Is Edna Pontellier's True Identity In The Awakening By Kate Chopin

The Awakening by Kate Chopin centers around a woman named Edna Pontellier who yearns for freedom from her societal roles and to become her own individual. Throughout the story, Mrs. Pontellier endures many phases and socializes with people of different roles in society, Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, to discover her true identity. In this article, the author goes into depth describing Edna’s awakening to what she wants for her life versus what society thinks she needs to be. Megan P. Kaplon, suggests that Edna’s journey to individuality and freedom is reached at the end of the book from Edna’s suicide to be freed from her duties as a mother (2012). Mrs. Pontellier attempts to abandon her role as a mother throughout the story in an attempt to become the person she desires to be (Kaplon, 2012). The author proposes that the story focuses on Edna’s realization of her societal roles that must be fulfilled while she dreams of being an artist, yet what she truly wants is a more sexualized, somewhat masculine, lifestyle which she cannot have due to her motherly duties (Kaplon, 2012). The author argues that motherhood is a concept throughout the entire story, although Edna wants
In Chopin’s time, individuality for women was not a thought as it was believed that a woman’s place was in the home raising her children. Chopin emphasized that although Edna was fully aware of this she wished to lead a different life and eventually sought to live a more masculine life to have her own identity; however, in the end, the nature of motherhood overcame Edna and once she realized that she can never lead a male life she decided to end her life so that she could finally be freed. Kaplon was stating that in this era a woman could not be herself and that her destiny was immediately fated for her, thus some women such as Edna could only find escape from inevitable motherhood through