Who is montel in the awakening

He decides to go to Klein's Hotel to play billiards and invites young Lebrun, but the latter prefers to remain behind to talk with Edna. Pontellier, an attractive woman with yellowish-brown hair, and Robert talk about various trivial subjects, then about themselves. Robert speaks of traveling to Mexico in the fall. He always talks about taking such a trip, but never does.

At the New Orleans mercantile house that employs him, his ability to speak English, French, and the language of Mexico—Spanish—makes him an asset as a correspondent and clerk. He is on summer vacation, lodging with his mother, Madame Lebrun, a widow.

The income she receives from the enterprise enables her to lead a comfortable life. Pontellier chats about her father's plantation in Mississippi and about her childhood home in Kentucky. She reads a letter from her sister, who is engaged to be married, then goes inside to dress for dinner.

Robert walks out to the croquet game for some amusement with the Pontellier children, who enjoy his company. He reports the news and gossip he heard during the day. Sleepy, she hardly responds. He is disappointed that she exhibits little interest in his conversation. When he looks in on his children, he discovers that one of them, Raoul, appears to have a high fever.

He reports his discovery to his wife. She doubts that Raoul is sick, saying he was well when he went to bed. Edna gets up and checks Raoul, then returns without saying anything. Edna goes out on the porch and cries profusely, although she is not sure why. In the morning, Mr. Pontellier gives his wife half of his billiard winnings from the day before. She and the children bid him good-bye as he goes to work.

He will not be back until the following Saturday. A few days later, she receives a box of candies, fruits, and other goodies from her husband in New Orleans. She shares the bounty with the boys' nurses, who declare Mr. Edna agrees. Pontellier has only a feeling that his wife is neglecting the children, but no evidence. He regrets accusing her of doing so. He is aware, though, that whenever they injure themselves at play they do not run to their mother for sympathy.

Instead, they bear their suffering and return to play. In battles with other children, they stand their ground. But there are many mother-women vacationing at Grand Isle—self-effacing women who closely protect their children and adore their husbands. Ratignolle has three children and talks about a fourth. She sits in the rocker while Mrs.

Pontellier occupies the top step. Robert is seated nearby. Although Mrs. Pontellier is married to a Creole , she is generally uncomfortable around other Creoles. They are so open and frank about matters of sex.

They have not a hint of prudery. Every summer at Grand Isle, Robert cultivates a friendship with a female resident—perhaps a young girl one summer or a widow or a married woman the next. Pontellier is his current favorite. Robert jokingly tells her of his former passion for Madame Ratignolle. Edna is not sure whether Robert is joking or is serious. Edna begins brushing a sketch of Madame Ratignolle. Robert sits on a lower step to observe. Chapters Edna shares with her a memory of her childhood in Kentucky, when she was walking through a green field.

Edna is not used to such a show of affection. When she was a girl, she and her sister Janet often argued. Her older sister, Margaret—dignified and practical—did not show her emotions readily.

Margaret kept house after their mother died. She had crushes as a girl on a cavalry officer and on a young man engaged to a neighbor. In addition, she thought often of the image of a tragedian and kept a picture of him. When she was alone, she often kissed it.

She enjoyed his attentions and believed that he and she were of the same mind in their tastes and other ways, but they were not. Her father and her sister Margaret opposed the relationship because he was a Catholic. She developed an affection her husband. However, at other times she forgot about them.

A year before, they stayed with their grandmother in Iberville for part of the summer, and Edna got along fine without them except for an occasional intense desire for their presence. Although she would not admit it to herself or others, she felt somewhat relieved to be free of them for a while.

She was not altogether suited to child-rearing. Two nursemaids follow. Edna joins the children. Why shouldn't she? You Creoles! When he returns to his mother's cottage, Robert goes to her room at the top, where she is working at a sewing machine.

A black girl pumps the treadle. Madame looks out the window and notices that her younger son, Victor, is about to leave with the rockaway. She asks Robert to call to him. When he whistles out the window, Victor does not look up. Madame Lebrun then calls to him, but he ignores her and drives off. She says she received a letter from him saying that he will be in Vera Cruz, Mexico, the following month and that Robert could join him if he wished. On a Saturday evening a few weeks later, Madame Lebrun hosts a dinner in the hall of the pension for her lodgers and their guests, including many husbands of the women residents.

There is entertainment—music, dancing, recitations. Madame Ratignolle plays a waltz while others dance. Robert then goes out to get Mademoiselle Reisz to play. She is a homely, disagreeable, middle-aged woman. After Robert escorts her into the hall, she plays brilliantly, with passion, bringing tears to Edna's eyes.

Although the hour is late, all the diners go to the beach to bathe. But Edna is disappointed when Robert drops behind to talk with others. Of late, he has avoided her, and she wonders why. Edna, who been taking swimming lessons to overcome her fear of water, is anxious when she ventures into the gulf.

But she stays afloat and exults in her newly found power. When she goes too far out, she panics. But in a moment, she regains herself and swims ashore. While she walks back to the pension, Robert catches up.

She tells him the evening has been exhilarating. I wonder if any night on earth will ever again be like this one. There must be spirits abroad tonight. When they reach the pension, she lies down in a hammock in front of her cottage while he smokes a cigarette. Robert leaves. But she refuses to move. He goes inside, irritated, and paces about. In the past, she would have acceded to his wishes. He then becomes stern and says he will not allow her to sleep outside.

Don't speak to me like that again; I shall not answer you. Mariequita speaks with Robert in Spanish, asking whether Edna is his sweetheart. He tells her she is married with two children. Mariequita then notes that a man named Francisco absconded with the wife of a man named Sylvano, who had four children.

They took Sylvano's money, boat, and one of his children. Beaudelet remains at the boat to tinker, and Mariequita walks off with the basket of shrimp she brought with her. At the mass, Edna feels faint. Robert takes her to the house of a friend, Madame Antoine, a heavy and clumsy but welcoming lady. When Robert goes back out to smoke, Edna bathes her face, neck, and arms in water from a basin, takes off her shoes, and lies down on a bed.

When she hears Robert talking with Tonie—Madame Antoine's son, who has returned from church—she falls asleep. After awakening later in the afternoon, she goes outdoors and spends time with Robert under orange trees. They dine on food he has prepared. As evening draws on, she and Robert return to Grand Isle in Tonie's boat.

She is surprised, for he had mentioned nothing of his trip to her while he was reading to her that morning. And he is going that very evening. The others express similar opinions. Robert says with some measure of irritation that he has been saying for years that he would be going to Mexico. Then he explains that the best way to meet, Montel, the man who invited him to Mexico is to take a certain steamer from New Orleans.

To be on time for it, he must leave at ten that evening with Beaudelet, who is transporting a load of vegetables. After Edna returns to her cottage, she tells the boys a story and then sits out on the porch. Robert comes by twenty minutes before leaving to say good-bye. You don't even offer an excuse for it. He asks her not to forget him, promises to write her, and walks off toward Beaudelet and his boat.

Edna, in tears, realizes that she is infatuated with Robert. But he is leaving at a time when the new Edna—the awakened Edna—is throbbing with emotions. Once, Robert beat up his brother for mercilessly insulting the Mexican girl Mariequita, Reisz says.

Edna takes a swim and walks back to her cottage with Reisz. After their summer sojourn on Grand Isle, the Pontelliers return to their New Orleans home, a large white house with columns on the veranda and bright flowers in the yard. The inside of the house is elegant and tasteful, with plush carpeting, tapestries, and paintings.

Pontellier receives guests on Tuesday afternoons. Maids serve liqueur, coffee, and chocolate. In the evenings, Edna and her husband sometimes attend an opera or a play. She says she simply felt like getting away. Belthrop was among the attendees. He then complains about the cook, saying the fish, roast, and vegetables were ill prepared. Good night. The narrator says, "All the mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the perfumes and the dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and foliage.

But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. She paces, tears up her handkerchief, and removes her wedding ring and flings it to the carpet. She stamps on it. Taking a glass vase from a table, she hurls it into the hearth. A maid hears the crash and enters. She cleans up the glass and finds the ring on the floor. She gives it to Edna, who slides it back onto her finger.

She declines, saying he should not spend so lavishly but should be saving money now and then. On the porch, he kisses her good-bye and heads off to his office. The boys are playing with their wagon, hauling sticks and blocks, under the supervision of the quadroon. A fruit vendor is passing by. But Edna has no interest in anything she sees. They are all of a world to which she no longer belongs. After she goes inside, she selects several of her sketches and takes them to Madame Ratignolle's. On the way, she thinks of Robert.

She is still under his spell. She is not thinking of any one moment with him—just of him, his being. Madame Ratignolle lives nearby in spacious apartments above her husband's prospering drugstore on the corner of a street. There, Edna shows her the sketches, saying she wishes to take more of an interest in art and is thinking of studying with a local artist.

After they eat an excellent meal, Mr. Ratignolle observes that Edna looks a bit unwell and suggests a remedy. When she leaves, Edna feels depressed.

The happy domestic life she witnessed is not for her, she realizes. She sees in it only boredom. In the ensuing days, Edna begins doing what she wants to do and even stops hosting the Tuesday afternoon parties. She comes and goes as she pleases; she does not worry about whether she is managing the household properly.

But she does not back down. She can be as insolent as he can. Perhaps I shan't always feel like it. And she is a better musician than Edna is a painter, he adds. It isn't on account of painting that I let things go. I don't know. Let me alone; you bother me. Life seems senseless. On a day that she is unhappy, she looks up Mademoiselle Reisz's address in Bienville Street and goes to her home to hear her play. However, she discovers that Reisz has moved; the people occupying her former home do not know her new address.

When she goes to a nearby grocery to inquire further, the grocer says he does not know where she moved but is glad she is gone. He does not like her. Edna then goes to a familiar address—that of Madame Lebrun—to learn Reisz's whereabouts. Edna confides to Madame Ratignolle much of her past history of infatuation with unattainable men. They are interrupted by Robert approaching with their children.

Edna joins the children in their play tent on the beach while Madame Ratignolle asks Robert to help her back to her cottage. In Chapter 8, Madame Ratignolle asks Robert to leave Edna alone rather than continue with his devoted, if platonic, attentions.

After walking Madame Ratignolle to her room, Robert joins his mother, who mentions that their friend Montel is in Mexico, should Robert like to join him there to pursue business interests. Robert is impatient to learn more about this prospect but is easily distracted by his mother's mention of Edna's likely return from the beach. All her life she has maintained the duality of "that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.

Note, however, that Chopin uses the term "occasionally" rather than "consistently:" Edna's small life is not one destined for greatness. Prior to her married life, Edna experienced several sexual, passionate obsessions with men that could not lead to actual relationships. While fixated on a dead writer, Edna felt that the "persistence of the infatuation lent it an aspect of genuineness. The hopelessness of it colored it with the lofty tones of a great passion.

Further, she enjoyed the subterfuge of such a relationship: "Anyone may possess the portrait of a tragedian without exciting suspicion or comment. This was a sinister reflection which she cherished. When she says about her running away from the prayer services that "I was a little unthinking child.

Even her actions later in the novel arise partly from genuine rebellion and partly from whimsy. Rather, she feels them, and is reduced to trembling, choking tears. Even so, the others have clearly enjoyed the performance. Robert suggests that the party go for a nighttime swim. Remembering the passionate infatuations that had consumed her before marriage, Edna is suddenly struck by the contrast between those feelings and the feelings she has now in her marriage.

Similarly, the nature of her former mental images testifies to the narrowness of her earlier mindset. The female was symbolized by the figure of the bird, with which the narrative repeatedly associates the Victorian woman. Significantly, Edna does not identify with the bird in her vision but rather with the man abandoned by it. She focused on his loneliness rather than the motivations and aims of the female figure that had left him behind.

Her internal change will be symbolized by a refiguring of the earlier image, as Edna will emerge naked, as a feminized version of her masculine figure of solitude.

The visions described in Chapter IX serve as a mark against which to measure Edna development as the novel progresses. The secondary characters that surround Edna in these early chapters of self-discovery are quite important. They often foreshadow the later events of the narrative. They symbolize two stages in the life of a respectable Victorian woman.