Grand Isle, in the city, it is more obvious, and the farther along we go in the story, it gets more obvious as well.  Mrs. James Highcamp is one example.  She has married an “American” but uses her daughter as a pretext for cultivating relationships with younger men.  This is so well-known that Mr. Pontellier tells Edna, after seeing her calling card, that the less you have to do with Mrs. Highcamp the better.  But she’s not the only example.  Victor basically details an encounter with Edna of being with a prostitute he calls “a beauty” when she comes to visit his mother..ending with the phrase that she wouldn’t comprehend such things.  And of course, most obviously there is the character Arobin with whom Edna eventually does get sexually involved, but his reputation has clearly preceded him.   

 Well, Edna’s awakening to all of this would explain part of her anger, but  there is more to Edna’s awakening then just Leonce, or the new culture she’s a part of, or really any outside factor.  

Yes, and it is in the universality of whatever is going on inside of Edna that we find ourselves.  That’s what’s so great about great literature- the setting can be 120 years ago, but our humanity is still our humanity.   

 I agree and love that, but let’s get back to her setting for a moment. I think it’s worth mentioning that the 19th century culture of the Creole people in New Orleans is messy and complicated in its own unique way.  It’s fascinating, but for those who are not of the privileged class, life was often a harsh reality.  The world, especially in the South, was problematic for people of mixed race heritage.  So, and this is more true the closer we get to the Civil War and the Jim Crow era, but those who called themselves “white creoles” had a problem because of the large existence of the free people of mixed race ancestry in New Orleans.  There was a strong outside pressure to maintain this illusion of racial purity, but the evidence suggests this simply wasn’t reality.  Let me throw out a few numbers to tell you what I’m talking about.  From 1782-1791, the St. Louis Catholic Church in New Orleans recorded 2688 births of mixed race children.  Now that doesn’t seem like a large number, but let me throw this number out- that same congregation at that time same only records 40 marriages of black or mixed race people.  Now, I know Catholics are known for having large families, but I’m not sure 20 women can account for 2688 births.   

No, something feels a little wrong.  That number suggests another explanation may be in order.   

Exactly, and by 1840 that number grows from 2688 to over 20,000 with mixed raced Creoles representing 18% of the total population of residents of New Orleans.  And if that doesn’t convince you, here’s another indicator, during this same period many many free women of color were acquiring prime real estate in New Orleans under their own names.  These women had houses built and passed estates on to their children, but notice this detail, the children of these mixed-raced women had different last names then their mothers.  We’re not talking about small amounts of property here.  By 1860 $15 million dollars worth of property was in the name of children with last names that were not the same as that of their mothers, oh and by the way, a lot of that property was in the neighborhood where Edna rents her pidgeon house just around the corner from Esplanade street- in other words around the corner and walking distance from millionaire row.   

Well, that’s really interesting, and I guess, does add a new dimension to the subtext in the language for sure. 

Well, it does, and it is likely something readers of the day would have certainly understood, more than we do 100 years later when the stakes of identifying as being of mixed raced heritage are not the difference between freedom and slavery.  But beyond just that, it’s an example of cultures clashing.  Edna represents an outwardly prudish Puritan culture coming into a society that is French, Spanish and Caribbean- very different thinking.  This is a de-facto multi-cultural world; it’s Catholic; it’s French-speaking; it’s international.  She doesn’t understand what she’s seeing.  And in that regard, her own situational reality is something she’s realizing she is only beginning to understand, and she comes into it all very gradually. She is not, in Adele’s words, “One of them.”  In fact, there may have been irony in the narrator in Grand Isle suggesting that Robert LeBrun’s relationships every summer were platonic.  His relationship with the girl in Mexico we will see most certainly is not, but nor was his relationship with Mariequeita on Grand Isle, the girl they meet on the day they spent together.   

Indeed.  You may be right- perhaps there is a real sense that Edna has been blind, and perhaps not just to her husband but by an entire society that presents itself one way but in reality is something entirely different altogether.  When she visits Adele and her husband at their home, everything seems perfect- of course.  Adele is the perfect woman with this perfect life.  Adele is beautiful.  Her husband adores her.  The Ratignolle’s marriage is blissful, in fact to use the narrator’s words, “The Ratignolles’ understood each other perfectly.  If ever the fusion of two human beings into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely in their union.”   

Do you think it’s sarcasm again?  Was it truly perfect, or just presenting itself to be perfect?  

It's really hard to tell.  Maybe they have worked out a great life together.  I think there is a lot in this passage to suggest they are truly happy together.  Edna even expresses that their home is much happier than hers.  She quotes that famous Chinese proverb “Better a dinner of herbs”.  The entire quote is “Better a dinner of herbs than a stalled ox where hate is.”- meaning her house has better food but she thinks of it as a hateful place- whereas this place is the opposite.  

Poor thing- she sees her reality for what it is.  I still see a little sarcasm in the narrator’s language, but even if Adele is every bit as perfect as she seems, and even if her home is every bit as perfect as it seems, and even if her husband is every bit as perfect as he seems, in the most real of ways, that could all be true and it wouldn’t matter.  E 

Precisely, The Ratignole’s life can be every bit as perfect as it appears. and it wouldn’t make Edna want it any more.  Edna leaves Adele’s happy home, realizing that even if she could have it it’s not the life she wants.  She wouldn’t want that world even if Leonce loved her.  It’s just not for her.  The problem is, that’s as far as she’s gotten with her problem solving.  All she knows is what she DOESN’T want.  Her new world is a world of negation.  She wants to quit, and so she does.  She absolutely disregards all her duties to the point that it finally angers Leonce enough to confront her.   

“It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a household, and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier days which would be better employed contriving for the comfort of her family.”   

An atelier is an artist studio.  It’ seems Edna has left all the responsibilities she had as a housewife as well as a mother.  And let me add, Edna was never dusting, cooking, or bathing her children.  She has several house keepers and nannies.  But now, she’s not even overseeing what others are doing.  Instead, she’s devoting herself entirely to painting.  And surprisingly, Leonce doesn’t even have a problem with that in and of itself.  Edna tells her husband, “I feel like painting.”  To which he responds, “Then in God’s name paint!  But don’t let the family go to the devil.  There’s Madame Ratignolle, because she keeps up her music, she doesn’t let everything else go to chaos.   And she’s more of a musician than you are a painter.” 

Yikes, that may be honest, but it does come across as a little harsh. 

I know.  I think it’s kind of a funny line.  To which, Edna has an interesting comeback- it’s like she knows it’s not about the painting. She says, “It isn’t on account of the painting that I let things go.”  He asks her then why she’s let everything go, but she has no answer.  She says she just doesn’t know.  Garry, do you want to take a stab at what’s going on with Edna?  

Well, I do want to tread carefully.  What is fascinating about this book is not so much that Chopin is arguing for any specific course of action, or warning against any specific set of behaviors.  She doesn’t condemn Edna for anything, not even the affair she will have with Arobin.  Instead of judging, Chopin, to me, seems to be raising questions.  And it is the questions that she raises that are so interesting.  Edna is desperately trying to rewrite the narrative of her life.  There is no question about that.  But that is an artistic endeavor, in some ways like painting or singing.   I guess we can say Chopin is blending her metaphors here.  Edna doesn’t want to be a parrot and copy, but she’s living her life exactly the way she is painting- it’s uncontrolled; it’s undisciplined; it’s impulsive.  I’d also say, it’s rather unoriginal.  There is no doubt that the social roles offered to her are restrictive.  There’s no doubt her marriage is a problem, but as we get farther into the story, it’s hard to believe that even if all of these problems could be rectified that Edna would be able define a life for herself.  We, as humans, are always more than a reaction to the social and cultural forces in our world- I hate to get back to the word we used last week, but I can’t get away from it.  Even under strict social norms, which I might add, Edna is NOT under for her time period- she is after all one of the most privileged humans on planet Earth at that particular time in human history, but even if she were under severe restrictions, she, as a human, still has agency- we all do. 

Yes- and to use Chopin’s words from chapter 6, Mrs Pontellier was beginning to realize her position as an individual as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world WITHIN and about her.  I think that Edna is like the rest of us in that it’s easier to understand and manage the world about us as opposed to the world within.  At least I can SEE the world about me- how can I see within?  How can I understand myself?  And so Edna goes to the world of Madame Reisz having discarded the world of Adele Ratignolle- the world of art, the world of the artist- which is where Edna goes in chapter 21.  I would argue that she sees it as the polar opposite of Adele’s reality.  There is the Adele version of being a woman- a totally objectified, sexualized but mothering type of woman= versus this version of womanhood who is basically asexually.  Perhaps Madame Reisz isn’t a woman at all- she’s an artist.   

Except that world, the world of the artist, comes with its own share of difficulties nevermind that it is simply more uncomfortable.  Reisz’ house is described as “dingy”.  There’s a good deal of smoke and soot.  It’s a small apartment.  There’s a magnificent piano, but no elegant food or servants or silver trays for calling cards.  She cooks her meals on a gasoline stove herself.  Let me quote here, “it was there also that she ate, keeping her belongings in a rare old buffet, dingy and battered from a hundred years use.” 

True, but there is also  the music and when the music filled the room it floated out upon the night, over the housetops, the crescent of the river, losing itself in the silence of the air and made Edna sob. The art is otherworldly, and there is something to that.  Something attractive maybe even metaphysical.  I want to talk about Kate Chopin’s choice of music.  I don’t think we noted this in episode one, but Chopin was an accomplished pianist.  She played by ear and read music.  She held parties, almost identical to the ones she described Madame Ratignole throwing in the book with dancing and card playing.  Music was a very big deal to Kate Chopin, so when she includes specific music in her writing, she’s not just dropping in commonly used songs, she uses artists she likes for specific reasons, and in this novel, the pianist Frederic Chopin is selected intentionally- and not because he has the same last name, although I did check that out- they are not related.  Garry, as a musician yourself, what can you tell us about Frederic Chopin, the Polish composer and pianist? 

Well, let me make this comparison, Frederic Chopin’s music in his day was the pelvis gyrating Elvis’ Rock in Roll of his day.  It was provocative.  19th century attitudes towards this type of harmony driven romantic music would seem hysterical to us.  They were seen as sensual and a destructive force, especially for women.  This may even be Chopin’s sassy narrator playing with us again- Frederic Chopin’s music is definitely driving sensuality in Edna. To say Kate Chopin is using it ironically is likely taking it too far, but I don’t know, maybe not.  This narrator has been ironic before. The main undeniable connection is that Madame Reisz plays Impromptus.  Impromptus are improvisational music.  Frederic Chopin wrote only four of them in his career.  The one Kate selects here is called Fantasie-Impromptu in C minor- it’s the only one in a minor key that he ever wrote.  You can pull it up on Spotify and hear it for yourself.   It is full of rhythmical difficulties.  It’s very difficult to play. It’s quick and full of emotion.  There is banging on low notes at times, thrills and rolling notes going faster and slower at others points.  Frederic Chopin, by the way, was a very temperamental person and in some ways shares a lot of the personality quirks of Madame Reisz. But he did have an interesting philosophy about music that I really like and does connect to our book.  He is recorded to have said this, “words were born of sounds; sounds existed before words…Sounds are used to make music just as words are used to form language.  Thought is expressed through sounds.  And undefined human utterance is mere sound; the art of manipulating sounds is music.” 

Interesting, music is thoughts as sounds.  I like the expression “undefined human utterance” especially in regard to Edna because she absolutely cannot get her thoughts out nor is she willing to share then with anyone.  She expresses more than once that her inner world was hers and hers alone. She can’t get her thoughts out when she talks to Adele; she can’t get them out when she talks to her husband, and she can’t get them out even with Madame Reisz which would have been a very safe space for her to express herself.  At the end of chapter 21, she’s sobbing at the music and holding in her hands a letter from Robert LeBrun crumpled and damp with tears.  

It would have helped her to have found someone to talk to, maybe the Dr. Mandelet that Leonce goes to in chapter 22 for advice about how to help his wife.   

What we find out from Leonce’s conversation is that Edna has withdrawn from every single person in her world.  She won’t even go to her sister’s wedding.  What the doctor sees when he goes to dinner at their house is a very outwardly engaging woman but an inwardly withdrawn one.  The Doctor wonders if she’s having an affair, but she isn’t.   

She is, to use the title of the book, One Solitary Soul.  As a human being, there are only so many types of relationships we find meaning in: we have our parents and birth family, we have our intimate relationship, we have our children (if we have any), we have our professional relationships, and we have our social friends- at least one of these has to be working for us.  Edna finds no satisfaction in any of them.  She doesn’t have a trusting relationship anywhere.   

Yes, every single relationship in her life is basically a burden.  Edna is trying to relieve herself of every single responsibility in the world hoping that getting out of relationships will help her expand her identity.  The problem is getting RID of responsibilities is not really the answer.  To find meaning in this world you must DO something worth doing.  Something that takes strength and energy.  Something you can be proud of.  Of course as a classroom teacher, that is what we do everyday.  It’s not helpful to give students high grades or marks for nothing.  It weakens them.  When you give them a difficult task and then they are able to do that task, they grow, they get strong, they learn they are capable of even great responsibilities.  If you want to get strong, you have to take ON responsibilities- you have to practice strength training, Edna goes the opposite way here.    

 Edna does look for models, and if she wanted a career path, or a professional life like we think of in  our era, Chopin threw in a character that could have served that function.  It’s what I see going on in  the chapters about the races.  Edna is actually really good at horse gambling.  She knows horses.  She knows the horse-racing business and knows it well.  The text actually says that she knows more about horse-racing than anyone in New Orleans.  In fact, it’s her knowledge about horses that puts her on the radar of the man she eventually has the sexual relationship with, Alcee Arobin.   

Let’s read the section where we see this relationship, if we want to call it that, take shape.  Arobin had first seen her perform well at the tracks and to use the narrator’s words, he admired Edna extravagantly after meeting her at the races with her father. 

Mrs. Highcamp is also a completely different version of a feminine ideal, although neither Edna nor the narrator seem to think enough of to give her a first name.  This confused me some when I read this because in my mind, Mrs. James Highcamp would have been this type of a liberated woman that Chopin might want to have Edna admire.  She’s clearly sexualy liberated, but beyond that she’s worldly, intelligent, slim, tall.  Her daughter is educated, participates in political societies, book clubs, that sort of thing.  But nothing about Mrs. James Highcamp is alluring to Edna at all.  She suffers Mrs. James Highcamp because of her interest in Arobin.  

Let’s read about these encounters between Arobin and Edna.  

Here’s the first one 

Page 86  

So, Arobin becomes fascinated with Edna, in part because she is so smart and different from other women.  At the end of that evening, they dined with the Highcamps. And afterwards Arobin takes Edna home.  The text says this “She wanted something to happen- something, anything, she did not know what.  She regretted that she had not made Arobin stay a half hour to talk over the horses.  She counted the money she had won.  There was nothing else to do, so she went to bed, and tossed there for hours in a sort of monotonous agitation. 

And so the relationship with Arobin is born out of boredom.   

Yes, the dominant movement in Edna’s life is always drifting towards boredom.  Edna wants to rewrite her social script, but she can’t seem to define what she wants.  She has trouble speaking, so she has no words to write her own story.  She doesn’t want to be a mother; she doesn’t want to work except in sunny weather; she has an opportunity with Mrs. Highcamp to get involved with political or literary women; but that doesn’t spark her interest.  She could make a name for herself at the races, but the money doesn’t motivate her- she’s always had it and in some ways doesn’t seem to know a world without money.  So, she’s going to default into this relationship with Arobin.  I’m going to suggest that she is again playing the part of the parrot.  Messing around with Arobin is just the kind of thing she sees men doing.  It’s what Victor does; it may be what her husband does; it is likely what Robert is doing down in Mexico, so she’s going to try to mimic male behavior since she hasn’t really found a female model she’s interested in emulating, and Arobin is an opportunitiy for this.   

And yet, she’s self-aware enough to not be seduced by Arobin.  The first time he really tries to make a move on her by kissing her hand, this is what she says which I find insightful, 

“When she was alone she looked mechanically at the back of her hand which he had kissed so warmly.  Then she leaned her head down on the mantlepiece.  She felt something like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into an act of infidelity, and realizes the significance of the act without being wholly awakened from its glamour.  The thought was passing vaguely through her mind, “what would he think?” 

She did not mean her husband; she was thinking of Robert LeBrun.  Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse.  She lit a candle and went up to her room.  Alcee Arobin was absolutely nothing to her.  Yet his presence, his manners, the warmth of his glances, and above all the touch of his lips upon her hand had acted like a narcotic upon her.  She slept a languorous sleep, interwoven with vanishing dreams.” 

Garry, is there a connection between Edna’s boredom with her new life and her desire to pursue this relationship with Arobin.  

Well, again, Dr. Kate Chopin is playing the psychologist.  Science has absolutely confirmed there is a relationship with boredom and risk-taking behaviors.  In other words, the more bored you find yourself, the more likely you are to do something risky.  It’s one reason teenagers are so prone to dangerous behaviors like drugs.  They don’t know yet how to cope with personal down time.  They can’t manage their own boredom.  Bored people don’t know what they want to do.  They also score low on scares that measure self-awareness.  Bored people can’t monitor their own moods or understand what they truly want.  And here’s another characteristic that should sound familiar in the life of Mrs. Edna Pontellier, notice that last line “vanishing dreams”, Edna is not dreaming.  She’s not working at writing a script for her life..structuring a story for herself.  Her dreams and not building anything, they are vanishing.  That’s not good.  And it’s not that doesn’t have illusions, she does, but a dream is not an illusion.  Dreams are what inspire us to do something different. Both a dream and an illusion are unreal, but an illusion will always be an illusion- it has no chance of becoming real; out of dreams new realities are born.  We are not seeing Edna dream.  Her dreams are vanishing.   

Which brings us to the place where I want to end with this episode- chapter 26 and Edna’s decision to move out of her husband’s house.  I mentioned that this book is constructed with the archetypal 3 in mind at every point.  Edna has been living on Esplanade street- the wealthy gilded cage life, and she doesn’t want that.  She has visited Madame Reisz’s apartment, but she doesn’t seem to want that- it’s, and I quote, “cheerless and dingy to Edna”.  So what does she do? She moves two steps away from Esplanade Street, to a house Ellen calls, “the pigeon house.”  Pigeons are the oldest domesticated bird in the world.  They never fly far from home- homing pigeons is actually a term. She’s building an illusion. Edna is going out of her husband’s house to a place around the corner, but is she really building a new life of any kind?  What is this about?   Edna describes it to Madame Reisz, this way,  “I know I shall like it, like the feeling of freedom and independence.”   

But is the feeling of freedom and independence the same as actually having freedom and independence? 

Well, obviously not.  They are worlds apart.  But Edna lives in feelings.  She works when she feels like it.  She plays with her children when she feels like it, and now she admits to Madame Reisz that she’s in love with Robert LeBrun, who by the way is coming back.  And when she finds that out she feels, and I quote “glad and happy to be alive.”  And what does she do after that, she stops at a candy store, buys a box to send to her children who are with their grandparents in the country and she writes a charming letter to her husband.  Her letter was brilliant and brimming with cheerfulness.  I’m sorry, but Edna frustrates the feminist in me.   

Well, Edna is struggling for sure.  She can’t connect with people.  She can’t identify a dream worth pursuing.  She can’t write her own story.  There is no doubt that a lot of this has to so with cultural and social forces at work in her world.   These are powerful forces.  However,  it is not the outside forces of her world that will do her in.  Edna is smart.  She’s beautiful.  She’s charming.  She actually has a lot going for her, especially for a woman during this time period.  If Chopin had wanted to write a story where a woman breaks free and soars, she has a protagonist who is positioned to do that very thing.   

But she’s in a mess.  And maybe that’s why she’s so relatable.  Many of us have made messes of our lives.  We have an incredible ability to screw up, but  humans are also incredibly resilient.  Look at Chopin’s own life as an example.  In some ways, she’s both Adele Ragntingole and Madame Reiz, at different points in her life she’d been both.  She may even have been Mrs. James Highcamp to a lesser degree. Why is Edna struggling here? 

Well, humans are incredibly resilient, but you know what else we are- we are social beings.  Let’s revisit that original book title, “One Solitary Soul”- it’s my experience that no one gets out alone- not even the rich, the beautiful or the smart.  No one gets out alone.   

Ah, Edna is strong enough to confront the forces without, but who will help her confront the forces within? 

And so next episode, we will see her confront those internal forces.  There are no more female characters to meet; no more male characters either for that matter.  We will see Edna confront Edna alone, and we will see what happens.  Thank you for listening.  If you enjoy our podcast, please share it with a friend, a relative, your classmates, your students.  We only grow when you share.  Also, come visit with us via our social media how to love lit podcast- on Instagram, facebook and our website.  Feel free to ask questions, give us your thoughts, recommend books.  These are all things we love.  Thanks for being with us today. 

Peace out. 

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HI, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our second episode in our four part series discussing the world of Kate Chopin.  Last week we introduced our author and what is generally considered her masterpiece, the novella, The Awakening.  Today we will continue discussing this book as we meet Edna and mosey around the Creole world of Victorian Louisiana on the vacation island of Grand Isle.   

This book is like Camus’ The Stranger in that it is incredibly complicated but deceptively simple looking.  It has been misunderstood since the minute it was published, and it’s still misunderstood.  Critics have claimed it’s a champion of the women’s movement; a challenge to the patriarchy, an expose on depression, a discussion of narcissism, an exploration of female sexuality- and certainly it can be looked at through each of these lens without any difficulty at all and there are things to say there.  And yet, Chopin cryptically told one critic in response to her book nothing along any ideological lines.  This is how she chose to frame her book, and I never and I quote, “dreamed of Edna making such a mess of things and working out her own damnation as she did.” 

What does that even mean?  

Exactly, it’s a consciously and deliberately messy book.  It is NOT best read as an ideological book of any kind- no matter if your prejudices lie for or against her apparent causes.  It certainly makes it easier to read if you’re looking to make it a political statement, and when I was first introduced to it, that’s how I was taught to read it, but I have since decided to reject easy interpretations of great literature in general primarily because that makes something great immediately uninteresting.  And this book is definitely NOT uninteresting. 

So, if we’re not to read it about being about politics, the patriarchy, oppression or that sort of thing, how should we understand it? 

Isn’t that the million dollar question?  What is so compelling about Edna Pontellier- and she has been compelling even maddening for the last 120 years. 

I don’t find her necessarily a likeable person, are we supposed to?  At first I wondered if it was designed so that men are supposed to not like her or maybe not like themselves by looking at what’s happened to her, but do women generally find her likeable?  I also don’t see how to avoid seeing gender as an important component of this book. 

Oh I agree, you can’t help but see gender and you’re definitely supposed to.  It’s about a woman- it’s about being a woman- but is there anything more complicated than a woman? 

That’s a loaded question!!  Do you honestly think you can bait me into answer that? 

 Ha!  Wise man!  In all serious, it’s about being human, but from a women’s perspective- and that can’t be reduced to any single set of definable variables.  That’s what’s messy about it.  It’s about a woman in the Victorian era at the turn of the century- the particulars of the challenges women faced that that particular political moment in US history- the woman question, as they referred to it in those days, but that’s just our starting point- the setting, so to speak- there are more interesting parts of Edna and her awakening than just resolving the contextual economic, sexual or matrimonial roles in society.  Beyond that, let’s just look at the term “the awakening”.  It's kind of  a strange  term to use in a book where the protagonist spends an unusually large amoung of her time asleep.  I’m not sure I’ve seen a protagonist sleep as much as Edna in any book, except maybe Sleeping Beauty or Rip Van Wrinkle. 

And yet, the title begs a question.  What is an awakening, or at least what is ’”The Awakening”? as Edna is to experience it.  The first part of the book which we are going to talk about today- chapters 1-16 IS her awakening.  For her, it’s kind of a gradual experience that happens to her over a summer.  Chopin first defines it in chapter 6, it’s described as coming into one’s own humanity – to recognize one’s relations as an individual to the world within and about. 

You know that’s a great definition of what it means to grow up really- to find one’s agency in the world.   

Chopin insightfully connects someone’s internal awakening with their sexual awakening.  This awareness of how you are a sexual being and as such interact with other beings as sexual beings- both of the same sex as well as the opposite sex.  Chopin illustrates this many ways and, and I would go far as to say seems to use sexual agency as an expression of agency of a general kind. 

 Yes, and what does that mean?  How should we define agency, as in human agency?  What do you mean when you use that term?  I know I asked a question that could be a long answer, but in just a few words.     

Agency, in general, refers to our capability as humans to influence our own functioning.  It is our ability to direct the course of events through our own actions.  Said another way, it’s our ability to determine and make meaning through purposeful and reflective creative action.   

A psychologist by the name of Albert Bandura out of Stanford university is a leading figure in this field, so if you’re interested, just Google his nam and you can read as much as you want.  But basically, according to Bandura, we exercise our agency in four ways.  We are self-organizing, pro-active, self-regulating, and self-reflecting. We are not simply onlookers of our behavior. We are contributors to our life circumstances, not just products of them.  That’s a quote 

 We like to think, and we do think the younger we are, that agency means freedom.  And in many ways it does.  But what does freedom even mean?  Does it mean I get to do whatever I want?  Well, sort of, but we’re interacting in a world full of forces both from the outside but also from the inside.  Understanding that seems to be what Chopin is wanting to explore in a very feminine context- because female forces aren’t always the same as male forces, by definition.  

Well, I will tell you what Bandura would say.  The problem is that Most human pursuits involve other people, so there is no absolute agency. Let me use Bandura’s words here.  He says, “Individuals have to accommodate their self-interests if they are to achieve unity of effort within diversity. Collective endeavors require commitment to a shared intention and coordination of interdependent plans of action to realize it- in other words you have to get along in the world you live in.  That’s the rub.   

Ahhh- getting along with others.  That’s another important idea to think about here.  The Awakening wasn’t even the original title of this book. The original title was A Solitary Soul.  That makes you think of the story in an entirely different way.  Is this a story about waking up or being alone or both?  If there’s something that we can see immediately in the characterization of Edna, is that she is a solitary woman.  She is very much alone and has been all of her life not physically alone, but emotionally.   

Well, for me that title tells me that this book is about attachment and intimacy, but I may be jumping the gun.  We didn’t get very far into the story last episode. We basically only got through the first chapter, so let’s kind of start there.  We found ourselves on a vacation resort island, the Grand Isle- which is fifty miles from New Orleans.   Emily Toth, Chopin’s biographer, described it as kind of a tropical paradise of sorts.  She said that For young mothers, like Kate Chopin it was a wholesome place to spend what otherwise was a dangerous season in the South.  Unlike New Orleens the Grand Isld didn’t have open canals or cisterns.  There weren’t swarms of disease infested mosquitos to threaten children or adults. No one there had to lock their doors.  The island was a tropical paradise.  It had palm trees, vines, orange and lemon trees, acres of yellow chamomile.  There were no actual streets only grassygreen or sandy paths.  It was seductive to the imagination, too, with tales of shipwrecks and pirate gold from Barataria Bay, the old haunt of the pirate Jean Lafitte. 

And of course that makes sense Memphis is also sweltering hot in the summer.  And for years, summer months in the South were deadly.  Mosquitos came in and with them deadly diseases.  Yellow fever especially was terrorizing, so if you could afford to get away from the city in the summer you did; and many many people did exactly what we see the Pontellier’s doing here.  Edna and the kids would stay at Grand Isle, Leonce would go into the city during the week and would come out to spend the weekends with the family. 

Last week, we didn’t actually meet Edna; we met her husband who is annoyed by these cackling birds that are making so much noise he can’t read his newspaper- a parrot and a mockingbird, and we talked about how birds are important symbols in this book.   

Yes- Birds and wings.  We have a parrot, we have a mockingbird, and later we’re going to have a pigeon house.  We’re also going to have a woman with angel wings, and another woman who tells Edna she needs strong wings.  But before we get to the lady friends with wings, let’s meet Edna Pontellier.   

Soon after Mr. Pontellier leaves the house,  Mrs. Pontellier and her summer companion Robert LeBrun come strolling along.  It’s not one of the world’s more normal love triangles- watch how these three interact-  Let’s read this interaction 

Page 4 

Well, there’s nothing quite so startling as introducing a book’s protagonist as an object on page one.  Mr. Pontellier literally looks at his wife as a piece of property according to our narrator, and he seems to care less about the man she’s spending all of her time with. 

Yes, but there’s more to see here.  She’s clearly a beautiful woman and a prize for her husband, but what does she get in exchange- rings.  And they sparkle.   She also gets days at the beach free of responsibility- in fact, we will see that Edna is the only character in this book who does no work of any kind, ever. These two have made a deal.  And what we clearly see as we watch the relationship develop is that love was never part of their original agreement, at least not the way we would like to understand love as it works in an ideal marriage.  Edna married Leonce because he loved her and flattered her, but Chopin is careful to make us very aware that she never loved Leonce in return or even deceived herself into thinking she did.  She  was “running away from prayers, from the Presbyterian service” from her father.  Although, we have to jump ahead to chapter 7 to see that.  Let’s just read the love story of these two lovebirds…to borrow from Chopin’s bird motif: 

Her marriage to Léonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in this respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of Fate. It was in the midst of her secret great passion that she met him. He fell in love, as men are in the habit of doing, and pressed his suit with an earnestness and an ardor which left nothing to be desired. He pleased her; his absolute devotion flattered her. She fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken. Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic, and we need seek no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for her husband. 

The acme of bliss, which would have been a marriage with the tragedian, was not for her in this world. As the devoted wife of a man who worshiped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams. 

But it was not long before the tragedian had gone to join the cavalry officer and the engaged young man and a few others; and Edna found herself face to face with the realities. She grew fond of her husband, realizing with some unaccountable satisfaction that no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby threatening its dissolution. 

Not the most romantic love story I’ve ever read.  In fact, she seems almost proud that she doesn’t love Leonce, but honestly, I think we can say that story is common enough.  How many girls and guys marry whoever they're dating in their youth just because it seems like it’s the time to do something like that happens to be the person they met at that time- as Chopin would call it, “an accident masquerading as a decree of Fate”?  How many others make a deal of convenience- a financial transaction or sorts. 

I agree completely- my favorite Marilyn Monroe movie, is about that- Diamond are a Girl’s Best Friend. Although I will say, most of the time things don’t work out like they do for Mrilyn Monroe.  Chopin’s portrayal is more realistic.  People marry and then sooner or later, one or both partners start doing things that resemble Chopin’s descriptions of the Pontellier marriage. In Victorian days, it was women, but today, I’ve seen situations where either partner experiences this exact thing Edna’s experiencing- sad isolation- being discarded for one thing or another.  Edna and Leonce have two small children, but here in chapter 3, Edna finds herself in isolation and crying in the middle of the night.  It’s gut-wrenching.  This relationship is cruel, and not just because Leonce wakes her up in the middle of the night wanting to talk- the scene  as it unfolds is an expression of a total lack of understanding between these two.  

What is most cruel here is the total lack of intimacy between these two. And money doesn’t make it all better even though they seem to think it does.  Leonce gives Edna a bunch of money the next day knowing that it makes her happy.  And later on after he goes back to New Orleans, Edna receives a care package from her husband, and she even admits to her friends that she knows of no better husband than Leonce Pontellier.   

Of course, this comes across very ironic to the reader because Chopin has already taken us behind the veil of what looks like a perfectly ideal marriage to see a lonely woman who cries when no one is watching.    

I also found it interesting that in the second chapter of the book before we even read the sad incident of Edna crying through the night, we are told that her mother had been dead- just a very psychological detail to introduce into the text.    

She’s a solitary soul.  There’s a couple more important details I think we need to pay attention to here early on in the text- what about this gentlemen- Robert LeBrun- Robert spends all day every day with Edna at Grande Isle, but Leonce is not jealous of him at all.  In fact, we are told Creole husbands are never jealous- that the gangrene passion is one which has become is dwarfed by disuse- although I’m not really sure I understand exactly what that expression means.  

No, On the contrary, Leonce seems to like the fact that Edna has a playmate. Robert takes Edna off his hands, so to speak.   Later in chapter 5, we are told that Robert picks a different girl every summer to fawn over. Some of the girls are single, but mostly  he picks married women- unattainable ones. These women apparently enjoy the attention, and Robert isn’t taken seriously as a threat. It’s part of the beach culture, and not a threat in this Creole culture.  

Agreed, except, as we’re going to find out, Edna isn’t a Creole woman and things aren’t the same with her- as Adele reminds Robert in chapter 8 as she tries to talk him into leaving Edna alone.  She point blank tells him, “Edna isn’t one of us”.  And she very much is NOT. Edna, the reader knows, was raised in a very frigid home- nothing like the physicality, sensuality and the openness of the Creole people.   I’ve got more to say about that, but before we get too far from the crying scene in chapter 3, I want draw attention to the detail where Chopin connects Edna’s loneliness and tears to the sea.  As Edna sat there alone and crying in the night, Chopin points out that and I quote, “no sound abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the top of a water-oak, and the everlasting voice of the sea.”  Two ideas here worth noticing- first Chopin is going to do a lot with sounds.  Music is important, which we’ll talk about extensively next episode.  But Grand Isle is noisy place- we’ve already had noisy birds and little, girls playing the piano, but here's the second idea- notice the emphasis and presence of the sea, it is the most important symbol of the entire book. The ocean is also an archetype. 

Just in case you haven’t heard us talk about archetypes before and unfamiliar what we mean by them in this literary context, archetypes are psychological.  The psychologist Carl Jung famously theorized that they are symbols wired into our brains- that’s one way to look at them- he called them a universal collective consciousness.  They are universal…meaning cultures all over the world throughout time having had nothing to do with each other use the same symbols to mean the same things- although they have had no way to coordinate this.  It’s an interesting  and true phenomena whether you agree with Jung’s understanding of the unconsciousness or not.  Not all traditional symbols are archetypes, but many are.  The ocean is an archetype that represents death, rebirth, timelessness, eternity, the mother of all life- it has in cultures of all times all over the world.  This is not a symbol Chopin just made up.  Do we know how she’s using it here, Christy, any ideas? 

Well, we’ll have to see how she develops it along the way.  That’s the thing about symbols, they take a life of their own in the story but also inside of every different reader.  But let’s just take note of what we can see: they are at the seaside, Robert and Edna have been at the sea all day, and now Edna listens to the sea- to its mournful lullaby- it’s just something to pay attention to and watch. 

In chapter 4, we meet our first Creole woman,  Mrs. Adele Raginolle, and my goodness she is basically described as a goddess.   Chopin says there are no words to describe her, she’s that gorgeous.  She’s the bygone heroine of romance. 

Oh yes, I’m intimidated by just reading about her.  I also want to point out before we get too far away from our discussion of archetypes that Chopin does a lot of things in threes- an archetypal number.  There are three women- Adele, Edna and this other one we’re going to meet in chapter 9, Mademoiselle Reisz.  Edna was raised in a household of 3 girls.  She had three crushes before marrying Leonce.  She has three male lovers in the later part of the book.  She has three homes to consider living in later on- it’s all carefully constructed and thematic, and we’ll need to look at all of them. But we’ll start with the women.  First, the amazing Adele.  She reminds me of some of the Louisianan beauties that intimated me when I showed up my ninth grade year at West Monroe  Junior High School, home of the Colonels.  Adele is perfect- gracious, well-mannered.  She is Southern charm writ large. Let me quote, “there was nothing subtle or hidden about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent: the spungold hair that comb nor confining pin could restrain; the blue eyes that were nothing but sapphires, two lips that pouted, that were so red one could only think of cherries or some other delicious or crimson fruit in looking at them.”  Does it get any more perfect than that? 

HA!, well, before she even talks about her physical beauty we find out she is the ideal mother-woman, and Chopin describes what that is.  A  mother-woman is one who is “fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood.”  A woman who and again I quote, “idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.”  Christy,  of course we’re supposed to notice the wings, but I can’t help but detect a slight bit of sarcasm on the part of the narrator.  Is she mocking “mother-women”? That whole description of Adele and the mother-women sound over the top. 

Great point and good question- and truly hits on another of the several brilliant strokes of this novel. We talked about this when discussing Jane Austen, but Chopin uses the same narrative style Jane Austen used- this thing we call free indirect discourse. And- for me this is important in understanding the novel as a whole.   What Chopin does is manipulates our perspective of events by mixing the perspective of a neutral narrator  and merging that perspective with perspectives of the characters, mostly Edna’s but not always.  When we have this objective narrator we see sarcasm and strong opinion, like when we saw that Mr. Pontellier looked at Edna on page two as a valuable piece of property.  That’s the narrator’s perspective, but then sometimes we have with this also an ability to merge into the point of view of one of the characters and see how they see things- like when Edna describes not really being in love with Leonce when they got married or fighting with her younger sister or even crying alone.   Sometimes we even see things from the point of view of another character, and a lot of times this objective narrator is very ironic about this- like here, but we saw it before when Leonce came in from the club at 11pm after Edna was asleep.  Listen to how Chopin phrases this, “He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in the things which concerned him and valued so little his conversation.  Isn’t that ironic and kind of funny.  It seems unreasonable for him to think of her as the object of his existence. But the way she writes it makes us understand that Robert really and truly believes Edna is the center of his universe.  We just don’t buy it.  Here again, we truly believe that everyone thinks Adele is the ideal woman, we’re just not so sure we should buy it.  It doesn’t really seem a holy privilege to us to be efface oneself as an individual and grow wings as a ministering angel.  In fact, it sounds terrible.  Never mind the fact, that right after that glowing recommendation of Adele’s perfection, we are let on to the fact that she fakes being sick all the time.  Why do that?  That’s manipulative- that’s not a perfect angel at all. 

Well, being around Adele, being around all the sensuous women and you haven’t mentioned the dirty book these ladies passed around, that embarrasses Edna- but all of this changes Edna.  She’s not use to the carefree openness of the Croele culture towards sensuality.  She doesn’t understand it.  And to add onto that, being around the ocean, being around this adoring younger man, Robert, being around the physicality of the females towards each other affects her- it’s the sensuality that awakens something in her, if you will.  She had felt it slightly before, but shut it down and almost prided herself in shutting it down by marrying Leonce. 

And, in some ways, it comes in slowly and takes her by surprise.  By chapter six Edna is starting to dream, to feel emotional- something beyond just whatever is going on between her and Mr. Pontellier.  In short, “Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relationships as an individual to the world within and about her.  Ths may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of 28- perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman. 

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.  How few of us ever emerge from such beginnings!  How many souls perish in its tumult!  The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abyss of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.  The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.  The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.” 

Dang, that’s definitely an outside narrator.  It feels a little like foreshadowing.   

 The language is metaphorical- the ocean is personified- it’s alive.   

There are two things that really stand out to me psychologically, the first is the admission that chaos is the beginning of things.  Which of course is true.  Organizing chaos is what starting anything is about.  But that is problematic.  Chaos requires a lot of effort and responsibility to untangle.  Is Edna ready to begin something like that?  Is that what she wants? Because we aren’t given any hints that Edna looks towards anything.  The text goes to a lot of trouble to suggest that she’s whimsical, thoughtless, impulsive, almost childish even.  What comes after an awakening is naturally more responsibility- the exercise of agency as Bandura would describe it.  We haven’t seen much of a responsible side in Edna. The second is how dangerous the ocean is expressed to be- which of course is something everyone knows who’s ever gotten into the ocean.  The ocean is certainly seductive; it’s beautiful but incredibly dangerous?  And thus the second question?  Is Chopin suggesting that Edna is walking into something that is deceptively beautiful- something that looks enticing but is actually terrible- something that promises to be an awakening but actually something that would silence her forever.  Just asking for a friend, as they say?  As a man, I wouldn’t want to presume to unsettle any woman’s spiritual awakening.   

HA!  No, I would say you would not- that would be wading in dangerous waters- parumpum.  And of course, you are right on all accounts.  Edna doesn’t look forward, but she does look back and in chapter 7 as she and Adele stroll on the beach, Chopin takes us back into Edna’s past.  Edna reflects on the three men she had crushes on, how being infatuated made her feel.  This is the chapter where Edna reflects on not loving Leonce but enjoying his flattery.    She also awakens in chapter 7 to the idea that she has mixed feelings about her own children.  She doesn’t think she loves her kids the way Adele loves hers.  And I quote, “She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way.  She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them…their absence was a sort of relief, though she did not admit this, even to herself.  It seemed to free her of a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her. Garry, what do you think about that? 

Well, it’s hard not to diagnose Edna, even though it’s not prudent to diagnose fictional characters. Obviously Kate Chopin is an incredibly observant student of human behavior.  She has seen this in real life.  Her interest in Edna is microscopic in some of the details.  What we know now from neuroscientists as well as psychologists who study attachment theory is that some women because they weren’t nurtured as babies or children DO have trouble attaching to their own children.  Obviously that was not Kate Chopin’s experience, but she clearly saw it somewhere.  She goes to great lengths to talk about how isolated Edna was as a child, how her mother was dead and her older sister was distant.  When we meet Edna’s father later on in the book, the reader can see for themselves that he’s mean.  It seems clear, that Edna either feels guilty or at least feels like she at least should feel guilty that she doesn’t seem to feel the way Adele feels towards either her husband or her children.  There’s a very telling passage at the end of chapter 16 where she tells Adele that she would never sacrifice herself for her children or for anyone.  That had actually started an argument with Adele.  Edna says this, “I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself.  I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend which is revealing itself to me.” 

I would also add, that that might be a dangerous thing to say in a Victorian world.  A Victorian woman would never admit to having such a feeling.  That wouldn’t be well-received. 

Yes, I’ve read that passage too.  In fact, it’s quoted a lot as a passage for female empowerment.  A woman saying she won’t give up her essence as an individual- to be subsumed into anyone else- be it a child or a man or anything. 

Yes, and maybe that’s what it means, but it may not mean that.  It may mean that she just can’t.  She literally can’t.  Lots of men and women both give up their lives for their families, their friends, even their country- and giving up their lives doesn’t mean giving up their identities. It means they love greatly.  I’m wondering if Chopin is suggesting Edna is realizing she is incapable of loving anyone outside herself, at least not loving greatly.  It’s not entirely clear to me which direction she intends to direct this character.   

So, if Adele is the first model of woman for Edna, the second model is Madame Reisz.  Adele and Madame Reisz are foils.  Total contrasts.  Chapter 9 introduces Reisz at an evening party there at Grand Isle.  I should mention that the treatment of time in this novel is completely non-traditional.  There are large gaps of time between events, so you just have to keep up.  Anyway, a few weeks have passed between chapter 8 and chapter 9.  In chapter 8 is where Adele tells Robert to stop flirting with Edna because, to use Adele’s words “she is not like us” and she might take him seriously.   

Of course, Robert ignores Adele’s warning and spends all of his time with Edna.  He seems to have decide he’s good with that.  

Yeah, he’s good with that until he isn’t…but that’s not the point I want to make here- In chapter 9, we meet another version of a feminine ideal in the person of Madame Reisz  The summer residents of the Grand Isle are having a party at the big house.  Everyone’s dancing.  Adele is on the piano since she’s too pregnant to dance herself, and everyone is having the best time. It’s pointed out that Adele plays the piano, not because she cares about the piano but because music makes her kids and husband happy.  Music brightens their home.  It’s a means to an end, but not the end itself.   She is passionate about her family- that’s the goal.   

She is the mother-woman, after all.   

Exactly- but not so with Mademoiselle Reisz.  Mademoiselle Reisz we will see is the artist-woman.  Mademoiselle Reisz’ relationship with music is much deeper.  Music is the end for her.  It’s her passion. and her music doesn’t make people happy it moves them to another place entirely.   

Before we talk about how Madame Reisz’ music affects everyone including Edna, let’s see how Chopin describes Madame Reisz- and contrast that with how she compared Adele. if you remember Adelle is the most beautiful creature to alight on planert earth.  But here’s Madame Reisz. 

She was a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who had quarreled with almost everyone, owing to a temper which was self-assertive and a disposition to trample upon the rights of others….she was a homely woman, with a weazened face and body and eyes that glowed.  She had absolutely no taste in dress, and wore a batch of rusty black lace with a bunch of artificial violents pinned to th side of her hair.” 

Well, that’s not exactly flattering. 

No, I’d say it isn’t.  She is not a mother-woman either.  She’s single and strong in a different way, not that Adele isn’t strong because I think she is.   It’s just a different feminine ideal. When Madame Reisz plays the piano it sends a tremor down Edna’s spinal cord, literally.  Let me read the text here, “the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body.  She trembled, she was choking and tears blinded her.”   

Edna is crying again, but this time it’s very different.   

True, and it is this night that Edna finally learns to swim.  Robert talks the entire party out into the white moonlight for a late night swim.  The sea is quiet, and Edna for the first time, boldly and with overconfidence goes into the water all by herself.   She has been trying all summer to learn to swim and has failed, but tonight it’s different.  A feeling of exultation overtakes her.  She grows and I quote, “daring and reckless, overestimating her strength, she wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.”  She’s intoxicated by her power to swim alone.  The text says, ‘she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.”  She tells Robert how swimming made her feel as he walks her back to her cottage.  She said this, “A thousand emotions have swept through me tonight.  I don’t comprehend half of them…she goes on to say.  It is like a night in a dream.”   

She stays on the porch that night instead of going in to bed like she usually does.  Mr. Pontellier comes home sometime past 1am (although I’m not quite sure where he went after the beach party), and she’s still on the porch wide awake.  He tells her to come in with him.  The text says that she normally would have “yielded to his desire”- however you want to understand that- but this night for the first time in her life, she tells him no.  She feels strong- maybe even masculine.  He’s kind of shocked and stays on the porch with her the entire night.  The text says this, “Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul.” 

That sounds like she has had her awakening.   

Well, it does, but then what does that awakening impel her to do?  The very first paragraph of chapter 12 says this, She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her, as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility.”  That does NOT sound like empowerment or Dr. Bandura’s description of human agency.  It sounds like the opposite of empowerment.    Impulsivity and irresponsibility are not noble character traits that lead to success. 

No, and if Edna is the parrot from the first chapter of the book, it seems to me, she might be parroting the behavior of her husband as her first acts of independence.  She tries to outwait him at night, then, the next morning, she gets up early and leaves him, just has he has done to her every single day.  She calls Robert and is gone, and she stays gone until 9pm at night leaving Adele to put her kids down.   It seems to me Edna and Leonce have more in common than we might have thought from the first two chapters of the book.   

Yeah, the text literally says, “She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her, as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility.”  Robert even mentions to Edna that he had often noticed that she lacked forethought. 

There’s that word again- responsibility.  And hence the great paradox Edna does not understand responsibility and freedom go hand in hand.  If you don’t have responsibility, you really can’t have freedom.  Edna tries to have one at the expense of the other.   

She also starts things and doesn’t see them through.  Even on this little adventure outing, she starts the mass, but walks out.  She literally goes into the house of a woman she doesn’t know, imposes herself by laying on her bed and sleeps the entire day away.  She is able to exercise freedom, but often only because other people are willing to take responsibility for her.   

The first part of the book ends with chapter 16.  Robert has announced that he is leaving Grand Isle and going to Mexico.   

We are left to infer, that after a day with Edna and the realization he might have real feelings for her, he doesn’t want the entanglement taking responsibility for that will bring.  Edna, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to get it.  She is distraught.  She doesn’t know how will she spend the rest of her summer without Robert.  Her husband literally asks her, “How do you get on without him, Edna?”  Which I think is a question I would never ask you about another man, but again I’m not a Victorian Creole. 

Ha, no, that’s true, but these two don’t think a thing about it.  Let me read this part, “It did not strike her as in the least grotesque that she should be making or Robert the object of conversation and leading her husband to speak of him.  The sentiment which she entertained for Robert in no way resembled that which she felt for her husband, or had ever felt, or ever expected to feel.  She had all her life been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves.  They had never taken the form of struggles.  They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and they concerned no one but herself.”- again that outside narrator commenting somewhat ironically on the state of affairs.   

Well, our solitary soul has not found wings, but she has found her sea legs and is exercising them.  I don’t find her behavior necessarily admirable at this point, but, but as we said in the beginning of the podcast- beginings are always chaotic.  That’s the normal state of affairs.  The question will be, is Edna capable of creating a story for herself?  She has decided she hasn’t been the protagonist of her own life, she’s been a parrot, or an object of Leonce’s.  She’s awakened to that in some way, she has begun.  She has two models of womanhood before her- the mother-woman of Adele and the artist-woman of Madame Reisz.   Next episode we will see the middle part of her story, what will Edna do when she goes back home?  What will she do when she’s away from the sea, the dreamy unreality of vacation life.  Will she take on new responsibilities with her awakening?   

Will Leonce? 

Indeed, things aren’t always the same when we get back home after vacation.  So, thanks for listening……….. 

peace OUT.  

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I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

And I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love lit Podcast.  This episode we begin a journey to a very unique American location to discuss a very American author. Kate Chopin, was born in St Louis but her heritage is more associated with Louisiana than with Missouri as she is from an originally American people group, the Louisianan Creole’s.  Christy, I know, you lived a part of your life in Louisiana, and your dad’s family is from Louisiana.  As we discuss Kate Chopin and her unusual and ill-received novel The Awakening, I think a great place to start our discussion, especially for those who may not be familiar with American geography, is with the Pelican State itself.   What makes Louisiana so unusual than the rest of the United States, and why does that matter when we read a book like The Awakening. 

Well, there are so many things that people think of when the think of Louisiana- Louisianan distinctive include Mardi Gras, crawfish bowls, jazz music, bayous, The French Quarter of New Orleans and its beignets.  The list is cultural distinctives is long.   But, just for a general reference, Louisiana is part of the American South.  Now, it might seem that the states that constitute the South are kind of all the same- and in some respects that’s true.  Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and the rest of them, … after all, they all succeeded from the Union during the Civil War, they all had slaves, they all have had to one degree or another racial tension over the last two hundred years, and, of course, to bring it to modern-day, they all are deeply entrenched in a tradition of American football, barbeque, shot guns, sweet tea, the Bible and a general admiration of good manners that include addressing each other as mr. mrs, yes mam and no sir.   

Ha!  Yes, that IS the South.  I remember moving down here and being frustrated that I could never find anywhere that served tea without sugar- and when they say sweet tea down here- I’m talking one step away from maple syrup.   

I like it!!!   

 People do and feel strongly about it.  In fact a lot of people have a lot have strong feelings about this part of the United States.  Some love the South; others hate it.  It’s a part of the United States that is historical, by American standards, although laughably young compared to other parts of the world,  and controversial- to this very day.  

Yes, yet having said that,  once you move here, it doesn’t take you long to realize that  The South is not one cohesive unit.  Every state is very different.  Florida was colonized by the Spanish- and has strong ties to places such as Cuba to this day.  Virginia was the seat of government and is still central to the heart of American politics.  The horse-racing people of Kentucky are very different from their cotton-growing neighbors in Mississippi.  There are many many cultural distinctives that are both old and deep.  Which brings us to the great state of Louisiana- Louisiana, especially South Louisiana, in some ways has more in common with the Caribbean islands than it does with other parts of the United States.  My daddy was born in Spring Hill, Louisiana and raised in Bastrop Louisiana which are in North Louisiana- far from the coast but the people of north Louisiana share many commonalities with their Cajun and Creole brothers.  I have early memories of magnolia trees, cypress trees, bayous, shrimp gumbo,  and, of my Uncle Lanny taking us in the middle of the night out with his hound dogs to go coon hunting- as in racoon hunting.   

So, for the record, these are things you don’t see in other parts of the United States.   

Indeed, they don’t have bayous and gumbo anywhere else- and although they do have racoons in other places and likely hunt and eat them, I don’t know.  The whole government of Louisiana is different and its visible.  They have parishes instead of counties.  The law is based on French law, not British law which affects everything.   It is predominantly Catholic not Protestant, hence Mardi Gras, which is what they call Carnival in Brazil but which we don’t celebrate in other part of the US.  But what interests us for this book is the ethnic origins of the people indigenous to the region.     The rural part of the state has been dominated by a group we call Cajuns.  Cajuns are Roman Catholic French Canadians, or at least their descendents were.   

They were run out of the Captured French Colony called Acadia in North Eastern Canada- it’s actually be termed “the Acadian diaspora”.  Acadia was in the maritime provinces up on the Atlantic side, near the US state of Maine. That part of Canada was very British hence the obvious antagonism.  

 Well, The word Acadians kind of morphed into Cajuns over the years.  That’s one people group.  But we also have another distinctively Louisianan people group  called the Louisiana Creoles.  This group of people ethnically are entirely different group than the Cajuns but also speak French.  Our author today, Kate Chopin was a creole, and she wrote about Lousianan Creole people.  Garry, before we introduce the Mrs. Chopin, local color and her influencial work, The Awakening, let’s learn just a little about these remarkable people.  Who are the Creoles of Louisiana? 

Well, let me preface by saying, as Kate Chopin would be the first to admit, history is always messy- people marry, intermarry, languages get confused and muddled, so when we talk about distinctives, we are talking about generalities, and if you want take to talk about Creole people the first word that must come to mind is multi-cultural.  There are creole peoples all over the Caribbean.  Haiti is the first country that comes to mind, so we need to be careful as we speak in generalities. But  the first generality you will notice of the Louisianan Creole people shows up in the first chapter of Chopin’s book, and that is that they also speak the French language, except for the Louisiana Creoles that can mean two different actual languages.  Today, and the latest stat, I saw was from May of 2020,  1,281,300 identified French as their native tongue- that would be Colonial French, standard French and the speakers of would include both people groups the Cajuns and the Louisianan Creoles.  But what is even more interesting than that is that the language Louisiana Creole is its own distinctive indigenous language, and is not the same as Haitian Creole or Hawaiian Creole or any other form of Creole where you might hear that word.  Meaning, Louisianan Creole although having origins in the French language is not French at all but its own distinct language.   This is confusing because the Cajuns speak a dialect of French that sounds different than the French from France or Quebec, but it's still French and French speakers can understand what they are saying even if it sounds different than the way they might pronounce things.  That’s different. Creole is French-based, but has African influences and is literally its own language and French speakers cannot understand it.  Today it’s an endangered language, only about 10,000 people speak it, but it is still alive.    

Yeah, that wasn’t something I understood as a teenager living in Louisiana. I thought Cajun- Creole all meant Lousianan.  Since we lived in North Louisiana, I never met anyone personally who spoke Lousiana Creole.  All the Creole’s I came into contact, including Mrs. Devereaux, my French teacher spoke traditional French, which is what they do in Chopin’s book too, btw.    

Of course, Cajuns and Creole people have a lot in common in terms of religion and even in taste in cuisine, but where they differ tremendously is in ethnicity and also in social class.  The Cajuns are white and from Canada but often rural and historically lower-middle class.  The Creole’s are not white, but culturally a part of the urban elite, the ruling class.  They are the first multi-cultural people group on the American continent and deserve a special status for that reason. 

Explain that, because that’s really interesting.  Today, to be multi-cultural is cool, but 100 years ago when ethnic groups did not intermingle, and being a multi-cultural group that was upper class seems like a huge anomaly.  Although I will say the word “creole” tips you off to the multi-cultural element.  It actually comes from the Portuguese word “crioulo” and the word itself means people who were created. 

 And again, I do want to point out that this is kind of a very big simplification of a couple of hundred years of history, but in short, the criolos were people who were born in the new World- but mostly of mixed heritage.  Gentlemen farmers, primarily French and Spanish came over to the new world.  A lot of them came  by way of the Caribbean after the slave revolt in Haiti.   They had relationships and often even second families with local people here. Many were Black slaves, others were native Americans, lots were mulattos who also came from the Caribbean.  Unlike mixed raced people from Mississippi or Alabama, Creoles were not slaves.  They were free people.  They were educated.  They spoke French and many rose to high positions of politics, arts and culture. They were the elite, many were slaveholders.  Now, I will say, that most chose to speak Colonial French over Louisiana Creole as they got more educated, also over time as we got closer to the Civil War era being mixed race in and of itself got pretty complicated with the black/white caste-system of the South, which is another story in and of itself.   And as a result, you had creoles who were identifying as white and others who didn’t- Chopin’s family were white creoles.  But regardless of all that, but in the 1850s and through the life of Chopin, until today, Creoles are a separate people group that identify themselves as such.  They are a proud group of people who worship together, connect socially together, and often build communities around each other. They have societal behaviors and customs that set them apart, and we learn by looking at life through Edna Pontellier's eyes, have a culture that can difficult for an outsider to penetrate, if you marry an insider. 

And so enters, Mrs. Kate Chopin, born in 1851 to a mother who was Creole and a father who was a Irish, both Catholic. She was not born in Louisisana, but in the great midwestern city of St. Louis.  St Louis, at the time had a rather large Creole population by virtue of being a city on the Mississippi river- which runs from New Orleans miles north. Her mom’s family was old, distinguished and part of what has been termed the “Creole Aristocracy”.  Kate grew up speaking French as a first language, and as many Creole women was raised to be very independent by three generations of women in the household. She received an exceptional education, was interested in what they called “the woman question”.  This will give you an indication of how progressive her family actually was, now brace yourself because this is scandalous….on a trip to New Orleans at the ripe age of 18, Kate learned to smoke. 

Oh my, did she smoke behind the high school gym or in the bathroom stalls? 

Ha!  Who even knows, but we do know that at age 19 she married the love of her life, another Creole, Oscar Chopin.  Kate and Oscar were very compatible and the years she was married to him have been described as nothing but really happy by all of her biographers that I’m familiar with.  They lived in New Orleans at first and then to Natchitoches parish in the central Louisiana where he owned and operated a general store.  They were married for 12 years, and- this small fact wipes me out- they had five sons and two daughters. 

Ha!  That confirms all the Catholic stereotypes of large families.   

I know right, that’s just a lot…and their lives were, by all accounts, going well until…there’s always an until… Oscar suffered the fate of a lot of people around the world even to this day, who live in hot climates.  He caught malaria, and suddenly died.  And there Kate was, alone in the middle of the interior of Louisiana,  with this store and all these kids.  She ran it herself for over a year, but then decided to do what lots of us would do in that situation…she moved back to the hometown of her childhood, St. Louis so she could be near her mother- I didn’t mention it before but her father had died in a terrible railroad accident when she was a young child and her brother had died in the Civil War- so basically all of the men that had meant anything to her at all, had all died.  One of Kate’s daughters had this to say about that later on when she was an adult talking about her mom, “When I speak of my mother’s keen sense of humor and of her habit of looking on the amusing side of everything, I don’t want to give the impression of her being joyous, for she was on the contrary rather a sad nature…I think the tragic death of her father early in her life, of her much beloved brothers, the loss of her young husband and her mother, left a stamp of sadness on her which was never lost.”   

Goodness, that Is a lot of sadness. 

Well, it is and it took a toll.  When she got back to St. Louis, Dr. Kolbenheyer, their obgyn and a family friend talked her into studying some French writers for the sake of  mental health, specifically Maupassant and Zola and take up writing.  She took that advice ..…so at age 38 a widow with six living children, Chopin began her writing career.  A career, sadly that was only going to last five years.  It started great, and she was super popular, but then….she wrote a scandalous book and was cancelled, and I mean totally cancelled.  Five years after the publication of  this candalous book that today we call The Awakening, she had a stroke and died.  At the time of her death, Kate Chopin as a writer, was virtually unknown and uncelebrated.   

What do you mean by cancelled? That sounds like a crazy story for a mommy writer. 

True, and it is.  When she started  writing, she was super popular.  This kind of reminds me a little of Shirley Jackson, honestly.  She wrote short things for magazines for money.  What made her work popular, at least in part, was because writing about a subculture of America that people found interesting.  Although she was living in St. Louis, her stories were set in Louisiana amongst the Creole people- and people loved it.  This movement in American literature where authors focus on a specific region or people group  has been called “Local Color”, and her ability to showcase the local color of the Creole people led her to success.     

Subcultures are so fascinating to me and I’m always amazed at how many different subcultures there are- and I’m not talking about just ethnically. There are endless subcultures on this earth, and most of the time we don’t even know what we’re looking at. 

Oh, for sure.  I think of guitar players as their own subculture- they speak their own language, have their own passions, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have their own foods. 

 HA!  Do I sense a bit of mockery?  But you are right, we do have a little bit of a subculture, but if you think guitarists are a subculture, what do you think of my cousin Sherry who is neck deep into Harley Davidson culture and goes to Sturgis, South Dakota every year.  

True, and there are hundreds of thousands of people who participate in that subculture all over the world   And of course, we’re talking about hobbies which are not the same as actual ethnic subcultures in any location, understanding and just seeing behind the fence of someone else’ experience is the fun.  The idea of living life vicariously through the stories, so to speak, of people who are so radically differently is one of the things I most love about reading.  In the real sense of the term “local color” though, this was an actual movement after the Civil War.  Authors were using settings from different parts of the country and it made the writing feel romantic for people unfamiliar with the setting while actually being fundamentally realistic- I know that’s a paradox, but if you think about it it makes sense.  They were works that could only be written from inside the culture by someone who was a part of it- that’s what made them realistic.   Chopin was considered a local color author because she was Creole writing about the world of Louisiana Creoles.   

Well, apparently it was well received.  She got stories printed first in regional publications but then in national publications.  “The Story of an Hour” which was the only story I had ever read of hers, and I didn’t know this, was published in Vogue in 1894.   

Very impressive, Houghton Mifflin, the publisher that to this day publishes quite a bit of high school literature textbooks actually published a collection of her stories, titled it Bayou Folk.  So, just in the title, you can tell they are playing up her Louisiana connection.  And that book was a success.  Chopin, who kept notes on how well all of her works were doing, wrote that she had seen 100 press notices about the book.  It was written up in both The Atlantic and the New York Times.  People loved how she used local dialects. They found the stories and I quote “charning and pleasant.”  She was even asked to write an essay on writing for the literary journal Critic- which I found really insightful.  

Well, of course, all of these things sound like a woman bound for monetary and critical success- stardom of her day.   

 And so her trajectory kept ascending.  She was published in the Saturday Evening Post.  Of course that was a big deal.  Everything was moving in the right direction….until.. The Awakening.  The Awakening was too much and she crashed immediately and hard.  

You know, when I read these reviews from 1899, it’s so interesting how strongly they reacted.  Let me read a few, her local paper, The St Louis Daily Globe-Democrat wrote this, “It is not a healthy book….if it points any particular moral or teaches any lesson the fact is not apparent.” The Chicago Times Herald wrote, “It was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the over-worked field of sex-fiction.  This is not a pleasant story.”  Here’s another one, “its disagreeable glimpses of sensuality are repellent.”   

She was not prepared for this.  She did not expect it.  She was expecting people to see it as the American version of some of the things she had been reading in French that had been published in France.  Her treatment of sexuality is what really got her, and maybe if her protagonist had been male she could have gotten away with it.  Actually, I’m pretty sure, she would have gotten away with it, there are other authors who did.  But discussing how women felt about sexuality- and let me say- in case you haven’t read the book- this is not a harlequin romance.  She doesn’t talk about hot steamy passion in descriptive tones.  She is very polished and shows deference to the WAY things were expressed in her day.  The problem was not in how she was treating sexual content- the problem was that she WAS discussing how women felt about sexuality and this just was too realistic.  People weren’t and maybe we still aren’t, ready to be vulnerable about how we feel about intimacy.   

You know, I tell students all the time that in American politics, sexual issues have always been used as a wedge issue to define people’s position as good or bad people.  That has not changed in the American political scene in 200 years and is something our European and Asian friends have mocked us about for just as long.  We are a people committed to moralizing, even to this day.  For a long time, it was cloaked in religion, but now, hyperbolic moralizing, although not done in the name of a faith is still a favorite American pastime.   

Well, honestly, I guess that’s also been true for the arts as well.  But honestly, greatr art is never moralizing.  And Chopin knew that.  Furthermore, if anyone had read that essay Chopin printed about her writing that I referenced, they would have seen that Chopin, by design, does NOT moralize in hers.  She does not condemn or judge.  She has no interest in telling us how we should or shouldn’t behave.  She sees the role of the artist, and clearly stated as much,  and the role of fiction as in demonstrating how we genuinely ARE as human beings.  It is a role of showcasing the human experience.  It is meant to help us understand ourselves.  What she does in her writing by using a culture that is unfamiliar to us, is allow us a safer space from which we can pull back the veil that IS our experience, so we can see ourselves.  Let me quote her from that essay and here she’s talking about the Creole people of Louisiana,   

“Among these people are to be found an earnestness in the acquirement and dissemination of book-learning, a clinging to the past and conventional standards, an almost Creolean sensitiveness to criticism and a singular ignorance of, or disregard for, the value of the highest art forms. There is a very, very big world lying not wholly in northern Indiana, nor does it lie at the antipodes, either. It is human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it.” 

Well, regardless of how she wanted to come across, apparently, she struck a nerve people didn’t want struck.  The Awakening unsettled America.  The book was published in April of 1899, by August critics were destroying it, and again I’ll use the reviewers words,  it had been deemed “morbid and unwholesome” and was reproached on a national stage.  She was scorned publicly.  When she submitted a new short story to the Atlantic “Ti Demon” in November after the publication of The Awakening it was returned and rejected.    Her own publisher, the one who had published the controversial book decided to “shorten is list of authors”- and they dropped her.  Of course to be fair, they claimed that decision had nothing to do with the problems with the reception of The Awakening. 

I’m sure that it didn’t.  Chopin was obviously crushed.  She would only write seven more stories over the next five years.  In 1904 when she died of a stroke, she was basically a forgotten writer.  And likely would have remained forgotten until, ironically the French discovered the novel in 1952.  A writer by the name of Cyrille Arnavon translated it into French under the title Edna with a 22 page introduction essay called it a neglected masterpiece.  What he liked about it had nothing to do with “local color” or creole people or anything Americana.  He saw in it what we see in it today- psychological analysis.   

So fascinating, this is the 1950s; this is exactly the time period psychology is shifting from Freudian interpretations of Chopin's’ day into behaviorism and eventually to humanistic psychology.   

Why does this matter? 

With Freud everything is secret and we’re ruled by unseen forces we don’t understand without psychoanalysis.  Chopin’s book came out when this was how we were looking at the world.  After him came Skinner’s behaviorism which said everything can be reduced to rewards and punishments.   Humanistic psychology is this third way of looking at things.  It’s extremely empathetic.  Names like Karl Rogers were looking at life with the idea that it’s just plain difficult to be a human, and we need to understand this complexity.  They would like books that are not all black/white thinking or moralistic.  This is what’s crazy to me about Chopin.  She wrote in the days of Freud, but she was so far ahead of her time psychologically; nobody would get her for another 60 years- literally two entire movements later in the field of psychology.   

Well, when they did get her, they really got her.  In 1969 a Norwegian critic Per Seyersted brought her out into the open in a big way.  This is what he said, “ Chopin, and I quote “broke new ground in American literature. She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman’s submerged life. She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman’s urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom.” 

Finally people were understanding what she was trying to do.  That’s exactly what she wanted to show- the complexity of being human.  Here’s another Chopin quote whole talking about the role of a writer, “Thou shalt not preach; “thou shalt not instruct thy neighbor”.  Or as her great- grandmother Carleville, who was extremely influencial in her life, used to tell her, Kate’s grandmother who raised her was known for saying this “One may know a great deal about people without judging them.  God does that.” 

Well, she was immediately resurrected.  Today she is considered one of America’s premiere writers. 

Well, it also didn’t hurt her reputation that she was being discovered in Europe at the exact same time, the women’s movement was taking off in the United States and finding an unsung feminist writer was very popular.  

Yeah, I thought she WAS a feminist writer, but you don’t see her as that. 

I really don’t, and that’s not to say there isn’t any feminism in the book, because obviously, it’s about life as a woman at the turn of the century.  Virginia Wolfe famouslty argued in her essay A Room of One’s Own that no one knew what women were thinking and feeling in the 17th century because they weren’t writing.  Well, you can’t say that about Chopin.  She was absolutely writing about what women were thinking and feeling, it just took 60 years for the world to allow her to share it.   

If we want to talk the particulars about The Awakening, which of course we do, we have a female protagonist.  I’m not going to call her a hero because I don’t find anything heroic about her.  But it’s very very honest characterization of what women feel, and honestly, perhaps it’s what a lot of people feel- both men and women when they live, as we all do, within cultures of high expectations.   

Isn’t writing about standing up to cultural norms and societal expectations kind of cliché?  I’m surprised you find it interesting in this situation. 

 Well, it for sure can be.  It’s what a lot of teenage angst poetry is about.  But Chopin’s book is a lot more complex than just a denouncement on social expectations of women’s roles.  In some ways, that’s just the setting.  This particular woman, Edna, is for sure, unhappyily objectified by a husband.  That part is obvious.  But, Chopin isn’t necessarily moralizing against this or anything else.  In the opening encounter between husband and wife, we see the wife being objectified, but we also see that they have worked out some deal.  She has a very privileged life.  It’s not a life between two people who have emotional intimacy, for sure.  These two clearly don’t.  Edna asks if her husband plans on showing up for dinner.  He basically sayd, I don’t know- I may; I may not.  It doesn’t appear Edna could care less one way or another and Chopin isn’t condemning them; she is observing.  This are the deals people are working out in the world.  She makes other observations in regard to Edna and her relationship with her children.  She loves her children; sort of; but it’s certainly not the motherly and passionate devotion most mothers feel towards their kids.  It’s definitely not the self-denying ideal, we see expressed through a different character in the book.  Again, Chopin is not endorsing nor condemning.  She’s observing.  There’s no doubt, Chopin herself was progressive.  She was raised in a house of dominant women.  She herself was a head of household.  She was educated.  She made money, but she had healthy relationships with the men in her life.  She is not a man-hater, that I can tell.  She never remarried but there is reason to believe she had at least one  other significant male relationship after her husband’s death.  So, portraying her as a woman who influenced feminism in any kind of deliberate way, I don’t think is something that she intended, nor was it something that happened.  She was cancelled. 

I understand that, it’s just interesting that today, we think of her first and foremost as a feminist writer in large part because she had sexual content in her books.  Although, as I think about the progressive women in the 1890s, what we know about them from history is that most were not really be fans of indiscriminate sex.  

Oh my, we’re getting edgy here, but I have to ask.  Why do you say that? 

You have to understand this is before birth control.  Sexual relationships for women meant running the very real risk of generating children which was often a life-risking ordeal.  Kate herself had gone through that seven times in twelve years.  Women were spending half of their lives pregnant.  Many progressive women in this time period were not fighting for the freedom to have sex, they were fighting for the right to NOT have it.  They wanted the right to say no.  The goal of Self ownership was central to nineteenth century feminism.  Woman's rights were about possessing a fully realized human identity.  We think of this today in terms of sexual freedom but that’s the arrogance of the presence kicking in.  Obviously human sexuality is a core part of the human experience and that’s likely why it’s central to Chopin’s story, but there are other aspects of person hood.  Women, especially educated ones, were interested in navigating a sense of place in the community and the universe at large- and that involves all kinds of things- hard things like love, connections, maternity. 

Exactly, and that’s why Edna is so complicated.  Being a human is difficult.   Navigating  “the woman’s sphere”, to use the expression of  the notable Chopin scholar Sandra Gilbert is complicated.  And so, we all find ourselves, one way or another in cages- some of our own making, some of the makings of our community, our religion, our culture, our own personalities- whatever it is.  And that is the opening of our story.  The Awakening starts with a woman in a cage.  This is not to say that men do not experience cages or awakenigs- they absolutely do, but Chopin is a woman and will speak from inside the world of women.  She will drop a woman named Edna, a middle child Presbyterian English speaking girl from Kentucky, into a French speaking Catholic world of elite Creole women.  Edna is flawed, but not awful.  She’s flawed in the sense that we are all flawed.  This woman acts out- in the way that many of us have acted out- often as children, but for some of us, we don’t experience this desire for agency until later in life.  For Edna it comes at the age of 26 and when it does- she will scandalize her world the way acting out always does.  She finds herself in a cage and decides she wants out...but then what…where do you go from there.  Let’s read how Chopin sets this up in the first paragraph of her story. 

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: 

“Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!” 

He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence. 

Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper with any degree of comfort, arose with an expression and an exclamation of disgust. 

He walked down the gallery and across the narrow “bridges” which connected the Lebrun cottages one with the other. He had been seated before the door of the main house. The parrot and the mocking-bird were the property of Madame Lebrun, and they had the right to make all the noise they wished. Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their society when they ceased to be entertaining. 

Christy, does she give the entire story away in the beginning? 

She’s doing something.  She opens with a bird- a parrot. We will talk more about this later, but birds are a big deal in this book.  But why a parrot- what do parrots do- well they imitate.  They talk.  This parrot is in a cage repeating something an English reader may not understand.   

What does that phrase mean? 

It means Go away! Go away!  For God’s sake!  The bird is telling everyone to go away, and Mr. Pontellier pretty much ignores the bird and does actually go away.  The bird speaks a little Spanish but also a language no one else understands.  There’s a lot of intentionality here.  This book begins with a bird in a cage and the book ends with a bird, but I won’t tell you how we find that bird yet.   

 These 19th century writers were always using symbols on purpose.  

They really do.  And if this one is our protagonist- what we can see is that she’s beautiful, she’s in a cage, and although she can talk, she cannot articulate something that can be heard properly or understood.   

And so that is our starting point. 

I think it is.  Next episode, we will join Edna and explore this beautiful place, Grand Isle- the site, and if the title of the book hasn’t given it away yet, I will, of her Awakening.  We will watch Edna awaken- but then, we know from our visit with Camus…that is only step one.  Now what. 

Indeed…now what.  Well, thank you for spending time with us today.  We hope you have enjoyed meeting Kate Chopin and jumping into the first paragraph of her lost but rediscovered American masterpiece, The Awakening.  And if you did, please support us by sharing this episode with a firend, either by text, by twitter, Instagram or email.  That’s how we grow.  Also, if you have a favorite book, you’d like us to discuss, you are always invited to connect with us, again via all the ways Modern world people do. 

Peace out! 

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Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

And I am Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  You have heard Christy say, over dozens of times if you’ve listened to a lot of our episodes that we’re here to discuss books.  Having said that, the word “books”  is being used as a synecdoche- to use a literary word- in other words, books is a word we’re using to symbolize something bigger of which books is just a part- and that something bigger is this concept of words.  Words that have moved the world and have moved us.  And so, in that spirit, this week, we’re pausing from looking at traditional text and looking at music lyrics, specifically rock lyrics, specifically the phenomena that is Foo Fighters and their music.   

And let me just add, for Garry, this is an exciting change of pace.  He’s been a guitar-head since childhood.  He’s a rock and roll and has been since, as a young teenager he saved up his money to buy his first  amp.  Tell us that story, Garry…this is for all the rock-n-roll heads who share a similar experience.   

The story….. 

And if you are like me, until I met Garry I had no idea that playing the guitar is akin to jumping down Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole.  To parody Freud, sometimes a guitar is not just a guitar- 

No, for me the guitar was the gateway instrument into a whole new world of Rock and it was the way that I discovered a bigger world other than the small town I grew up in.…and I will add, not just me.  David Grohl, who started the band Foo Fighters, in 1995 talks about hearing the Album The Record by the band Fear and wanting to become a musician.   In fact, if you listen to Grohl’s ac 

 Well, you say ___________, It’s still a bit of a  rabbit hole- I mean just in terms of gear, for those of us who didn’t know, you can be a Gibson person, a telecaster person, a stratacaster person, a Gretch person- just to name a few of the kinds of electric guitars, nevermind the amps, the pedals, the boards, the pick ups, the tones- and that’s not even the music side of it- just the tech of blasting music on an electrical guitar- think of Michael J Fox in Back to the Future.   

But having said that- once you put all those elements together, and if you do so in a genius sort of way, you will get a ticket to transcend into this other realm called Rock and Roll.  Today, and this stat is only an American stat, I don’t have the numbers worldwide, but today Rock is still the preferred genre of 56% of the American population, surpassing pop, country and rap- which I found surprising.  Rock albums still account for the majority of all vinyl music sales- although they do not surpass rap or country when it comes to streaming services- that might tell you something about demographics.  But in a world with so many things that divide us, Foo Fighter unite audiences which range over 4 generations and across all nation-states, rock and roll is a powerful unifier.     

Yes, and the uncontested leading rock band in the world in 2022  is The Foo Fighters.  And how do we determine that?  Well we can look at awards,   they have won 12 grammies for one thing, including Best Album 4 times.  But awards are not an awesome metric to measure human impact- especially for Rock.  But there are others.  Since David Grohl started his one man band in Seattle in 1994, They have released 9 albums, gone on 9 worldwide tours which each lasted over a year-  just the 2017 tour from the album “Concrete and Gold” consisted of 113 shows on five continents grossing $114 million.  They have sold out the famed Wembley stadium in London- not once but twice, oh and it sold out in 24 hours.  That stadium holds 86,000 people.  Another big hint as to the enormity of their impact from that same tour was the performance at Glastonbury, when over 150,000 people were documented singing in unison the lyrics to their song “Best of You”.  Their top five songs, just on Spotify, which is only one and not even the largest of streaming  services have over 2.5 billion downloads- and that is just on Spotify.  They have 16 million monthly listeners on Spotify.  In 2021 they were inducted into the rock and Roll hall of fame, the first year they were eligible.  There is no overstating the influence, the passion, the commitment and connection that this group of men, led by Dave Grohl, has had on over 4 generations of humans of all ages, races, and gender from all over the world these last 25 years.  Literally hundreds of millions have been touched by their music both in person and over the sound ways.   

And so today, we would like to look at the history and the music of this powerful force of positivity, and it has been a force of positivity.  How has this group connected and improved the lives of so many?  There are hundreds of millions of personal examples from fans, but here’s a famous one.  In 1995, David Letterman, who at the time was a famous late night comedian on tv, gave the foo fighters their first spotlight on television.  They played a song from their album which I’ll tell you about in a minute called “”This is a Call”.  Letterman was hooked on the Foo Fighters.  In 2000, he had a quintuple heart by-pass surgery and after his recovery, he asked them to come to NY and be on his first show back after his surgery.   For him, them being with him was personal.   He publically stated on the show that night that their song “Everlong” was what got him through his surgery and recovery.  When Letterman retired from television, he asked that they play that song again for the last few minutes of his final show after he said farewell for the last time ending his long career.  How did that song, this band, inspire him to fight off death as his heart struggled to regain strength?  What has been the impact of their music on so many across the globe?  The answer lies in the lyrics, in part.  It lies in the musical talent, in part.  It lies in the energy and passion, in part.  It lies in the showmanship But all of these components are working together to produce a single effect- what is it?  What is the power of Rock and Roll? 

I think we can see the answer by looking at this band and looking at three of our favorite Foo Fighters songs.   

I think we can too.  What we see is that the Foo Fighters in general, and Dave Grohl personal story in particular in every way embody Camus’ idea that life is best lived  fighting the absurd, rebelling against meaningless, rebelling against the constant pressure to commit philosophical suicide.   

 Dave Grohl’s life and music showcase one man’s fight to do this- in spite of pressure to conform, in spite of death, and in spite of the heavy-handed trappings of success, and that is the gift he shares in his lyrics as well as how he plays and how he lives his life on and off the stage.  

We mention Dave Grohl’s story, first, because Foo Fighters really starts with him.   For those who aren’t familiar with that. Name, Dave Grohl was the drummer for the rock band Nirvana.  In 1994, Nirvana was on top of the world with international success and Grohl became famous.  Last week we mentioned the existential song, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”- that’s Nirvana. 

Well, I want to add, Grohl’s story is almost the classic Camus journey.  His mother is a retired public school English teacher from the suburbs of Washington DC, so shout out to mom!!, btw.  His father was a political speech writer- also from that Washington DC area.   One finny thing is that his mom is a democrat and his dad a Republcan- so there you go navigating that as a kid!!   

 He left this kind of suburban highly educated lifestyle at the age of 17 and literally dropped out of high school to play the drums.  He even lied about his age because he was a minor.  But he auditioned and joined this band called Scream.  He lived for four years, sleeping on a sleeping bag, living out of a van with the 4 other band members and a roadie, playing night after night in dives to groups of 20-200 people max.   

That sounds kind of like a rock and roll movie, and, Of course I don’t know, but I can’t image his mother being very excited about those life-choices, especially the dropping out of school one. 

Probably not, especially since there was no guarantee it would work out.  It almost never does.  But as Grohl tells it, stardom wasn’t really the end goal.  He was pursuing music, a community, the life he wanted with nothing to prove really. At one point, Scream was really struggling.  He was in LA and things were at a standstill.  He hears about an opening with this other band called Nirvana.  It wasn’t mainstream, but was popular with the underground community on the West Coast, specially Washington state.  David calls a friend who knows the band to try to get an audition and gets it.  He calls his mom to ask her if he should drop Scream and go to Nirvana, with her encouragement he makes the change that would launch him into a different world. 

Well, Nirvana’s success is pretty well documented, but of course, even people who don’t follow rock music cannot think about Nirvana without thinking about the tragic suicide in 1994 of Nirvana’s singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain.  The famous Neil Young quote from his note, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” has been controversial itself and unfortunately led to teenage suicides since its release to the public, but for Grohl the loss was personal.   

Cobain’s death left David heartbroken.  He lived with Cobain, slept on his sofa during the early days.  He had watched Cobain struggle with depression.  He says he saw him have lows and he would go to his room and not come out, but Cobain also could be incredibly fun and alive.  They traveled together, played together, worked together.   He had grown to love his friend.  Beyond just losing a friend, With Cobain’s death, Nirvana was over, and Dave had to decide what to do.  Tom Petty, famous in his own right, invited him to play the drums for him, but he decided he didn’t want that.  He didn’t know if he even wanted to play the drums anymore. 

What he wanted was to carve out a new thing- make his own reality- and for him that meant recording an album all by himself.  So, that’s what he did.  In 1995, for five days he sat with the engineers in a studio by himself.  He recorded the vocals, recorded the guitar parts, recorded the drum parts and then the engineers put it all on top of each other.  He wanted to make it look like it was actually a band so he used this pseudonym Foo Fighters,  He’d been reading some stuff about UFOs and kind of just used the name.  Later when he was inducted into the hall of fame he said this, “had I actually considered this a career, I probably would have called it something else, because it’s the stupidest _________ band name in the world,”  BTW, if you listen to Grohl talk on platforms meant for educational purposes, you will have to get used to a bleeping.  Grohl is passionate and very colorful, it’s funny, but there are a lot of bleeps.   

The point I want to make by bringing up David’s personal history is because it’s here we see Grohl, like Camus, choosing to fight the absurd and choosing also to fight philosophical suicide.  He did not conform to th suburbs just because it certainly was an easy thing to do growing up in DC.  He didn’t say, “it doesn’t matter” when his friend died, because it does matter.  No where in this story can you find someone taking the easy way out- or lying to themselves. This is the story of a child growing into a man determined to be as completely honest as possible and committed to creating meaning- his own meaning- in this world. 

And so the Foo Fighters are born.  This very first album was a success and they even got on David Letterman, but it is on the second album The Colour and the Shape that we find one of their most endearing hits,  Everlong, the one Letterman had them perform when he retired. 

Which I find so interesting because the song isn’t really about anything I would think Letterman would like on the surface, in terms of lyrics.  Grohl wrote it in 1996 after going through an ugly divorce.  He had met another girl, Louise Post, and they just connected.  It’s such a funny story.  He originally recorded at a friend’s studio in DC, again playing all the parts himself, but it was rough.  When it came time to record the album the The Colour and the Shape, the producer wanted to include Everlong.  He raelly thought it brought the album together thematically.  Grohl was cool with this but he wanted Post to sing the real back up vocals for it because it was about her.  Post recalls, and this is from her Instagram post and I quote, “I sang these back-ups over the phone at 2am after being woken up from a deep sleep in Chicago by David Grohl who was tracking the vocals for “EverLong” in LA.    

Again- and this is why a song is not just words - lyrics are VOICE plus words.  And the voice, if it is good, functions to enshrine language – elevate it beyond just the content of the words.  In Grohl’s case, he doesn’t have the range of someone like Mariah Carey or even Steve Perry from Journey.  But the voice is action and it’s that movement that Grohl and all the Foo Fighters communicate.  Grohl screams at times, but his voice is communicating something beyond the words on the page.   What do you hear? 

There’s just an authenticity there.  I heard him talking about the origins of the song, Everlong and I was shocked when I learned that he doesn’t even know how to read music.  He never studied formally.  He just strummed a new combination and heard a song.  I don’t want to use the word innocence because that’s not the right word, but it’s this raw pursuit of wanting life and bringing people along and it has captivated the world- obviously only an authentic genius could ever do what he does, especially self-taught.  But, when you think about how songs, and this song in particular lives in the hearts of so many, we know that the human voice holds a special place.   It is a human instrument, where the soul, to sound mystical- unifies with the lungs, the diaphragm, the abs- to do something different.  But Let’s look at those famous lyrics and talk about them.  

Hello I've waited here for you Everlong 

Tonight, I throw myself into And out of the red Out of her head, she sang 

Come down and waste away with me Down with me Slow, how you wanted it to be I'm over my head Out of her head, she sang 

And I wonder When I sing along with you 

If everything could ever be this real forever If anything could ever be this good again The only thing I'll ever ask of you You've got to promise not to stop when I say when She sang 

Breathe out So I can breathe you in Hold you in And now I know you've always been Out of your head Out of my head, I sang 

And I wonder When I sing along with you 

If everything could ever feel this real forever If anything could ever be this good again The only thing I'll ever ask of you You've got to promise not to stop when I say when She sang 

And I wonder 

If everything could ever feel this real forever If anything could ever be this good again The only thing I'll ever ask of you You've got to promise not to stop when I say when 

The words are simple- which is why they work as lyrics.  No one has time to explicate poetry while they’re at a rock concert.  You have to understand the idea in a instant.  

There is also a lot of repetition, when you just read it, like we did it feels redundant, but when you add the voice the repetition plays a different role.  It signifies hooks and choruses and gives us a sense of excitement and anticipation for the next drum riff or energetic pulse.   

Well, the ear is listening for something different in music than it is in poetry.  Then you add the signature guitar riffs to that- you have a different emotional experience.  And I want to point out that all good music that people love is emotional. The song Everlong has two versions- the version with the whole band as well as just the acoustic version- both are powerful, but really two different experiences.  The emotions are different.   

 For sure, but Everlong, like all rock ballads is meant to be sung.  The contrasting anaphors of If everything, if anything, rhyme with the following line- the only thing----are drawn together in your ear because of that rhyme and they create this tension that leads you to the climatic line of feeling real.  In fact, that’s the central idea- whether it be in the acoustic or the band version-  they both convey a universal feeling of holding on to one single moment- and making it feel eternal- holding on -look at the word he chooses- what is real.  It’s really a paradox- eternity felt in a moment- on the surface it doesn’t make sense, but it’s a feeling we all have or at least want to have- and he expresses it so simply, with simple words- but the drums, the bass, the guitars plus the screaming vocals- make the idea completely alive.   

 “And I Wonder when I sing along with you” you feel the power of the line that “If everything could ever feel this real forever” whether your heart pounds with that overpowering electrical guitar or with just the strumming of the acoustic one- you’re inspired to hold on- to feel the moment again- just like that repeating riff. 

YOu know, Everlong is an interesting example of a hit song that grows into its success overtime.  People liked it when it came out, but over time it’s just grown and grown to the point that it’s the song everyone most wants to hear when they go to a Foo Fighters concert- and they end their concerts with it., but it wasn’t that way at the first.  If you want their first hit that entered the BillBoard hop 100, you have to go to the next album they recorded called Echoes and the song from there that we all remember is Learn to Fly.   

I want to ask a question, what is the BillBoards or the Billboard Hot 100- that is a term everyone uses to determine success. 

Sure, Billboard is a magazine, Billboard biz is the online extension.  Billboard tabulates the popularity of songs on a weekly basis.  Sometimes the charts are genre specific, for example you have the country chart or the rock chart, but they cover all genres.  They are ranked according to sales, streams, airplay, thst sort of thing.  The Billboard Hot 100 combines all aspecits of a single’s performance (sales, radio airplay and streaming activity) and ranks how successful any one song is, it has to be a single.   The top rated songs on Billboard will be the songs featured on radio because they draw the audience that leads to higher advertising rates.  

The Song Learn to Fly actually won a grammy for its music video.  The lyrics were written, not just by David Grohl, but Taylor Hawkins the drummer and Nate Mendel.  By this point in the history of the Foo Fighters, What we have seen evolve is the vision of one man, Dave Grohl, into a collective- a brotherhood.  Foo Fighters by 1997 is no longer a one-man band.  “Learn to Fly” has three co-writers.  There have been a couple of entrances and exits over the years, but not many really.  Today Foo Fighters is David Grohl, Chris Shiflett, Nate Mendel, Franz Stahl, Rami Jafee, Pat Smear, and until his untimely passing Tayler Hawkins. 

Let’s read this famous anthem. “Learn to Fly” 

Run and tell all of the angels This could take all night Think I need a devil to help me get things right Hook me up a new revolution Cause this one is a lie We sat around laughin' and watched the last one die 

Now, I'm lookin' to the sky to save me Lookin' for a sign of life Lookin' for somethin' to help me burn out bright And I'm lookin' for a complication Lookin' cause I'm tired of lyin' Make my way back home when I learn to fly high 

I think I'm dyin' nursing patience It can wait one night I'd give it all away if you give me one last try We'll live happily ever trapped if you just save my life Run and tell the angels that everything's alright 

Now I'm lookin' to the sky to save me Lookin' for a sign of life Lookin' for somethin' to help me burn out bright I'm lookin' for a complication Lookin' cause I'm tired of tryin' Make my way back home when I learn to fly high Make my way back home when I learn to 

Fly along with me, I can't quite make it alone Try to make this life my own Fly along with me, I can't quite make it alone Try to make this life my own 

I'm lookin' to the sky to save me Lookin' for a sign of life Lookin' for somethin' to help me burn out bright And I'm lookin' for a complication Lookin' cause I'm tired of tryin' Make my way back home when I learn to 

I'm lookin' to the sky to save me Lookin' for a sign of life Lookin' for somethin' to help me burn out bright And I'm lookin' for a complication Lookin' cause I'm tired of tryin' Make my way back home when I learn to fly high Make my way back home when I learn to fly Make my way back home when I learn to 

Again when you read the song, you see the repetition that characterizes a lot of great music.  You see the anaphoras 

Now what is an anaphora 

It’s when you read the beginning of a phrase but you change the ending 

Make my way back home when I learn to fly high 

Make my way bak home when I learn to fly 

Make my way back home when I learn to 

In that case, the phrase starts the same, but the ending is different- in this case, it drifts off and is shortened each time.  The effect only works when you sing and play it.  The power is lost when you read it.  Song lyrics are just not the same as poetry for that reason- their power is different.   

the rhythm bends the lyrics into different shapes or patterns that aren’t the natural flow of conversation or even in reading poetry.  The percussive breaks the lines on the page, the rhyme and repetition springs out in different places than in normal poetry- for example the word “lookin’” it’s all over the song and your ear catches it when we sing it, but if you just look at it on the page, it looks random.  I heard it said once that song lyrics exist in the air, and that is a good way of thinking about them. 

When you watch a video of people watching the performance of this song, all you see are arms raised, everyone singing in unison, Everyone identifying something personal in those words.  They’re looking for something honest- looking for something to help push through the absurd and in this song it’s represented in the sky the sky.  This is a great example of how music and poetry for that matter  take a life of their own.  It’s symbolic.  It’s universal-  looking to the sky- but what does the sky represent?  Should we look up the archetype?  Is it something unattainable?  Is it something spiritual?  For each person, it’s something totally different thing and you can see it in the eyes of every person in the stadium or in the field of the festival.  Kelly Clarkson asked the band, one time on her show, what it was the song was about- at least what it was for then when they originally wrote it,  Grohl revealed the secret.  At the time I wanted to become a pilot! I wanted to learn to fly.  

Well, I can tell you, and I’ve seen that interview, too, the Foo Fighters absolutely know this song is about more than being a pilot.  And if you ever had any doubt, those doubts were laid to rest with the Rockin 1000. 

Oh yes.  Tell us what that is.   

So, in 2014, a man by the name of Fabio Zaffagnini had a vision to get Foo Fighters to come to Italy.  His plan was insane.  He wanted to unite 1000 musicians: drummers, guitarists, , bassists, vocalists, everything- and he did it.  In July of 2015, over 1000 musicisns gathered in a field in a little town in north east Italy called Cesena and together- in unison- all 1000 played this song “Learn to Fly”.  It’s an amazing YouTube video, everyone should watch it.  At the end of their performance, Fabio appeals to the band and asks them to come play in their little town of Cesena.  Of course the band soon tweeted, “Ci Vediamo a presto, Cesena”- or See you soon, Cesena.   

Well, I’ve watched that YouTube, and it almost makes you cry.  It’s so beautiful, so passionate, how could they possibly say no.  Those musicians of every age- both men and women jumped, waved in the air, sang with their hearts.   

Well, exactly and why would they. Three months after the Rockin 1000 video went viral, the Foo Fighters played in Cesena, on the night of the concert, Dave Grohl admitted to the audience that their video made him cry.  This group of musicians represent everything Foo Fighters is giving to the world: energy, passion, the fight and will to live and live well.  It’s who the Foo Fighters are.  And there are endless examples of this band doing just that. On their tour of Iceland, the night before the concert they were out in the country having dinner when they drove past a barn where a group of local punk rockers were practicing.  The Foos stopped and went in and jammed with this little local band called Nilfisk AND invited them to play their original song “Jacking Around” as an opening act for the Foos.  The front man for this band at the time was 16 years old.    

In May of 2005, they released one most of the most recognizable and highly regarded of all Foo Fighters, “Best of You.”  Prince even performed it during the half time show at SuperBowl.  Let’s read these lyrics and talk about why this song has resonated around the world.  

've got another confession to make I'm your fool Everyone's got their chains to break Holding you 

Were you born to resist or be abused 

 Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you 

Are you gone and on to someone new? I needed somewhere to hang my head Without your noose You gave me something that I didn't have But had no use 

I was too weak to give in Too strong to lose My heart is under arrest again But I break loose My head is giving me life or death But I can't choose I swear I'll never give in, I refuse 

Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you Has someone taken your faith? It's real, the pain you feel Your trust, you must confess Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you Oh 

Oh, ho-oh, oh, oh-oh, oh, oh-oh, oh Has someone taken your faith? It's real, the pain you feel The life, the love you'd die to heal The hope that starts the broken hearts Your trust, you must confess 

Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you 

I've got another confession my friend I'm no fool I'm getting tired of starting again Somewhere new 

Were you born to resist or be abused? I swear I'll never give in, I refuse 

Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you Has someone taken your faith It's real, the pain you feel Your trust, you must confess Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you Oh 

Well, first of all the word “best” is repeated 40 times.  And repetition is emphasis.  We know that.  This song is about that.  We all have secrets in their heads about themselves.  We all fight something inside to overcome the worst in us.  This song is a personal fight song, an anthem of recovery from brokenness.  

It’s also a lot about the drums.  Taylor Hawkins inspired the millions who watched him lead the band with this anthem.  His drumming was raw.  He pounds these eighth-note accents that you can hear from the back of a stadium.  There’s so much power and energy- it’s driving- it builds.    

In an interview during that 2005 tour a journalist from the Globe and Mail asked Hawkins what kept his work interesting.  He said this,  

“I'm scared to death every time I get on stage. I have insane stage fright. If Nate screws up, the beat goes on. If Dave screws up, everyone laughs. But if I drop the beat, we can all go down in flames. It's like jumping off a cliff every time.” 

I don’t know how you could NOT be.  So much is at stake.  10s of thousands of people have spent hundreds of dollars and come with astronomically high expectations to have their lives changed and to be inspired.  

 I can’t imagine the weight of it.  But I think I understand, at least in part, the heart of it.  In 2011, the band released their 7th studio album.  Wasting Light would eventually win four grammies including Best Rock Album.  I think how they created that album really captures who they are as a band, what they represent and why their essence reverberates around the world.  Tell is the story, Garry, 

Well, they decided to record in in Grohl’s garage with no computers.  The album is messy, distorted, over the top and they had to rehearse for three weeks to even do it because they used old fashioned editing techniques that didn’t allow for mistakes to be fixed in post-production. 

And why do it? 

Well, they wanted it to be real.  Grohl speaks to that at the Grammy’s after they won Best Album of the year, and his words became highly controversial almost immediately.  He said this, ““This is a great honour, because this record was a special record for our band. Rather than go to the best studio in the world down the street in Hollywood and rather than use all of the fanciest computers that money can buy, we made this one in my garage with some microphones and a tape machine...It’s not about being perfect, it’s not about sounding absolutely correct, it’s not about what goes on in a computer.” 

So, what’s controversial about that.   

Well, it was taken to insult everyone else in the industry who is using auto-tune to fix their voices so they never go off key, or any number of editing tricks that could make someone like you or me sound like Rihanna with the right computer. Pro tools is the recording software that can make anyone sound like they are good.  

The next day Grohl released a statement clarifying his comment.  This is what he said,  

I love music. Electronic or acoustic, it doesn’t matter to me. The simple act of creating music is a beautiful gift that ALL human beings are blessed with. And the diversity of one musician’s personality to the next is what makes music so exciting and … human.” 

That’s exactly what I was referring to. The ‘human element.’ That thing that happens when a song speeds up slightly, or a vocal goes a little sharp. That thing that makes people sound like PEOPLE. Somewhere along the line those things became “bad” things, and with the great advances in digital recording technology over the years they became easily ‘fixed.’ The end result? I my humble opinion…..a lot of music that sounds perfect, but lacks personality. The one thing that makes music so exciting in the first place.And, unfortunately, some of these great advances have taken the focus off of the actual craft of performance. Look, I am not Yngwie Malmsteen. I am not John Bonham. Hell…I’m not even Josh Groban, for that matter. But I try really f—ing hard so that I don’t have to rely on anything but my hands and my heart to play a song. I do the best that I possibly can within my limitations, and accept that it sounds like me. Because that’s what I think is most important. It should be real, right? Everybody wants something real. 

An interesting aside – live orchestra music actually prefers when the concert attendees cough and make noise. It proved the recording is a live take and the orchestra truly is as good as it sounds. 

Everybody wants something real…there’s that word again that brings us back to Camus…we do want real, we want honest, we want someone with the courage to show us what it looks like.  The history of the Foo Fighters is just one crazy example of this after another.   In Sweden in June of 2015.  They were in the second song of a show that consisted of 26 songs in front of 53,000 people, Grohl landed wrong from a jump and his ankle collapsed and he fell.  He had broken his leg.  The band didn’t know what had happened and they just played.    Grohl grabbed the microphone, and said this, ““You have my promise right now that the Foo Fighters, we’re gonna come back and finish this show,” he said. “But right now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna go to the hospital, I’m gonna fix my leg. But then I’m gonna come back, and we’re gonna play for you again! I’m so sorry!” 

He handed over the show to Taylor Hawkins who led the band til Grohl came back an hour later.  They had to cancel a few dates, but by the fourth of July they had the problem solved.  They built a giant throne made just the occasion the Foo Fighters came out for their 20th anniversary Fourth of July blowout at RFK, and Grohl who screams and jumps lead the band sitting down.  That tour continued with 60 more shows.    

And that’s what I mean about fighting the absurd.  Taylor, Nate, Chris, Pat, Rami, Chris, Franz, Will and Dave lead with their lyrics, their beat, their riffs, but also their example.  This is what “not surrendering either to the absurd or to philosophical suicide can look like”.  This is what not giving in looks like.  This is what finding the best in yourself looks like.  Dave Grohl spoke about what it felt like when Cobain died.  He said at one point he didn’t know if he ever wanted to play music again, but then he realized that music was the one that had healed him over the course of his entire life.  It had saved his life more than once.   

I can absolutely understand and agree with this 100%.  Music absolutely been there for me personally and  has kept me sane in the worst moments of my own life.    

Unfortunately, Dave and the rest of the band are going to have to face the full force and pain of absurd in a very personal way yet again.  On March 20th, Foo Fighters played at Lollapalooza in Argentina.  They ended their set with Everlong, as they usually do with Hawkins on the drum.  At the end of the song, Hawkins tossed his drum sticks to the audience, threw his arm over Grohl’s shoulder, and took a bow with the rest of the band.  Although no one had any idea, this would be his last performance.  

That night Dave Grohl ended the show with these ironic words, “I don’t say goodbye,” Dave Grohl told the crowd before kicking it off. “I don’t like to say goodbye. I know that we’ll always come back. If you come back, we’ll come back. Will you come back? If you come back, we’ll come back, so then I won’t have to say goodbye.” 

Hawkins said goodbye, but the music he made, the energy he emitted does. not  And so, we end this episode saying, thank you, Foo Fighters.  Thank you for pushing forward, encouraging the world to not let the world get the best of us, for inspiring us to look to the sky, learn to fly and holding on to the moments of eternity when they come. 

Thank you for sharing with us in this episode on a different sort of book- the music of the Foo Fighters.  As always please feel free to connect with us on any of our social media: FB, Insta, Twitter, LinkedIn.  Email us, tweet us, if you are a teacher, visit our website for educational support, if you are a friend, check out our merch on the website as well.  In any case, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend, when you share about us, we grow.   

Peace out…. 

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