Just Keep Swimming

In chapter 10, the reader finds out that Mrs. Pontelier has trouble swimming. Despite everybody’s efforts and help, she continues struggling and having a fear of the ocean. Dory the fish should have met Mrs. Pontelier and fixed this problem ASAP because it’s not really about the fact that Mrs. Pontelier can’t swim, and it’s not really that the ocean is the ocean and she is fearful of it. This particular idea of a woman not being able to swim and the description of her needing constant reassurance towards it, is a metaphor for the constraints she has. In this particular part of the novel she is empowered when she learns to swim and I believe this is when her awakening begins, When she sees she can be dependent on just herself, and when the unknown seems conquerable.

This part of the book really got my attention because of the way Chopin describes Mrs. Ponteliers newly found swimming abilities. She begins by describing Mrs. Pontelier as a child who discovers something amazing and new. The idea of finally understanding something or even simply understanding empowers anyone. In this particular case, Mrs Pontelier had been trying to learn to swim during the whole summer, and has depended on others to teach her but ultimately it was up to her to take the first stroke.

After achieving something like this, her attitude becomes different. As soon as she gets a taste of what it is like to achieve this on her own she wants to swim out further and she became “daring and reckless”. This is not just towards the water. The descriptions given by Chopin make it pretty obvious that it is not about the water and swimming.

“She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.” (Chapte X, PAGE 60)

Ms. Pontelier, comes face to face with an idea that even if the ocean seems like a lonely path, it still excited her to think of what limits there could be in something that seems never ending, these limits that she could reach by going out further. The last line of this quote shows how the character herself associated the idea of her swimming with reaching something that won’t hold her back and becoming lost. Maybe by becoming lost in something that doesn’t hold her back but keeps making her want to “swim more”, Mrs. Pontelier can finally find that piece she is missing that held her back before, that piece that made her cry for no apparent reason. This whole part foreshadows the idea of Mrs. Pontelier completely changing her perspective on things. In this same page, when Mrs. Pontelier looks towards the shore and sees the people she left, she describes the water as having “the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome”. She has not swum out a great distance and is more intimidated by the distance to swim back than that of the rest of the ocean. This is the distance that holds her back, her husband, her children, and society in general. This is what prevents this character to be able to “swim” out and test the waters. She is bound by the chains of what is expected of her versus what she wants for herself.

There is another part that seems to foreshadow something negative. While still far from the shore “a quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time appalled and enfeebled her senses”. It seems that while there is all this that Mrs. Pontelier can achieve, there might be a negative effect to it. As if her want to push her limits might take her to an extreme limit and that might be the other things that hold her back from getting there.