The Awakening

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!"

Awakening-and-death arc: Edna Pontellier's Grand Isle summer → Robert Lebrun's departure → New Orleans rebellion (studio, parties, Arobin) → Robert's return and flight → Gulf suicide — the plot is consciousness expanding until social and maternal bonds snap, so plot scores 84.

When they reached the cottage, the two seated themselves with some appearance of fatigue upon the upper step of the porch, facing each other, each leaning against a supporting post.

Edna Pontellier the awakening wife, Robert Lebrun the Creole suitor who flees, Alcée Arobin the sensual substitute, Léonce Pontellier the conventional husband, Adèle Ratignolle the maternal foil, Mademoiselle Reisz the artist-muse — each a pressure on Edna's selfhood, so cast scores 82.

He stirred the smoldering ashes till the broiled fowl began to sizzle afresh. He served her with no mean repast, dripping the coffee anew and sharing it with her. Madame Antoine had cooked little else than the broiled fowl.

Thirty-nine chapters across Grand Isle, New Orleans, and Cheniere — the middle New Orleans rebellion (studio, gambling, Arobin) dilates before the return to the Gulf accelerates, so pace scores 80.

The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight.

Chopin's sensuous impressionism — the parrot, the sea 'whispering, clamoring, murmuring,' Edna standing 'naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun' — fuses body and landscape, so prose scores 88.

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!"

Creole Louisiana — Grand Isle cottages, New Orleans Pontellier house, Cheniere Caminada, the Gulf — every porch and piano carries social and sensual code; the sea as final arbiter, so world scores 86.

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!"

Ch.I — the caged parrot shrieking 'Allez vous-en!' while Mr Pontellier reads yesterday's paper, the Farival twins at the piano — immediately establishes confinement, Creole ease, and Edna's anomalous restlessness, so hook scores 86.

"I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me."

The female desire novel before the culture could admit it — Edna's refusal of motherhood-as-destiny — banned, recovered, foundational; proto-modernist interiority in 1899, so innov scores 92.

He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him—but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone.

Ch.XXXIX — Edna walks into the Gulf, Robert's 'Good-by—because I love you' unreceived, 'the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone' — suicide as the only uncolonized space, so ending scores 90.