A few weeks prior to getting on a flight to Louisiana, I remember all I could think about was one thing: humidity. Humidity and I don’t agree with each other and being uncomfortable for more than a few minutes makes me upset, but the swamps and marshes of Louisiana have a way of growing on you.
I’ve been to New Orleans once before in my life, and the extent of it was seeing the Audubon Aquarium and Bourbon Street, which you can imagine is scary to a 14 year old. But I still had high hopes for this trip; the idea of staying in a beach house while also receiving academic credit was very appealing to me, but what I did not expect was to see myself so much in a book that I had never even heard of.
Golden hour at the beach house.
As the city gave way to endless stretches of road and tall cypress trees, we joked on the bus that we were leaving civilization. I noticed the distance between houses getting bigger and bigger, until eventually the suburbs gave way to wetlands. The sky was a light gray, signaling a storm, and I thought about how eerie everything looked; rural Louisiana is a far cry from the busy city I’m used to in LA, but it was a welcome change. I felt a little bit like a child seeing Disneyland for the first time. I saw billboards about crawfish, little shacks on the river's edge advertising fresh seafood, and heard some country music I wasn’t even aware existed, and I say that as someone who does listen to country. The scenery didn’t change much as we got closer and closer to Grand Isle, Louisiana, our destination. In addition to not knowing the book, I had also never heard of Grand Isle and I have to say, it is a treasure.
On Tuesday, our first full day in Grand Isle, I began reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin. This was a book I didn’t know existed before this trip, let alone knew the plot. Little did I know, I would read something written by a woman in the 1890s that would mean so much to me in 2024.
I read on the beach which is something I never get to do, I mean when is the beach right in your backyard? And at first, I wasn’t really sure how I felt about the novel. We meet Edna and her husband, and, of course, Robert who charmed me in about two lines. Edna and her family, along with a few other Creole families, spend much of their summers in Grand Isle, away from the busy city. Reading the story of her journey, in the exact place where she goes through a transformation, is an interesting feeling. Kate Chopin has a way of capturing mundane and often sleepy moments that, in addition to being on the island, help transport you to the setting that Edna is living in. Being on that beach, having quite literally nothing else to do except read and relax, was like nothing I’ve really experienced before.
““The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude...””
I would be a lousy sailor in a greek myth, the siren’s would easily win.
In Grand Isle, the sea really does beckon you to it. During our lectures, next to the big windows of the house, I would catch a glimpse of the tide and think about how nice it would be to go for a swim. The gulf waters of Kate Chopin’s time were most definitely much cleaner than the gulf is today, but regardless I found myself going for a swim when I could. I loved what the ocean represented in this book; Edna’s transformation begins and ends in the ocean and I can see how Grand Isle provides the perfect setting for that. There is nothing in Grand Isle, not back in Edna’s time, and not now. Staring at the ocean, for me, has always been the source of a crisis, existential in nature. The ocean reminds me how small I am in the grand scheme of things and, like Edna, could swallow me whole if I allowed it. In the serenity and desolate nature of the beach, I was forced to do some soul searching; when life slows down, it's much easier for thoughts to creep in, thoughts I try to keep at bay most of the time.
While I’ve only just entered my 20s, I do feel like I have grown more in the past year than I ever have before. When Edna describes everything remaining the same, yet she feels herself different, I feel like she’s just described the past year and a half of my life. I feel like I live the same day over and over, but when I look back on the years, I realize everything has changed, everything about me has changed. As a recent graduate, I acknowledge that I came out a completely different person than I was when I entered college 4 years ago, and I can’t describe how much better I am for it. Like Edna, I feel as though change came suddenly. I realized one day that everyone seemed to know who they were, whether or not this was true, and how much I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know myself and this caused me a lot of inner turmoil because, in my head, how can I not know who I am? I’ve lived with myself for 21 years, I have to know.
““But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, disturbing.” ”
But this came with time; more time than I wanted, but time that I needed. I think I find something new about myself everyday, and this novel helped me realize how far I’ve come. Edna and I live very different lives but, somehow, I understand exactly what she felt. Realizing you’re changing is never easy and, if you’re like me, you hold tightly to the past, clinging on as long as possible to relationships and your past self that you’ve outgrown; growing up is never easy, and realizing you’re not who you once were is jarring, but it’s necessary.
I never thought I’d love this book as much as I did, and maybe I’ll read it in a few years and realize I actually don’t like it that much, and that’s okay. This book is what I needed at this place in my life, and I’m grateful. I’m grateful for Edna, and I’m grateful for Kate. It’s comforting to know that women who came before me have the same struggles, and these struggles are just growing pains.
Maybe rural Louisiana isn’t so bad.