Edna Pontellier's Death In The Awakening

Deaths in pieces of literature are rarely mere devices to remove no longer relevant characters from the plot; deaths often contribute to overarching themes. Therefore, readers must not overlook death scenes, lest they miss key points of a work. In Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening, the ambiguous suicide of the protagonist Edna Pontellier comprises the very end of her story. The circumstances of Edna’s untimely death, the positioning of the death scene in the story, and ambiguity of the implications of her death all endorse Chopin’s belief that an individual cannot live apart from both society and nature.

Edna’s death, although sudden, is not entirely unexpected considering the lack of fulfillment Edna feels in her newly awakened being. The

Remember them” (The Awakening, page 146). Edna realizes society’s inability to separate her from her socially assigned roles stems from nature’s inability to separate her from her biologically assigned roles. As a mother, Edna’s children are not just a part of her life, they are a part of her body. This biological connection cannot be broken, and even if Edna could break free from her marriage to Léonce to no longer be considered Mrs. Pontellier by society, she will always be her children’s mother as assigned by nature. Edna comes to see her children as “antagonists who had overcome her” (The Awakening, page 151). No matter how hard she tries to escape them, her children are a part of her – the strongest bond keeping her from becoming an individual. To Edna, death is the only way to evade their eternal grip. To return to civilization is to return to the roles of wife and mother. To die is

In the last scene, Chopin describes Edna as feeling “like some new-born creature” (The Awakening, page 152), and she describes Edna’s final sensations as being “the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks” (The Awakening, page 153). Both descriptions correspond to the new beginnings and hopefulness of springtime, suggesting that Chopin believes in a hopeful future for women and their roles in society. In Chopin’s time, women had yet to receive the political and social equality they deserve, so Edna’s death is inevitable. Although Edna fails to escape the confining social constructs of her time, Chopin’s use of positive and hopeful imagery indicate that she is hopeful for a time when women will not be defined by their husbands or their children and they need not be afraid to find their own individualistic place within society. In this future, women need not attempt to escape from society, a pursuit that Chopin believes will always be unsuccessful, but society will not expect women to fit into any one mold. For Edna, this hopeful future will come too late, but hope still remains for the rest of