Music and images have always walked hand in hand. Even when we were little, music has a part of shaping our imagination. To put it a bit simply: our parents probably wanted to get rid of that one toy that played that one song over and over, but now grown up. we remember that toy and that song as one thing. In this modern world we live in, the media combines music and images to either add more emotion to a captivating scene in a movie, or make us remember that product we don’t really need but their background music is just so good, you feel the urge to buy whatever crap they were selling.
Maybe I’m weird but I enjoy listening to music and really focusing on how it makes me feel. Yes. I am one of those creeps that stares out the window while on the bus and looks directly at something in the street, but I am actually picturing herself being good at math, dancing like Britney Spears, or even daydreaming about that one guy. It all really depends on the music I am listening to. Music can give hope in so many aspects (like me and math) in its own unique way because while there are songs that might bring you down, there are those few “eye of tiger exceptions” that make you feel on top of the world.
This idea of connecting images to music appears in The Awakening with Mrs. Pontellier. The guests at the cottages were being entertained in a very casual get together. Everyone was dancing and having a good time but Mrs. Pontellier separated from the group and while she was admiring the view, Robert asked if she wanted to hear Mademoiselle Reisz play. This woman is only described as “a disagreeable little woman, who had quarreled with almost everyone, owing to a temper which was self assertive and a disposition to trample upon the rights of others.” Basically lady was a bitchbut despite this she sure knew how to play the piano.
Mrs. Pontellier seems to escape into another world when listening to music. Each different song brings different images into her head from a naked man standing on a rock in the sea shore to a simple woman petting a cat. Being these the times that they were, a woman’s head was the only place she could express what was really going on. The images Mrs. Ponellier evokes seem to show her desire for happiness and a want to be individual. As a reader I could really connect to this part of the novel and found it really interesting how a character could escape from her day to day troubles through music and images. This part shows that Mrs. Pontellier is not fully content with the society she lives or she would have never separated from the rest of the people in the party environment. The reason she wanted Mademoiselle Reisz to play was because she wanted an escape in that particular moment.
She had heard Mademoiselle Reisz play before but most of the time, it was from a far. The impact the live performance had on Mrs. Pontellier, was clear because instead of images “the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her.” (Chapter 9, pg 56) She did not just feel the superficial idea of the music but completely absorbed it as if she was in the ocean and the music was her ocean. Mrs. Pontellier goes through her day to day life being neutral towards those things that should make her happy and completely absorb her happiness, but instead she only feels what she should feel, when surrounded by something else, like music.
Mrs. Pontellier uses the music as an escape and to find happiness in a place no one really took into consideration during these times: a woman’s mind.
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