Chapter XXI — Summary

Plot Summary

Chapter XXI of The Awakening takes place entirely at Mademoiselle Reisz’s rooftop apartment in New Orleans. Edna Pontellier pays a visit to the eccentric pianist, who greets her with a full-body laugh and mock surprise, having half-expected Edna would never fulfill her promise to call. The two women settle onto a bumpy sofa, and Mademoiselle Reisz makes coffee on the gasoline stove in her cramped kitchen. Over cups of coffee and biscuit, the musician drops a bombshell: she has received a letter from Robert Lebrun, written from Mexico City, and it is filled with references to Edna from beginning to end.

Robert’s Letter and the Chopin Impromptu

Edna is astonished that Robert wrote to Mademoiselle Reisz rather than to her, and she pleads repeatedly to see the letter. Mademoiselle Reisz teases out excerpts—“Have you seen Mrs. Pontellier? How is she looking?”—but refuses to hand it over. She also relays Robert’s specific request: that she play for Edna the Chopin Impromptu, his favorite piece. After considerable back-and-forth, Edna’s persistence wins out. Mademoiselle Reisz retrieves the letter from a table drawer and hands it to Edna, then seats herself at the piano. She begins with a soft improvisation that gradually melts into the opening minor chords of the Chopin Impromptu, then drifts into the quivering love-notes of Isolde’s song before returning to the Impromptu’s soulful, poignant longing.

Themes and Symbolism

Mademoiselle Reisz’s apartment is richly symbolic. Perched high above the city to discourage visitors, it is cramped and dingy, yet its windows let in all the light and air there is, and from them one can see the crescent of the river and the masts of ships. The space reflects a life of deliberate independence—comfort sacrificed for creative freedom, the magnificent piano dominating a room otherwise bare of luxury. When Edna announces she is “becoming an artist,” Mademoiselle Reisz cautions that the true artist must possess “the courageous soul—the brave soul that dares and defies.” This standard hangs over Edna’s trajectory for the rest of the novel, raising the question of whether she has the temperament to sustain genuine artistic and personal independence.

Emotional Climax and Foreshadowing

As twilight fills the room, the music and the letter combine to produce an emotional crisis in Edna. She sobs “just as she had wept one midnight at Grand Isle when strange, new voices awoke in her,” drawing a direct line between this scene and her earlier awakening by the sea. The interweaving of the Chopin Impromptu with Isolde’s love-death music from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is a pointed allusion: Isolde dies for a forbidden love, foreshadowing the destructive potential of Edna’s passion for Robert. When Edna departs, she leaves Robert’s letter on the floor, crumpled and damp with tears. Mademoiselle Reisz silently smooths it out and returns it to the drawer—a gesture that underscores the older woman’s knowing sympathy and the weight of feeling Edna cannot yet articulate.