Edna Pontellier In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

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From the moment we are born, to the moment we spread our athletic wings we are controlled. Our everyday mundane lives are disciplined by our parents. They tell us how to compose ourselves and sometimes to the point where we have forgotten our self-independence. Once we deem fit that we can soar and live a liberated life we opt out and leave the warm nest we are accustomed to. But what happens when you live in a time period like the late 1800's, that because you are a women you are not even cognizant of the restrains that have been installed within you? You leave a life governed within four walls, only to fall in another one. That is the case for Edna Pontellier in the novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Chopin dictates to us how the men in …show more content…
Pontellier traces the stencil well enough to suppress her being as an individual. Edna to him is a prized possession, and just as we polish our belongings to make them shine, Mr. Pontellier worries for Edna’s appearances. “You are burn beyond recognition… looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage” (2). She doesn’t belong to him as husband and wife belong to each other. Rather she belongs to him as property, one were you trim and build for value. Notice, she belongs to him, not the other way around. Just as she belongs to him, there are certain duties she is supposed to complete as his wife and a women. A night when he arrives home from a night out and he begins to tell her about his detour, he is annoyed that she pays him no attention, even though she is half asleep. “She was overcome with sleep, and answered him with little half utterance. He thought it very discouraging of his wife” (5). Just as she fails him as a wife she seems to fail as a mother. As he progresses to check on the sleeping children he has declared that their son Raul, has a fever and delivers his findings to Edna. As Edna is certain that there is no fever, he questions her motherly senses. “If it was not a mother’s place to look after children, whose on earth was it?’ (5). To Mr. Pontellier there are roles that husband and wife are supposed to play. The responsibility …show more content…
As the suave Robert was accustomed to having a married women who fancied him every summer, Edna was no exception for him. But to his endeavor she become more than sensual company, she becomes love. Perhaps Robert’s intentions were pure, he ultimately wanted a traditional wife. He was just like Edna’s husband in the way he feels about the role of a women. “Something put into my head that you cared for me; and I lost my senses. I forgot everything but a wild dream of your some way becoming my wife” (108). Robert’s grand desire is for Edna to leave Mr. Pontellier and be with him, once and for all. Edna is astound to discover Roberts intentions, rather than being thrilled that her one love wanted her. Though she was staggered because she realized that Robert wanted her for the same reason all men wanted a women. Robert failed to see that Edna wants to leave her husband because she needs freedom, the ability do as she pleases and be able to express herself as easily as the stroke of a paint brush. Though she let it be known that she would never belong to a man again. “I give myself where I choose. If he [Mr. Pontellier] were to say, ‘Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,’ I should laugh at you both” (108). As Robert comes to his senses and realizes that Edna can never be his in the way he would like her
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