It was day one of Bookpacking and I’d been up since five in the morning. The day before, I woke up at five in the morning, too, to primp and groom myself ahead of my parents’ six AM arrival time in order to secure good seats for the 140th annual USC Commencement. I sat in the heat, weighed down by a stack of fragrant leis, and walked across the stage with bleeding feet to accept my diploma. My extended family came out to support me, and I made the rounds with sincere gratitude and feigned energy. The day prior I’d spent submitting finals, finishing work projects, cleaning, packing, readying myself for another journey entirely, and by the time my family cleared out and I’d helped my mother clean up the dishes and graduation-themed décor, I was more than ready to fall into bed, my alarm set for five AM sharp.
It was this on my mind as our van rumbled down the raised Louisiana highways, past cypress swamps and dilapidated telephone lines with poles listing so far to the side they looked like masts in an abandoned pirate shipyard. I was tired. Bone tired. Dead tired. Social battery drained to zero, non-recyclable, dispose with caution.
Our blue beachside cottage in Grand Isle, Louisiana. An unexpected, last-minute delight after our arranged accommodations collapsed.
I was surrounded by my new classmates, my travel buddies and soon-to-be friends, but the exhaustion was weighing down my cheeks, and all I could bring myself to look forward to is the moment I could finally rest.
Lucky for me, we were headed for Grand Isle, where, à la Kate Chopin, we had a beachside cottage waiting for us, specifically for the purpose of rest.
Kate Chopin’s novella, The Awakening, follows Edna Pontellier, an American woman navigating Creole society in the 1870s as she vacations on the beach, strolls around New Orleans, and awakens to a burgeoning independence and passion that has laid dormant within her for her entire life. The novel’s subject matter is abstract, but poignant; the “awakening” to oneself, that vague urgency that comes with the consciousness of one’s own unarticulated potential. Through uninterrupted leisure and rest, Edna awakens.
Much like Edna, this Maymester marks a voyage towards independence for many of us. Travel, and by necessity the separation from the social and material comforts of our day-to-day lives, lends itself to self-discovery and individuation. We should all hope to awaken to some inner potential—whether that’s a love of reading, our ability to forge new connections, the joy in embarking to places unknown, or simply gaining awareness of what it feels like to sit in conscious contemplation of our experiences. None of that would be possible without one essential ingredient—rest.
By divine professorial authority, we have been instructed not just to keep up with our reading, blogging, and essaying, but to learn to rest. Before we can adjust to the rhythms of the Big Easy, we must first teach ourselves to slow down. To read our books in peaceful silence. Sit on the porch swing. Feel the warm sand. Watch the waves. Sleep.
The ocean like a wide-open field, and the liminal space on the beach.
The porch swing of my Romantic dreams. If only there weren’t mosquitos and I would’ve stayed out there all night like Edna in her hammock.
As we soaked in the days in our Grand Isle home, I found that there are so many more hours in the day when all you have to do is read, write, and rest. I felt the urge to multitask, to maximize, to struggle against the passage of time finally beginning to fall away. I had time. I could change into my swimsuit and dip my feet into the water. I could cook some food. I could take a warm shower. I could nap—and I did, sometimes twice a day—on the beach or on the porch or on the couch or in my bed. It was this potential, almost more than the actions themselves, that allowed me to finally release the stress I had been carrying with me through the end of the semester and into my graduation.
All the while, I delved into Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, sitting before the same ocean vista as Edna. I found myself moved not only by Chopin’s beautiful imagery but also by the subtlety of her subject matter. The novella, like its characters, meanders, without concrete structure, anchored not by a conventional plot but rather by its exploration of Edna’s interiority. This marks a departure from the Arthurian style of fiction, where the actions of protagonists and antagonists are guided by the demands of the plot. The advent of psychology in the Early Modern period changed literature forever; in this sense, The Awakening was ahead of its time, resembling a post-Freudian interest in the novel as a psychological portrait of a character.
“She had all her life long 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 that they concerned no one but herself.”
The nuances of Edna’s psychology are observed by more than just the reader; the characters around her—particularly Mr. Pontellier—react with concern and suspicion to her emergent interiority. Before her awakening, Edna’s emotions “had never taken the form of struggles,” remaining entirely internal and presenting no conflict with her ability to function as a well-mannered member of society. There existed a disconnect between Edna’s emotions and her behavior. However, this shifts after her summer in Grand Isle, when she can no longer ignore the feelings within her and takes action to align her life with her interior self. Her new behavior defies convention, an inconvenience to the people around her which prompts her husband to pathologize her discontent. Mr. Pontellier considers Edna’s unchaperoned walks throughout New Orleans such a sign of impropriety and bizarreness that he seeks counsel from a doctor, rather than recognize Edna’s frustration with the constraints of her life as a woman in the 1870s. He urges Edna to attend her sister’s wedding—to rest, to see her family, to get fresh air, and to remove her from the prying eyes of Creole society—but Edna refuses. Finally, to mitigate the scandal caused by Edna’s townhouse rental, Mr. Pontellier announces a trip to Europe in the newspaper without consulting Edna.
Art based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” whose protagonist slowly deteriorates into insanity under the restrictions of the “rest cure.”
Mr. Pontellier’s frantic actions reveal a sinister side to vacation; rest can be weaponized. Historically, rest has been used to simultaneously treat and punish atypical behavior in women. The “rest cure” was once a common treatment for “female hysteria” and other clinical conditions that in modern terminology could refer to anything from generalized anxiety and depression, to post-partum psychosis, multiple sclerosis, or even just sexual frustration. This treatment, as depicted in the famous short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," involved bed rest and strict avoidance of any intellectual stimulation for weeks at a time. Women who complained of ailments, displayed symptoms of mental illness, or rebelled against the patriarchal order could be locked in rooms for indefinite rest. Nowadays, it is easy for us to forget the oppressive potential of enforced rest (i.e. isolation and understimulation) when we crave it so much. Edna refuses to go on the trips her husband suggests, resisting his attempts to pathologize her newfound independence. However, it is impossible to ignore the positive influence of rest and travel in the novella, the liminal space of the beach at Grand Isle, and the uninterrupted time for rest and contemplation during which Edna’s awakening took root. Rest does create space for important growth and personal realizations, for Edna then and for us now. It is no wonder that, at the end of the story, Edna chooses to return to Grand Isle of her own volition, shedding her worldly restrictions once and for all.
In the spirit of Bookpacking, on our last day in Grand Isle, I decided to get in the water. I wanted to know what Edna felt, to feel the rejuvenation of endless sea stretching before me. I swam out far, beyond the breaking waves, and bobbed above the current. It was, to me, intentional activation of the senses. Intentional rest. Out there in the deep, far too deep to anchor my feet to the sand, Francesca spotted an ominous fin. My pleasure turned to panic in an instant. We raced back to shore. She was a stronger swimmer than I, and so I fell behind. My arms were tired. In that moment I shared Edna’s final fear of losing strength. But instead of the hum of bees, I heard my new friends laughing in the surf up ahead of me. And so I swam back to shore, slowly, slowly.