Who Is Edna's Struggle For Freedom In The Awakening

When The Awakening opens, the reader meets Edna Pontellier. Edna is a wife and mother who is on a family vacation at Grand Isle. While vacationing, Edna becomes interested in a young man who goes by the name of Robert Lebrun. Robert and Edna then become close, but too close in Robert’s eyes. Robert realizes how fast the relationship between the two of them is moving, so he decides to flee to Mexico. Edna, who craves someone’s attention, becomes lonely without someone holding her hand. Just after she returns home to New Orleans, she acquires the love of another man: Alcee Arobin. She does not necessarily love Alcee, but he is the only one who will satisfy her needs, whether her needs are personal or sexual. By the time Robert returns, Edna has furthered her interest in painting and moved into a new house. When all is said and done, Edna realizes that everything is becoming too stressful, so she swims far out into the sea where she supposedly commits suicide. Critics have claimed that “the effect of this book was immediate and lasting” (Koloski 1). The reason for Chopin’s writing of this novel? Nobody really knows.

The “awakening” she experiences is simply a rebirth of what used to be her true self. Marriage is obviously a barrier in the novel from beginning to end. Edna starts out obeying her husband’s every need, but as the novel progresses, she finally gains confidence and begins to disobey him and make her own decisions. Kate Chopin uses The Awakening to “set off a firestorm of complaints from critics scandalized by its frank treatment of a woman’s frustration with her marriage, her emotional and sexual awakening and her eventual suicide” (3-4) to show how the character Edna is the backbone of this