Edna Pontellier In The Awakening

Edna Pontellier is a woman in control of her life. She and her husband, Léonce, have frequent power struggles due to this. When he returns from his business trip and goes to check on their sleeping children, Léonce is convinced that one of them has a fever and needs looking after, but not from him. Léonce tells Edna to go look after her kids, and when she refuses and says that she checked before and they were both fine he starts to reproach her for neglecting her family and not caring about her kids. Edna, finally, finds herself going to the kids’ room just to calm Léonce down; but she never tells him what she did or how the kids were. After this Edna feels: “An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in an unfamiliar part of her
consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish.” (p 7) Edna also moves out of the family’s home, an already uncommon practice in the Victorian Era, without waiting to know how her husband feels about this. She does this because she can control her own life, and does not need to wait for anyone’s opinion on what she does.