When we drove on the bridges and streets attempting to locate the holiday house our Maymester group was going to stay in, I must admit that I felt unnerved. I was here in an extremely unfamiliar place, looking out of the window and simply seeing darkness, open land, and glistening water, much different from the bright Los Angeles city that I had become well-acquainted with. In reading The Awakening, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was how Edna, the woman whose story and transformation we follow throughout the novel, felt. She married a Creole man, a person of an entirely different culture from her American background, yet she was expected to effortlessly assimilate to this new place with different standards. In a time when a woman’s behavior was heavily watched and critiqued, fear of straying from the norm must have been the cause of much of her anxiety and obedience in the beginning of the novel. I wonder if she felt similar to the way I did, quite aware that she could say something wrong at any moment with this new group of people as opposed to the comfort of long-term relationships at home. Beyond this individual connection to Edna, our group definitely stuck out like a sore thumb, and I could only imagine that she would have felt the same. Walking into the Starfish, a small restaurant in Grand Isle, I couldn’t help but feel that all eyes turned to our strange grouping of people, obviously foreign to the area.
A view from our car, entering Grand Isle as the sun began to set and our surroundings turned darker.
Contrasting with her initial nervous feelings about this new environment, Edna found a deep calm in Grand Isle, and so did I. She peered into the openness of the ocean and hesitated to enter this abyss, but she eventually embraced its power by leaping into it. Though a different kind of fear, our group hesitated to go into the water at first too because we were fearful of pollution, having heard of oil spills in the past. I didn’t go beyond dipping my toes in, getting a tantalizing feel of the warm Atlantic Ocean. This became quite funny in retrospect as Andrew shared that he had gone swimming, that Edna had clearly gone swimming, and that it was just murky from the sand. With this newfound security, I began to crave the water. I ran into the ocean the next day, quickly lathering on my sunscreen and not letting it set as one is supposed to (likely causing the many tan lines I received). I felt a sense of freedom. I had been to many beaches, beautiful ones at that, but I looked to my left and right and saw no other body in the water – just me. That was an entirely new feeling; it was as though the ocean belonged to me, and I could swim as far down the coast as I desired. Yes, I owned the water, but I also succumbed to it. I lifted my feet from the seafloor, put my head up, and floated. I simply existed on this body of water, letting it choose where to take me with the currents. I felt bonded to Edna in that moment, how she must have felt the water wrap around her body and carry her in the waves in the same way.
Grand Isle seemed to be a place of discovery, not because of the life-changing critical decisions that one has to make as we may do in a fast-paced world, but because of the single, the almost only choice to relax. I experienced a new meaning to this word on the trip. I even hear it spoken with a slow exhale… “relax.”
After swimming as one with the water and basking in the intense sun, I felt as though I was in a daze. I lazily made my way back up the beach house steps and plopped myself on a chair. I continued reading the novel, but this time, I became totally consumed by the words on the page because my mental energy was only directed here and nowhere else. As we headed back inside for our seminar, I remember feeling purely relaxed. When was the last time I felt like this? It must have been years. At home, even when I have “nothing to do,” I still feel pressured to do something because God forbid that I sit idle. In Grand Isle, there was nothing else I could possibly be doing but reading. When I took a deep breath, I recognized that there was no tightness in my chest. I looked at my fingernails as if I had seen them for the first time. They were long and strong, much different from the usual short length that comes from my picking them so often as a nervous habit. I know that Edna learned to feel this same freedom in Grand Isle over the course of her holiday.
““When Edna was at last alone, she breathed a big, genuine sigh of relief. A feeling that was unfamiliar but very delicious came over her. She walked all through the house, from one room to another, as if inspecting it for the first time.””
I began to understand how as Edna got a taste of freedom and agency over herself, it became impossible to let go. I walked along the water, and all I had to do was what I wanted to do. If I wanted to take a step to my left and wet my toes, I could. I could turn around and walk back, or I could walk for miles and miles. The choice was mine and mine only. Though this is simple, nobody was there to pose another option. I would dare say that I did not even appreciate what it meant to be alone until this trip.
Now, while I thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of Grand Isle, I am at times so devastatingly held back from enjoying the simple beauty of things because of my knowledge. After taking a variety of classes that essentially highlight how humans have destroyed the world, I have never been able to see things the same. I think I most resonated with Edna regarding her experience of no longer living in ignorance. I looked out onto the beach and saw the oil rigs far along the horizon, thinking of the drilling that must be happening along with it. Learning of the oil spill in Grand Isle, I recalled how my oceanography professor shared that the oil we see on the surface is only 15% of what was spilled, and most of it resides deep underwater. I looked at the land and saw endless agriculture, thinking of the trees that must have been cut down, ridding the place of rich biodiversity. As you likely can tell, this is just depressing. Yet I would not, not recommend it. Edna mentioned something so beautiful that I will refuse to forget:
“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”
This mindset I have acquired in recent years does cause me to suffer, but it also grants me something extremely powerful: choice. I choose to live my life no longer in ignorance because I can now consciously make changes to reduce the damage I feel humans have made. Though some of this action is small in scale, it grants me agency in the outcome of our world.
Over the course of my time there, I learned a variety of contrasting things that somehow worked together. Learning to relax, my brain was de-fogged and given room for thought. This room allowed me to appreciate The Awakening for its full value in relation to my life. I am incredibly grateful to have experienced Grand Isle through the lens of Edna as it entirely shaped my perception of this special place.