The Awakening, By Kate Chopin

Written by Kate Chopin during the Victorian period, The Awakening deals with woman’s rights issues such as women in society, women’s roles, and women’s personal identity. More specifically, the narrator and protagonist, Edna Pontellier desires the aspects of love outside of her loveless marriage, and pursues a way to fit in to an incompatible society. Compared to Adele Ratignolle, the ideal woman and mother of the time, Edna is subpar with the attention she gives her family. As a way to find herself and find some happiness, Edna seeks to empowerment by believing that freedom can be obtained through impulsive and taboo actions. Women of the Victorian Era had to find a suitable identity that was acceptable in society, but Edna runs from the responsibilities and seeks her own
Claiming that her actions where only done in her youth, Edna acts without thought while moving through the meadow as a child and even as an adult, this vice still follows her. When asked why, Edna describes that “I don’t remember now. I was just walking diagonally across a big field.”(Page 16) But she never knew why, her actions were impulsive. Previously not being able to swim, the water surrounding the Grand Isle serves as a cage to contain Edna to her life and responsibilities that society gives her. By the lessons given by Robert Lebrun to learn how to swim, Edna gets a taste of symbolic freedom by leaving the island. Not accustom to the flirtatious Creole lifestyle, and through innocent actions, Edna forms a love interest with Robert. As explained by Adele Ratignolle, “She is not one of us; she is not like us. She might make the unfortunate blunder of taking you seriously.”(Page 19) Edna is an outsider in the ways of their culture and by the means of society; she is not happy with her life and how society wants her to present herself, “Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a