Edna's First Awakening Analysis

Edna’s first awaking happens in response to her being around people of Cajun descent who openly communicate and touch. While spending time on the beach with a Cajun women Edna is touched, this touch is not in a sexual way, but is outside the norm and starts Edna’s journey towards what she will accept versus what is socially acceptable. Edna says that mother-women “created the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm” {Baym 567). Edna does not consider herself to be a motherly-women. Edna’s second awakening occurs when she pushes the bounds of her immortality by swimming out farther than she thought that she could, but still makes it back to shore. This leads her to try new thing even to the point of speaking back to her husband. To speak
harshly back to one’s husband was blasphemy during this time, remember women where to be demure and sub-servient. Edna grows to love and yearn for Robert the son of a family acquaintance, this infatuation leads to her third awakening. The awakening of self-awareness, this self-awareness gives Edna the right, she feels, to determine her own destiny. She feels that her body is her own to give or to keep. She demonstrates this by moving out of her estranged husband’s house and aggressively kissing Robert at her apartment. These actions where unheard of and unacceptable socially for a proper lady.