"She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining"
About this Quote
Chopin nails the quiet cruelty of attachment: it flares brightest not in presence but in interruption. The sentence moves like a small weather system, turning romance into atmosphere. Missing him is not proof of grand passion so much as a reaction to a changed climate, a disruption of routine. That comparison to the sun is doing sly work. Sunlight is essential, yes, but also taken for granted; you don’t praise it every morning, you just live inside it. Only when it’s blotted out do you feel its power on your skin.
The subtext is almost anti-sentimental. Chopin refuses the love-story habit of treating longing as automatically noble. Here, longing is a symptom of absence, not a guarantee of depth. The phrase “some pretext” suggests his departures aren’t tragic necessities; they’re excuses, socially acceptable little vanishings. That implies a relationship shaped by external pressures and evasions - the kind of half-freedom, half-performance Chopin so often anatomizes in her portraits of marriage and desire.
Context matters: Chopin wrote in a world that trained women to organize their lives around men, then pretend it was natural. By framing him as weather, she hints at how easily a person can become infrastructure - not adored, but assumed. The line’s sting is that it catches the reader recognizing a common emotional lie: we confuse the shock of deprivation with the presence of love, because craving is louder than contentment.
The subtext is almost anti-sentimental. Chopin refuses the love-story habit of treating longing as automatically noble. Here, longing is a symptom of absence, not a guarantee of depth. The phrase “some pretext” suggests his departures aren’t tragic necessities; they’re excuses, socially acceptable little vanishings. That implies a relationship shaped by external pressures and evasions - the kind of half-freedom, half-performance Chopin so often anatomizes in her portraits of marriage and desire.
Context matters: Chopin wrote in a world that trained women to organize their lives around men, then pretend it was natural. By framing him as weather, she hints at how easily a person can become infrastructure - not adored, but assumed. The line’s sting is that it catches the reader recognizing a common emotional lie: we confuse the shock of deprivation with the presence of love, because craving is louder than contentment.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899) — passage from the novel expressing Edna Pontellier's feelings toward her husband (public domain). |
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