The Seducer, Kate Chopan

Rene Magritte’s painting, The Seducer, both speaks to and juxtaposes with motifs in Kate Chopan’s novel, The Awakening, like Edna’s lack of content, need for freedom, and acts of defiance. The water is calm, the sky is blue, and the clouds are swirling and white in The Seducer. The opposite holds true for Edna: “On rainy or melancholy days…. She stayed indoors and nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.” Life’s promise should be one of elation and charm, with boundaries such as society merely an afterthought. The Seducer tricks the viewer into taking nonsense for reality, much like Edna’s happiness in her head compared to happiness in real life. She chooses to think that what she needs is available to her in her head, and doesn’t bother with the things that are happening in reality. Her children, her husband, and her social endeavors come second to her various whims, selfish desires, and whatever else she may want.
Sigmund Freud once said: “The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’” Regarding Edna, the question is not a difficult, disheveled, or ambiguous one. Freedom is something that she desires immensely. Freedom from her family and from society is the key to how sh...

The Seducer, Kate Chopan

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