Oppression: Emotions and Men

Sometimes emotions engulf us and we have no other option except to lie there and take it.

Our moods vary and events mark us and scar us.

And yet most of the times it’s extremely hard to give a detailed description of just what it is exactly we’re feeling.

Kate Chopin manages to so avidly capture Mrs. Pontellier’s mood after having an adverse encounter with her adoring husband.

Chopin describes her mood as being:

“An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was
like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul’s summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself.”

It’s safe to say strong emotion, especially when that of sadness and suffering, is generally accompanied by a tightening in your throat as your chest constricts and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness surrounds you. Chopin describes an ‘indescribable oppression’ with only those few words directing her thoughts to an almost cruel and repressing entity dominating her consciousness, her soul, and her whole body with anguish.

One would assume that this oppression is the emotion that harbors down on her rendering her a weeping mess. But that same oppression also signifies her husband. It signifies men. It indicates the males that run society and take advantage of women all the while they disregard them and hold them down on a pedestal that’s been crushed to the wooden floor. She is conscious of the tyranny she is subjugated to in a world where women are expected to do certain things and frowned upon when failing at completing them or reaching certain expectations.

She describes this knowledge as being stored in an unfamiliar part of her consciousness because she rarely ever uses said part of her awareness. Because while women may try to act all blasé and indifferent to the injustices that surround them daily, there’s still a part of them deep down that understands just what it is that is happening. And seeing how Grand Isle is a summer holiday resort, when she describes that sense of oppression as “a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul’s summer day” it’s almost ironic in the sense that in the present setting, it’s always summer. Which, apart from the obvious being that it’s existence takes away the happiest of her days and tints them with its being, the fact that it is always summer signifies a shadow that is constantly there. It is a daily oppression.

It turns out to be a mood. Or at least that’s what Kate Chopin says.

Something about Edna Pontellier that strikes me as refreshing in that point is that she admits to being in a mood, and formerly describes the cause as her husband. And yet she does not ensue to reproach her husband in brooding thoughts, or curse Fate for guiding her towards this inevitable path.

“She was just having a good cry all to herself”.

It’s funny how most of the times we cry or feel hurt, we think of the people or the events that hurt us and we sort of curse them out and blame them for our current pity-party.

So Edna admits fully to the whole cause of her salty tears, and yet doesn't lower herself to the former and pin-point her husbands faults, accepting the fact that she is sad, and that thinking negatively or gathering up fury won’t help. So she just cries.

And that’s admirable.