Thoughts on Franzen's "Freedom"

There is a point in Freedom during which Patty, one of the two most central characters, reads Tolstoy's War and Peace in a period of three or four days of solitude in a log cabin. She's struck by the great expanse of time Tolstoy covers, and how long those days felt. It was like she had lived a whole lifetime.

This particular passage stood out to me particularly because I was engaging in a similar relationship with Freedom, which tells the story of the lifespan of an entire family, enveloping nearly three full generations and touching on a fourth, and which I read in about four days. A critic of the novel in The Guardian wrote that he didn't think Franzen was hubristic enough to be actually comparing his own work to that of Tolstoy, but I'm not so sure. Not having read War and Peace, I can't say whether it's fair of him to do so, either.

The very obviously deliberate choice of title places the entire book under the lens of a concept which at first does not seem central to the story, but which then becomes unavoidably pressing on the reader's mind somewhere in the middle of the book after a patch of passages which include a disproportionate use of the words "freedom" and "liberty." And this is a book very much about timeless problems, but which is also very much a book for its time. Questions of freedom are addressed in terms of everything from relationships and career to American imperialism and environmental politics. It even explores the concept of debt and financial obligation as a system of morality (a la David Graeber) via a son, Joey, who views every act of support from his parents as a debt to be repaid. That understanding of their relationship ultimately becomes untenable in a situation in which Joey must simply ask his father for help in a manner which he will certainly not be able to repay. 

Perhaps this was especially apparent because of my predilection against the term "freedom," but what I think Franzen's story ultimately and most powerfully articulates (in terms of the concept of liberty itself) is the essential emptiness of the term. Once we leave a romantic relationship which we had always felt was constraining us, we are free of particular limitations but fall into the restraints of other realities. "We always have a choice," we are told, and it's true to an extent - but we are also limited not only by the circumstances, or by the decisions of others, but also by our own dreams, our goals, our abilities, and by the paths we desperately wish to take but cannot. "Mistakes Were Made" is the title of Patty's therapy-assigned autobiography. The refusal to take the full responsibility or blame for all of the suffering endured by herself and her loved ones is at once reprehensible, understandable, and noble. By narrating the story from each of the character's perspectives we learn that the sometimes seemingly unforgivable actions made by the Berglunds are just the desperate efforts of trapped individuals. Freedom is the story of a family struggling to come to terms with those limitations, and the stories they tell themselves to understand the decisions they've made. With humor and tragedy, Franzen narrates that story without a single unifying "point" or "purpose." It is simply the complicated story of the life of a family. Free from the sentimentality and manipulative emotionality that I remember so strongly in Jonathan Safran Foer's books, Franzen managed to sadden and uplift me with the very real beauty of the struggle of loving one another, and ourselves.

An Awakening

You know those books with catchy titles or interesting covers, ones you haven't read, perhaps have only seen in your friend's hands or at the library? And you go through the next several years thinking about such a book that you've never read, and know nothing about, until finally you pick it up and quite simply do the deed, and read it from cover to cover? 

The West Windsor - Plainsboro High School Reading Guide for the tenth grade had listed Kate Chopin's The Awakening on its 2006-2007 list. I know half of my peers read the book, in large part because it was one of the shorter ones on the list. I, on the other hand, read Uncle Tom's Cabin and Walden, and quite frankly was not too too much the better for it. So The Awakening, with its catchy title and blue, serene, almost transportive cover, very much piqued my interest. I saw it from across the classroom and never really forgot about it. The story was supposedly about a woman coming into her own...something. Her own self? By way of her awakened sexuality, I later decided, after finishing it last week. 


Perhaps the most fascinating notion is that this book was written in the 1890s. Two centuries ago, Edna Pontellier was breaking barriers, and being flighty, and FEELING and searching for  feelings that would release her pent up desires and satisfy her hunger. I can think of a lot of women coming of age in the 20th century, and even in the 21st century,  who are yet to reach such heights. 


Maybe some of you have already read this book, so the synopsis I give will be short: Edna Pontellier is a married woman,  who lives in New Orleans with her husband and two children. The family vacation on Grand Isle, with other créole families who hail from New Orleans. There, staying as a guest in one of Madame Lebrun's cottages, Edna meets and falls in love with the proprietor's son, Robert. Upon her return to New Orleans, Edna realizes (as do those around her) that she's changed; she's unable to stay confined to the bourgeois routines that she previously engaged in during her passive pre-love existence as a boring housewife. Ultimately, she decides she is unable to strike a balance between honoring her children's needs, and her role as a wife, and her desire to be with Robert, who loves her back. 


This book surprised me with its charming, yet careful, plot construction and was somehow rather suspenseful. The dialogue wasn't heavy at all; the characters were rather terse with each other, and for once, a nineteenth century book seemed to realistically capture dialogue, without rendering it overwrought and verbose. This book seemed so modern that I kept checking the inside cover to remind myself that it was, in fact, written in the 1890s. Edna quickly becomes a relatable character to the 21st century reader. She's originally from Kentucky, though her husband is of French stock and is a native Louisianan; classic outsider, vacationing in the company of those she doesn't intuitively understand. There are allusions, I feel, to the idea of French séduction, and Robert is described as being such an innocent, compulsive séducteur, even though he appears to have shed that identity by the time we see him at the end of the book.  


Throughout the book, Edna has a recurring flashback to a memory of herself as a young girl, eschewing church services one Sunday morning, and walking "diagonally across a big field" with bluegrass that stood taller than she was; "she threw out her arms as if swimming when she walked, beating the tall grass as one beats the water." 


Edna's summer at Grand Isle is in fact reminiscent of this moment -- she is transported back to her youth because of a great many concurrent events. Robert teaches her how to swim. Edna is gently falling in love with Robert, and she only realizes it when he is leaving her, and the island, to pursue his luck at business success in Mexico. And when he checks out of Grand Isle, she mentally checks out of her marriage. When she returns to New Orleans, she's "walking through the green meadow again, idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided." She sends her children off to be with their paternal grandmother in the countryside, and stops taking house calls, something that offends her friends and her husband. She even picks up and moves to another house, a smaller house around the block from the Pontellier residence, and she means to stay there. And her return to the ocean, the book's final image, her ultimate inability to reconcile her role as a wife and mother and her role as a lover, serves as the ultimate destination for her wandering soul. 


M. Pontellier is an interesting character in all of this. He senses his wife's changed behavior, but his presence in her life is entirely peripheral. Until this particular summer, he still managed to control much of her existence, in part due to her submissive, if not indifferent, approach to married life. His wife's awakening appears to him to be a disease. 


It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier's mind to wonder if his wife were not growing a little unbalance mentally. He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world. 


Another moment in the book that I really loved was when Edna goes to visit  her perhaps most shrewd, knowing friend, Madame Reisz, a spinster and piano player who lives in relatively humble quarters in New Orleans, and who also vacationed on the island with the Pontelliers. Madame R knows that Robert loves Edna, and that Edna loves Robert, and guards this secret well. One fine day, when Edna goes to visit her, she discovers Robert at her friend's apartment. And after speaking with him and observing him, she reflects on what has happened between them. 


She recalled his words, his looks. How few and meager they had been for her hungry heart! A vision -- a transcendentally seductive vision of a Mexican girl arose before her. She writhed with a jealous pang. She wondered when he would come back. He had not said he would come back. She had been with him, had heard his voice and touched his hand. But in some way he had seemed nearer to her off there in Mexico. 


Have you guys felt this? I know I have. Separation does make the heart grow fonder. But Edna's life-changing meanderings through the most raw parts of herself are a direct response to Robert's parting. His return, of course, could never live up to what she expected it to be. But it was surprising to me that I felt her experience as if it were mine -- that sensation that someone's return has resulted in the loss of an idea of what their return would bring, or perhaps a loss of that ideal version of the person that would have returned, in a perfect world. And then this loss requires a certain mourning. This reflection on distance and intimacy was fascinating to read as part of a character's musings. 


This book is only 200 pages, and I was entirely consumed by it. I'm so glad I took the plunge and read it! I think it's a book that has a required re-read in it, perhaps in the next five years. For those of you who haven't read it, DO. And if anyone's read The Awakening, do comment on what you thought of it, sumreaders would love to hear your take.


D