Chopin, Kate - Nancy S. Ellis (essay date 1992)
Nancy S. Ellis (essay date 1992)
SOURCE: Ellis, Nancy S. “Insistent Refrains and Self-Discovery: Accompanied Awakenings in Three Stories by Kate Chopin.” In Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou, edited by Lynda S. Boren and Sara deSaussure Davis, pp. 216-29. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1992.
[In the following essay, Ellis delineates the role of music in “After the Winter,” “At Cheniere Caminada,” and “A Vocation and a Voice.”]
In The Awakening, Mlle. Reisz's piano music triggers Edna Pontellier's first emotional arousing: “The very first chords … sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier's spinal column. It was not the first time she had heard an artist at the piano. Perhaps it was the first time she was ready, perhaps the first time her being was tempered to take an empress of the abiding truth. … The very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves...
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