“The Voice of the Sea Speaks to the Soul“: Voicing Silence in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and in Rebecca Migdal’s Graphic Adaptation

Abstract

This article examines Kate Chopin’s second novel, The Awakening, in conjunction with a graphic novel of this work developed by Rebecca Migdal in The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3 and aims to study the use of silences in Chopin’s novel and the graphic version. This analysis examines non-linguistic communication presented in Chopin’s novel in the figure of her literary alter ego, Edna Pontellier. The methodological framework of this investigation draws on intermedial semiotics with the aim of discussing the use of the literary resource of silence as a visual communicating device in Chopin’s cornerstone of feminist literature The Awakening.