Chapter XXXVII — Summary

Plot Summary

Chapter XXXVII of The Awakening takes place almost entirely in the Ratignolle household, where Edna has come at Adele’s urgent request to be present during childbirth. Edna arrives at the drug store below the apartments and is greeted by Monsieur Ratignolle, who is carefully mixing a red liquid medicine. He explains that Adele’s sister could not travel from the plantation, leaving Madame Ratignolle “inconsolable” until Edna promised to come. A Griffe nurse has been staying with the family for the past week, and Dr. Mandelet has been visiting throughout the afternoon.

Edna goes upstairs by a private stairway and finds Adele in the salon, writhing in pain on a sofa. Her beautiful golden hair lies braided and “coiled like a golden serpent” on the pillow. Adele is frustrated that Dr. Mandelet is late and that Alphonse has not arrived. When the doctor finally appears, he asks Edna to wait in the salon, but Adele insists Edna stay by her side. Between waves of agony, Adele chatters to distract herself from the suffering.

Edna’s Psychological Crisis

As the labor intensifies, Edna becomes seized with “a vague dread.” Watching Adele suffer triggers fragmented memories of her own childbirth experiences—an “ecstasy of pain,” the heavy chloroform odor, a numbing stupor, and then waking to discover a new life she had brought into the world. But these memories feel “far away, unreal, and only half remembered,” underscoring how fundamentally disconnected Edna has become from the domestic identity that defines women of her social class. She begins to wish she had not come and contemplates inventing a pretext to leave, but something compels her to stay.

What follows is described as a “scene of torture” that Edna witnesses “with an inward agony, with a flaming, outspoken revolt against the ways of Nature.” This revolt is not merely squeamishness—it represents Edna’s fundamental rejection of the biological and social machinery that binds women to motherhood. She sees in Adele’s suffering the full cost of the “mother-woman” ideal that she has been trying to escape throughout the novel.

Adele’s Warning

The chapter’s emotional climax arrives after the birth, when Edna, “still stunned and speechless with emotion,” leans over to kiss Adele goodbye. In an exhausted whisper, Adele delivers the chapter’s most consequential line: “Think of the children, Edna. Oh think of the children! Remember them!” This plea carries the weight of the entire Creole social order—a mother’s duty to sacrifice personal desire for her children’s welfare. Adele, the novel’s embodiment of selfless motherhood, voices the one obligation Edna cannot fully dismiss, even as she rejects every other convention.

Significance and Themes

Chapter XXXVII is a pivotal turning point that sets the final tragedy in motion. The serpent imagery in Adele’s braided hair evokes the biblical Fall and the curse of painful childbirth imposed on Eve, linking the suffering of motherhood to an inescapable, ancient punishment. Edna’s “revolt against the ways of Nature” reveals that her awakening has reached its most radical conclusion: she rejects not just social convention but the biological imperatives that society uses to justify women’s confinement. Yet Adele’s whispered warning reminds Edna that her children remain her one unbreakable bond to the world she longs to leave. This irreconcilable tension—between absolute personal freedom and maternal responsibility—drives Edna toward her final decision in the chapters that follow.