Edna Pontellier's The Awakening

Edna Pontellier is unhappy with her role as a wife and mother of two in the late nineteenth century. Her children are healthy and beautiful, her husband is one of the most patient men around, yet there is something missing from her domestic life. It is too bland, too monotonous, and Edna longs for something more—an independence too often out of reach from women in her position. The Awakening by Kate Chopin illustrates Edna’s development of self, as she learns to make her yearnings and curiosities reality. During her development of self, Edna experiences multiple awakenings in the form of personal feats, including teaching herself to swim, exploring her newfound sexuality, and taking her own life. During her summer stay at the Grand Isle, Edna teaches herself to swim, a skill all had failed to teach her before. Edna is …show more content…
Initially, Edna mistakes her feelings for Robert as the girlish infatuation she is so familiar with from her youth, but these emotions are different. For her, her relationship with Robert is a real and tangible connection; he is an attainable object of her affections. When Robert is away, Edna appeases her yearning for him through attention from Arobin, which is enough on a physical level, but not on an emotional level, the level Edna so desperately desires. Without Robert, Edna’s “entire existence [is] dulled,” but when he returns, so does the color return to her life (ibid. 46). Edna and Robert consummate their love in a few passionate embraces. While Edna’s kisses with Arobin were light and fleeting, her kisses with Robert are “full of love and tenderness,” expressing everything she’s felt since their stay in the Grand Isle (ibid. 107). Edna, a married woman, isn’t afraid of the consequences anymore; she wants Robert and only Robert, and now that the guilt is gone, she is no longer at war with herself. She knows that she deserves him, that she deserves happiness in its truest form:

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