Edna Pontellier’s Power in the Novel Awakening

In “The Awakening”, by Kate Chopin, Edna Pontellier, comes to realize that she is unhappy with the life she is living with her husband and children and thinks she should do something about it. She falls in love with a man named Robert Lebrun, but she can not be with him because that would not be acceptable to the society. The society did not allow her the freedom to love another man, so she thought that the only way to escape and be free was to kill herself at the end of the novel.

When looking at the ending of the novel through a realist lense, it suggests that Edna’s suicide is validated by the difficult situation she was in where she could not be with the love of her life because of society’s view that women should not divorce and stay faithful to their husbands and children.

Throughout the novel, Edna has realizations that push her towards killing herself because she knows that the life she wants can not be attained in the society she is living in.

When Edna begins to have feelings for Robert Lebrun, she knows that it is wrong and begins to think about her situation, “How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!”(Chopin 643). Here she foreshadows her death. Realistically, she knows that living a happy life with Robert is not going to be attainable, so the only way she can escape the life she is living is to kill herself, so she does not have to go through the pain of living without Robert.

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When Edna speaks out against her husband for the first time she, “began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul”(Chopin 657). She knows that the reality is that she can not always speak against her husband because that is considered to be wrong.

These realizations that she has shows her that her dream of living happily is not possible and the only solution is to end her life. The experiences Edna has with Robert Lebrun and Alcee Arobin made her want love that her husband did not give her. Her desire for this love was so strong that when she realizes she can not have it, she decides to kill herself. After Robert has left for Mexico, Edna finds love with a man named Alcee Arobin. When Arobin and Edna are together, he kisses her, “It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really responded. It was a flaming torch the kindled desire”(Chopin 698). She got a feeling with Arobin that she would not have gotten with her husband. She knew she could not be with Arobin just like how she could not be with Robert and she could not live with that. Edna falls asleep and wakes up to see that everyone else is gone and Robert is the only one beside her and she says, “A new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving only you and me as past relics”(Chopin 662). She liked the thought of her being alone with Robert.

Being with him gave her a sort of comfort that she did not experience with her husband. This love was something she did not want to live without and she could not live without because of society’s rule that women should stay faithful in their relationship with their husbands. Edna’s friend, Adele Ratignolle, being symbolic of the society she lives in, increases her hatred towards the society, which ultimately influences Edna to end her life. When Edna is at Grande Isle, she notices women who are nothing like her. She calls these women, “mother-women”, “They were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels”(Chopin 638). Adele Ratignolle is one of these women and Edna can not relate to her because she does not enjoy taking care of her children and worshipping her husband. These “mother women” are what society expects women to be, but Edna could not be someone who she is not. Despite Edna’s hatred towards society, she still befriends Adele Ratignolle.

When Edna begins to leave the hospital when Adele is about to give birth, Adele says to Edna, “Think of the children, Edna. Oh think of the children! Remember them!”(Chopin 719). Adele had a feeling that Edna would leave her children and she was right. Edna leaving Adele is symbolic of her leaving the society and its pressures because soon after she kills herself because she knows that realistically, she can not force herself to be the woman society wants her to be. Edna’s situation is very similar to that of Mrs.Wright from the “Waltz” because they both were unhappy in their relationships with their husbands. Mrs.Wright kills her husband because she no longer wanted to live with someone who neglected her. Similarly, Edna kills herself because she no longer wants to live with her husband and children. In both stories, the death of either the woman or the husband was the only realistic option because that was the only way that the women could escape the societies and be freed from their troubles.