The Awakening: Chapter Analysis

Summary: Chapter I
The novel opens on Grand Isle, a summer retreat for the wealthy French Creoles of New Orleans. Léonce Pontellier, a wealthy New Orleans businessman of forty, reads his newspaper outside the Isle’s main guesthouse. Two birds, the pets of the guesthouse’s proprietor, Madame Lebrun, are making a great deal of noise. The parrot repeats phrases in English and French while the mockingbird sings persistently. Hoping to escape the birds’ disruptive chatter, Léonce retreats into the cottage he has rented. Glancing back at the main building, Léonce notes that the noise emanating from it has increased: the Farival twins play the piano, Madame Lebrun gives orders to two servants, and a lady in black walks back and forth with her rosary
beads in hand. Down by the water-oaks his four- and five-year-old sons play under the watchful eye of their quadroon (one-quarter black) nurse.
Léonce smokes a cigar and watches as his wife, Edna, strolls toward him from the beach, accompanied by the young Robert Lebrun, Mrs. Lebrun’s son. Léonce notices that his wife is sunburned and scolds her for swimming during the hottest hours of the day. He returns the rings he’s been holding for Edna and invites Robert to play some billiards at Klein’s hotel. Robert declines and stays to talk with Edna as Léonce walks away.
Summary: Chapter II
Robert and Edna talk without pause, discussing the sights and people around them. Robert, a clean-shaven, carefree young man, discusses his plans to seek his fortune in Mexico at the end of the summer. Edna is handsome and engaging. She talks about her childhood in Kentucky bluegrass country and her sister’s upcoming wedding.
Summary: Chapter III
Léonce is in great spirits when he returns from playing billiards late that evening. He wakes Edna to tell her the news and gossip from the club, and he is disappointed when she responds with groggy half-answers. He goes to check on his sons and informs Edna that Raoul seems to have a fever. She replies that the child was fine when he went to bed, but Léonce insists that she attend to him, criticizing Edna for her “habitual neglect of the children.”
After a cursory visit to the boys’ bedroom, Edna returns to bed, refusing to answer any of her husband’s inquiries. Léonce soon falls asleep but Edna remains wide awake. She sits on the porch and weeps quietly as she listens to the sea. Though she has found herself inexplicably unhappy many times before, she has always felt comforted by the kindness and devotion of her husband. This particular evening, however, Edna experiences an unfamiliar oppression. It fills her “whole being” and keeps her out on the porch until the bugs force her back inside.
The next morning, Léonce departs for a week-long business trip. Before he leaves, he gives Edna some spending money and says good-bye to the small crowd that has gathered to see him off. From New Orleans, he sends Edna a box of bonbons that she shares with her friends. All of the ladies declare Léonce the best husband in the world, and under pressure Edna admits “she kn[ows] of none better.”
Summary: Chapter IV
Léonce cannot explain why he always feels dissatisfied with Edna’s treatment of their sons, but he perceives a difference between his wife and the other women on Grand Isle. Unlike the others, who are “mother-women,” Edna does not “idolize” her children or “worship” her husband at the cost of her own individuality. Edna’s friend Adèle Ratignolle, who embodies all the grace and charm of a romantic heroine, is the prime example of the mother-woman. Back on Grand Isle, Adèle, Edna, and Robert relax, eating the bonbons Léonce has sent and conversing about Adèle’s sewing, the chocolates, and, much to Edna’s shock, childbirth. As a result of her marriage to Léonce, who is a Creole (a person descended from the original French and Spanish settlers of New Orleans, an aristocrat), Edna has spent a great deal of time surrounded by Creole women. Yet, she is still not entirely comfortable with their customs. Their lack of self-restraint in conversation is at odds with mainstream American conventions. Nevertheless, they somehow possess a quality of lofty purity that seems to keep them free of reproach.
Summary: Chapter V
Since early adolescence, Robert has chosen one woman each summer to whom he devotes himself as an attendant. As he sits with Edna and Adèle by the shore, he tells Edna of his days as Adèle’s attendant. Adèle jests that, at the time, she had feared her husband’s jealousy, a comment that inspires laughter because it was accepted that a Creole husband never has reason to be jealous. Adèle says that she never took Robert’s proclamations of love as serious confessions of passion.
Robert’s decision to devote himself to Edna for the summer comes as no surprise to those on Grand Isle. Yet although Robert devotes himself to a different woman every summer, his playful attentions to Edna differ from his treatments of past women, and when he and Edna are alone he never speaks of love in the same “serio-comic tone” he used with Adèle. Edna sketches Adèle while Robert watches. He leans his head on Edna’s arm until she gently pushes him away. Adèle is disappointed that the finished drawing does not resemble her, but she is still pleased by the work. Edna herself is unsatisfied. She smudges the paint and crumples the drawing.
Edna’s children bound up the steps with their nurse some distance behind them. They help Edna bring her painting equipment into the house and she rewards them with bonbons before they scamper away again. Adèle experiences a brief fainting spell, which Edna suspects may be feigned. After recovering, Adèle gracefully retires to her cottage, meeting her own three children along the way and receiving them with “a thousand endearments.” Edna declines Robert’s suggestion that they go for a swim, unconvincingly complaining that she is too tired. She soon gives in to Robert’s insistent entreaties, however, and he places her straw hat on her head as they move toward the beach.

Summary: Chapter VI
How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Edna cannot determine why she initially declined Robert’s offer of a swim when she did wish to go with him to the beach. She begins to feel a strange light within her that shows her the way to “dreams,” to “thoughtfulness,” and to the “shadowy anguish” that brought her to tears the evening Léonce returned from the club. She is slowly beginning to think of herself as an individual with a relationship to the outer world, and the sound of the sea draws her soul to “inward contemplation” and wisdom that are disturbing in their newness and depth.
Summary: Chapter VII
Edna rarely discusses her feelings and private matters with others. Since childhood, she has been aware of a “dual life—the outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.” Throughout the summer at Grand Isle, her reserve gradually erodes because of her increasingly close friendship with the candid Adèle. Walking toward the beach arm in arm, the women form a tall, stately pair. Edna, lean and mysteriously charming, wears a simple muslin and a straw hat, while Adèle, typically beautiful in the fashion of the time, protects her skin from the sun with more elaborate dress. The two women sit down on the porch of Edna’s bathhouse, and Edna removes her collar and unbuttons her dress at the throat. The lady in black reads religious literature on an adjacent porch, while two lovers cuddle beneath the vacant children’s tent.
Noting Edna’s thoughtful silence, Adèle wants to know what Edna is thinking, and Edna searches her train of thought to reply accurately. She answers that the sea reminds her of a day when she walked through a large meadow near her childhood home in Kentucky, spreading out her arms as if swimming through the waist-high grass. Edna surmises that on that day, she had been escaping a dreary session of Sunday prayers. Although she insists that she has since adhered to religion out of a firm force of habit, Edna notes that “sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided.”
Edna is confused when Adèle caresses her hand gently. The Creoles’ open expression of affection still surprises her. Edna thinks back to the few relationships she had with other females as an adolescent. She was never close with her younger sister, Janet, and her older sister Margaret was always occupied with the household duties after their mother died. Edna’s girlhood friends tended to be self-contained, much like herself, and her closest friend was a girl whose intellectual gifts Edna admired and imitated.
The relationships that most absorbed Edna were her intense, unrequited crushes on men. Her chain of infatuations was abruptly ended by her marriage to Léonce, who had courted her earnestly. She was pleased by his devotion, and when her Protestant father and sister raised objections to Léonce’s Catholicism, Edna found the marriage even more appealing. But Edna also had other, more serious motivations for the marriage. Still hopelessly passionate about a well-known tragedian of the time, Edna believed that matrimony would end her unrealistic fantasies and anchor her to the conventional standards of society. Thus, she later felt a certain satisfaction in her marriage’s lack of passion and excitement.
Edna’s thoughts turn to her relationship with her children. She considers herself “uneven and impulsive” in her affections for them. She always feels relief when they are sent away to visit family, finding that she has “blindly assumed” the responsibilities of motherhood—responsibilities for which “[f]ate had not fitted her.” She puts her head on Adèle’s shoulder and finds herself expressing some of these thoughts out loud, enjoying the freshness and honesty of her own voice. Robert, followed by the two women’s children, interrupts the moment of intimacy between Edna and Adèle. Edna joins the children, who have now displaced the cooing young lovers under the nearby awning, and Adèle asks Robert to walk her back to the house.
Summary: Chapter VIII
After Edna’s confession of her former passions, Adèle worries that Edna might take Robert’s attentions seriously and warns him to let her alone. Insulted, he impulsively declares that he hopes Edna does take him seriously, as he is impatient with Creole women, who view him as a mere passing amusement. Adèle reminds him that if he were indeed to court married women with any seriousness, then he would ruin his reputation as a trusted gentleman. Robert begins to rationalize to Adèle the appeal of a real affair, then thinks better of it. Instead, Robert launches into stories of a well-known seducer, Alcée Arobin, until it seems Adèle has forgotten about her concern for Edna. Adèle retires to her bedroom while Robert, after a brief search for Edna on the beach, relaxes with his mother at her cottage. The two discuss the impudence of Robert’s brother Victor and chat about the most recent news from Montel, Madame Lebrun’s long-time suitor.
Summary: Chapter IX
A few weeks after Adèle’s conversation with Robert, Madame Lebrun and her renters hold a Saturday-night celebration to entertain their weekend guests. The party-goers request a piano duet from the fourteen-year-old Farival twins, who, formally committed by their parents at birth to become nuns, are dressed, as usual, in the blue and white colors associated with the Virgin Mary. Several other children perform, and then Adèle plays the piano while the other guests dance. Robert fetches Mademoiselle Reisz, a quarrelsome middle-aged woman, and entreats her to play for Edna.
Whenever Edna listens to Adèle practice her different pieces, images of varying emotions appear in her mind: a naked man staring out at a fleeing bird in “hopeless resignation,” a dancing woman, children at play. But now, as she listens to the playing of Mademoiselle Reisz, Edna sees no pictures of these emotions. Rather, she feels them, and is reduced to trembling, choking tears. As Mademoiselle Reisz finishes and leaves the room, she pats Edna’s shoulder and tells her that she is the only worthy listener in the entire crowd. Even so, the others have clearly enjoyed the performance. Robert suggests that the party go for a nighttime swim.
Summary: Chapter X
As the crowd makes its way from the party down to the beach, Edna wonders why Robert has distanced himself from her. He no longer accompanies her constantly as he did before, although he doubles his devotion upon his return from an entire day spent away from her. It is as though he feels obligated to spend a certain number of hours with Edna.
Most of the beach-goers enter the water without a second thought, but Edna is hesitant.
Despite the attempts of the other guests to teach her, she is still unable to swim. Suddenly, she feels empowered and steps into the water, earning surprised applause from her onlookers. She swims out alone, for the first time truly feeling a sense of control over her body and soul. She becomes reckless and wants to swim out “where no woman had swum before,” and she scolds herself for discovering the simplicity of this act after so much time spent “splashing about like a baby!” When she looks back to the shore, however, she realizes how far she has gone and worries that she will perish from not having the strength to make it back on her own. When she arrives back on shore, she immediately dresses in the bathhouse and starts to walk home alone, despite the attempts of her husband and the other guests to retain
her.
Robert runs after Edna as she makes her way home, and she asks if he thought she was afraid to walk home alone. He assures her that he knew she wasn’t afraid, but he is unable to explain why he ran after her. Overwhelmed, Edna tries but fails to articulate the flood of new emotions and experiences the night has inspired in her. When Robert tells her a story of a spirit seeking a mortal worthy of visiting the semi-celestials, and of how that spirit selected Edna as his companion this night, she dismisses the tale as mere banter, not realizing that Robert is trying to express that he understands how she feels. Edna collapses into her porch hammock and Robert decides to stay with her until her husband returns. Neither speaks. The narrator comments, “No multitude of words could have been more significant than these moments of silence, or more pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire.” When they hear the swimmers returning, Robert says good-bye and leaves.
Summary: Chapter XI
[Edna] perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant . . . she could not realize why or how she should have [ever] yielded [to her husband], feeling as she then did.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Léonce returns and urges Edna to go to bed, but she tells him not to wait for her—she will stay outside in the hammock. She can tell that her stubbornness irritates him, and she realizes that up to this point she has always submitted to her husband’s requests unthinkingly, out of habit. Edna feels so altered by her newfound defiance and resistance that she fails to understand how she could have ever yielded to his commands before. Léonce sits on the porch smoking cigars and drinking wine until just before dawn. Several times he offers wine to Edna, but each time she refuses. Sleep finally defeats Edna’s exuberant mood and forces her inside. She asks Léonce if he is coming as well, and he replies that he will follow her once he finishes his cigar.
Summary: Chapter XII
Edna wakes up after a few hours of restless sleep. Almost everyone on Grand Isle is still in bed, but several people, including the two lovers and the lady in black, are on their way to the wharf to take the boat to the isle of Chênière Caminada for Sunday mass. For the first time all summer, Edna actively requests Robert’s company by asking one of Mrs. Lebrun’s servants to wake him. However, neither Edna nor Robert thinks her request an extraordinary turn of events. They join the other guests on the boat, and Robert speaks in Spanish to Mariequita, a young, flirtatious Spanish girl who is brimming with questions. Robert soon returns his attention to Edna and suggests they explore other islands together in the upcoming days. They laugh about the treasure they will find and then squander together. Edna feels as though the chains that had held her to Grand Isle have finally snapped over the course of the previous night, leaving her unanchored and free to drift wherever she chooses.
Summary: Chapter XIII
“How many years have I slept?” she inquired. “. . . A new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving only you and me as past relics.”
(See Important Quotations Explained)
In the middle of the church service, Edna feels drowsy and troubled. She stumbles outside, with Robert following closely behind. He takes her to rest at the cottage of Madame Antoine, a native of the Chênière. Once she is alone in the small bedroom, Edna removes most of her clothing and washes up at a basin. Stretching out in bed she observes with a new affection the firmness and fineness of her arms, and she drifts off to sleep. When she awakens, glowing and full of energy, she finds Robert outside in the garden, alone. She feels as if she has slept for years and jokes that they are the only remaining members of their race. Edna eats the dinner that Robert has prepared, and when Madame Antoine returns, they rest together under a tree, listening to the woman’s stories until the sun has set and they must return home.
Summary: Chapter XIV
When Edna returns, Adèle reports that Edna’s younger son, Etienne, has refused to go to bed.
Edna takes him on her lap and soothes him to sleep. Her friend also tells her that Léonce was worried when Edna did not return from the Chênière after mass, but once he was assured that Edna was merely resting at Madame Antoine’s and that Madame Antoine’s son would see her home, he left for the club on business. Adèle then departs for her own cottage, hating to leave her husband alone. After Robert and Edna put Etienne to bed, Robert bids her good night and Edna remarks that they have been together all day. Robert leaves, and as she awaits Léonce’s return, Edna recognizes, but cannot explain, the transformation she has undergone during her stay at Grand Isle. Because she is not tired herself, Edna assumes that Robert isn’t actually tired either, and she wonders why he did not stay with her. She regrets his departure and sings to herself the tune he had sung as they crossed the bay to the Chênière—“Ah! Si tu savais . . .” (“Ah! If only you
knew”).
Summary: Chapter XV
One evening at dinner, several people inform Edna that Robert is leaving for Mexico that evening. Edna is shocked by this news, as she spent all morning with Robert and he mentioned nothing of his plans. The dinner conversation splits off into varied stories and questions about Mexico and its inhabitants, but Edna feels such anguish that the only time she opens her mouth is to ask Robert what time he will leave. After finishing her coffee, Edna promptly retires to her cottage, where she occupies herself with housework and the needs of her sons. Mrs. Lebrun sends a message requesting that Edna sit with her until Robert leaves, but Edna replies that she doesn’t feel well and wants to stay in. Adèle comes down to check on Edna and agrees that Robert’s abrupt departure seems unfair and unkind. Unable to persuade Edna to accompany her back to the main house, Adèle departs unaccompanied to rejoin the others’ conversation. Robert himself then visits Edna. He bids her good-bye and is unable to say when he will return. She expresses her disappointment and offense at his spontaneous and unannounced departure, but he stops short of giving her a full explanation, fearing that he will reveal his true feelings for her. Edna asks Robert to write her and is bothered by Robert’s uncharacteristic, distant reply: “I will, thank you. Good-by.” Edna broods in the darkness and tries to prevent herself from crying, recognizing in her relations with Robert the same symptoms of infatuation she knew as a youth.
Summary: Chapter XVI
Edna is constantly possessed by thoughts of Robert. She feels as though her entire existence has been dulled by his departure. She often visits Madame Lebrun to chat and study the pictures of Robert in the family albums. Edna reads the letter Robert sent to his mother before departing for Mexico from New Orleans and feels a momentary pang of jealousy that he did not write to her instead.
Everyone finds it natural that Edna misses Robert, even her husband. When Edna learns that Léonce saw Robert in New Orleans before his departure for Mexico, she questions him extensively about their meeting. Edna sees no harm in this interrogation, for her feelings for Robert are nothing like her feelings for her husband. She is used to keeping her emotions and thoughts to herself. Edna had once tried to express this ownership of emotions to Adèle, telling her: “I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn’t give myself.” Adèle cannot understand what more one could do for her children than give up her life.
Shortly before the summer’s end, Mademoiselle Reisz approaches Edna on the beach, curious about the effect of Robert’s absence on Edna. A conversation ensues in which Mademoiselle tells Edna that Madame Lebrun is partial to her other son Victor, despite Victor’s impudence. The two brothers apparently have a history of squabbles. Mademoiselle Reisz does not realize that she has upset Edna, and she gives Edna her address in New Orleans, urging her to visit.
Summary: Chapter XVII
Léonce takes great pride in his possessions and enjoys walking around his lavishly decorated New Orleans home and examining his household goods. Every Tuesday for the past six years Edna has observed her reception day—a day set aside each week for receiving visitors—dressing handsomely and not leaving the house. A few weeks after returning to New Orleans, she and Léonce sit down to dinner, Edna wearing an ordinary housedress rather than her usual Tuesday gown. Léonce notices her attire and asks about Edna’s day. She replies that she was not at home to receive visitors, nor did she leave the servants with an excuse with which they might placate her guests. Léonce is angry with her, fearing that her neglect of her social duties will jeopardize his business relations with the husbands of her visitors. Complaining that the cook has produced a substandard meal, Léonce leaves mid-meal to take dinner at the club, a practice to which Edna has become accustomed over the past several weeks. After finishing her meal, Edna goes to her room, pacing while she tears her thin handkerchief into pieces. She throws her wedding ring to the floor and tries unsuccessfully to crush it. Feeling the need to destroy something, she shatters a glass vase on the hearth.
Summary: Chapter XVIII
The next morning Edna declines Léonce’s request that she meet him in town and instead tries to work on some sketches. Not in the mood for sketching, however, she decides to visit Adèle, whom she finds at home folding newly laundered clothing. Edna informs her friend that she wants to take drawing lessons and presents her portfolio, seeking praise and encouragement in the matter. Edna gives some sketches to Adèle and stays for dinner. Upon leaving, Edna realizes with a strong sense of depression that the perfect domestic harmony enjoyed by the Ratignolles is entirely undesirable to her. She pities Adèle’s “colorless existence” and “blind contentment.”
Summary: Chapter XIX
Edna has entirely abandoned the practice of staying home to receive callers on Tuesdays. Léonce, severely displeased by Edna’s refusal to submit to his demands, scolds his wife for spending her days painting instead of caring for the “comfort of her family.” He bids her think of Adèle, who never allows her love of music to distract her from her household responsibilities. Léonce sometimes speculates that Edna suffers from some mental disturbance, and he leaves Edna alone to paint and sing Robert’s song to herself as she dreams of the sea and Grand Isle. Her daily moods fluctuate wildly between inexplicable joy and equally intense sorrow.
Summary: Chapter XX
During one of her spells of depression, Edna decides to pay Mademoiselle Reisz a visit in order to listen to her play the piano. Finding that the woman has moved, Edna visits Madame Lebrun in search of Mademoiselle Reisz’s new address. Robert’s brother Victor answers the door and sends the servant to fetch his mother. He launches into a story about his exploits of the previous evening, which Edna cannot help finding entertaining. Madame Lebrun appears, complaining of how few visitors she receives, and Victor tells Edna the contents of Robert’s two letters from Mexico. Edna is depressed to hear that Robert enclosed no message for her. She asks about Mademoiselle Reisz, and Madame Lebrun gives her the pianist’s new address. Victor then escorts Edna outside. After Edna leaves, the Lebruns comment to each other on Edna’s ravishing appearance, and Victor notes, “Some way she doesn’t seem like the same woman.”
Summary: Chapter XXI
Mademoiselle Reisz laughs with happiness and surprise when Edna arrives at her door. Edna’s frank admission that she is unsure of whether she likes Mademoiselle pleases her host. Mademoiselle mentions nonchalantly that Robert has sent her a letter from Mexico, in which he has written almost entirely about Edna. Edna’s plea to read the letter is denied, although Mademoiselle mentions that Robert requested she play for Edna “that Impromptu of Chopin’s.” Edna continues to beg Mademoiselle to play the piano and to allow her to read Robert’s letter.
Mademoiselle Reisz asks Edna what she has been doing with her time and is surprised to hear of Edna’s current desire to become an artist. She warns her that an artist must be brave, possessing “a courageous soul . . . that dares and defies.” Edna assures her that she has persistence if nothing else, and Mademoiselle Reisz laughs, gives Edna the letter, and begins to play the Chopin Impromptu that Edna requested. The music deeply affects Edna, and she weeps as the pianist glides between the Impromptu and another piece, “Isolde’s song.” When Edna asks if she may visit again, Mademoiselle Reisz replies that she is welcome at all times.
Summary: Chapter XXII
Léonce expresses his concern about Edna to Doctor Mandelet, his friend and the family’s physician. Léonce confides that he and his wife are no longer sleeping together, noting, “She’s got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women.” The doctor asks if Edna has been associating with a circle of “pseudo-intellectual women,” alluding to the contemporary women’s clubs that served to educate their members and to organize them politically. Léonce replies that Edna no longer seems to see anyone at all. She mopes around the house, wanders the streets alone, and has abandoned even her Tuesday receptions.
Having ruled out Edna’s female companions as the source of her estrangement, Dr. Mandelet inquires about Edna’s heredity. Léonce assures the doctor that Edna descends from a respectable Presbyterian family, but he admits that her younger sister Janet, who is about to be married, “is something of a vixen.” Doctor Mandelet suggests that Léonce send Edna to the wedding so that she can be with her family, but Léonce replies that Edna has already declared her unwillingness to attend. She told her husband, “a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth.” After a pause, the doctor assures Léonce that this “passing whim” will run its course if he lets her alone for awhile, even allowing her to stay home alone when he leaves on business if that is what she wishes. Doctor Mandelet promises to attend dinner at the Pontellier home in order to study Edna inconspicuously. Despite the doctor’s suspicion that Edna may have another man in her life, the doctor takes his leave without making any inquiries along that line.
Summary: Chapter XXIII
Edna’s father, a former colonel in the Confederate army, stays for a few days in New Orleans to select a wedding gift for Janet and to purchase a suit for the wedding. Edna is not very close with the Colonel, who retains a certain military air from his war days. Nevertheless, the two are companionable, and Edna decides to sketch her father in her studio. The Colonel takes Edna’s painting very seriously, posing patiently for her sketches. She takes him to Adèle’s soirée musicale (an evening of musical entertainment), where Adèle enchants him by being flirtatious and flattering. As usual, Léonce refuses to attend Adèle’s gathering, preferring the diversion of the club. Adèle disapproves of Léonce’s club and remarks to Edna that the couple should spend more time together at home in the evenings, an idea Edna rebuffs by asserting that they “wouldn’t have anything to say to each other.”
Edna takes delight in serving her father hand and foot, appreciating their companionship but realizing that her interest in him will likely fade. Doctor Mandelet comes to dinner at the Pontellier home but notices nothing in Edna’s behavior to arouse concern. She seems to him positively radiant as she relates her day at the races with her father and describes the charming people they met there. Everyone takes turns telling stories for entertainment: the Colonel speaks of war times, Léonce recalls memories from his youth, and the doctor tells a tale of a female patient who eventually came to her senses after pursuing multiple stray affections. Edna responds to this with a fictional story of a woman who disappears forever into the islands with her lover. Edna pretends to have heard the tale from Madame Antoine, and the doctor is the only person who perceives the implications of Edna’s tale. On his way home, he muses, “I hope to heaven it isn’t Alcée Arobin.”
Summary: Chapter XXIV
Edna and the Colonel engage in a heated argument over Edna’s refusal to attend Janet’s wedding in New York, but Léonce doesn’t intervene, resolving instead to attend the wedding himself in order to deflect the insult of Edna’s absence. The Colonel criticizes Léonce’s lack of control over Edna, maintaining that a man must use “authority” and “coercion” in all matters concerning his wife. As Léonce’s departure for New York approaches, Edna becomes suddenly attentive to and affectionate with Léonce, remembering his many kindnesses and even shedding a few tears when the day of his departure arrives. The children, too, are leaving for a while, to spend some time with Léonce’s mother, Madame Pontellier, who requested their company at her home in the country. Once alone, Edna is overtaken with a “radiant peace.” She surveys her house and gardens as if for the first time, dines alone in her nightgown, and reads in the library every night before bed.
Summary: Chapter XXV
The initial restfulness and ease Edna feels after the departure of her family quickly dissipates. At times, Edna is optimistic about her future and places her trust in the promise of youth. On other days, she stays indoors and broods, feeling that life is passing her by. On days when she is feeling sociable, Edna visits the friends she made at Grand Isle or goes to the races. One day, Alcée Arobin and Mrs. Highcamp, whom Edna had run into recently while at the races with her father, call on her to accompany them to the track. Alcée had met Edna before, but on the day he ran into Edna with her father, Alcée found Edna’s knowledge of racehorses exciting and magnetic and became enamored with her. Alcée escorts Edna home after dinner with the Highcamps, persuading her to attend the races with him again. Edna is restless after he leaves and regrets not having asked him to stay for a while. She sleeps restlessly, waking in the middle of the night, and, remembering that she has forgotten to write her regular letter to Léonce, begins to compose in her head the words she will write him the next day
A few days later Alcée and Edna attend the races alone. Alcée behaves as he is known to with attractive young women—without inhibition. He stays for dinner with Edna after the races and discovers, through casual conversation and interaction, the sexuality latent within her. His boldness makes Edna nervous, for, despite her attraction to Alcée, she feels that she is being led toward an act of infidelity. She firmly sends Alcée away and, when alone again, stares at the hand he has kissed, feeling as though she has been somehow unchaste. It is not her husband whom she fears she has betrayed, however: her thoughts are of Robert only.
Summary: Chapter XXVI
Alcée writes Edna an elaborate letter of apology. She is embarrassed that she took him so seriously before, and she responds with light banter. Alcée takes Edna’s response as a license for further flirtation and soon resumes a level of familiarity that first astonishes Edna and then pleases her, as it appeals to her animalistic sexual urges.
Edna continues to visit Mademoiselle Reisz, who is helpful at times of emotional turmoil. During one visit, Edna announces that she is moving out of her house because she has grown tired of looking after it and feels no real connection to it as her own. She plans to rent a small house around the corner, which she will pay for with her winnings from the racetrack and the profits from her sketches. Mademoiselle Reisz knows that Edna’s motivation to move is more complicated than she claims. She gets Edna to admit that she wants to move to the smaller house because it will enable her to be independent and free. Yet even after this confession, neither Mademoiselle Reisz nor Edna herself can explain completely the reason for Edna’s sudden decision.
As usual, Mademoiselle Reisz gives Edna Robert’s latest letter. She does not tell Robert that Edna sees his letters because Robert is trying to forget the woman whom he recognizes is “not free to listen to him or belong to him.” Edna is shocked to read that Robert will soon be returning to New Orleans. During the heated discussion that follows, Mademoiselle Reisz tests Edna’s devotion to Robert by making false claims about the nature of love. She ultimately realizes that Edna’s feelings are pure and laughs at the way Edna blushes when she finally confesses aloud her love for Robert. Edna returns home full of excitement. She sends bonbons to her sons and writes Léonce a cheerful letter in which she states her intent to move into the smaller house.
Summary: Chapter XXVII
Later that evening, Alcée finds Edna in fine although contemplative spirits. She notes to him that she sometimes feels “devilishly wicked” by conventional standards but cannot think of herself that way. Alcée caresses Edna’s face and listens to her talk about her visit to Mademoiselle Reisz earlier in the day. Mademoiselle Reisz placed her hand on Edna’s shoulder blades and warned her that the bird that attempts to fly above tradition and prejudice must have strong wings, or it will “fall back to earth, battered and bruised.” Alcée asks Edna where she will fly, and she replies that she is not contemplating any “extraordinary flights.” In fact, Edna claims, she only “half comprehend[s]” the older woman. Alcée kisses Edna, and she responds by “clasping his head.” Alcée’s kiss is “the first . . . of her life to which her nature had really responded. It was a flaming torch that kindled desire.”
Summary: Chapter XXVIII
After Alcée leaves, Edna weeps. She feels guilty when she considers the material possessions surrounding her, all of which her husband has provided. She understands the irresponsible nature of her actions, yet she feels no shame or regret. Instead, it is the thought of Robert and of her love for him, growing ever “quicker, fiercer” and “more overpowering,” that affects her. She suddenly feels that she at last understands the world around her, “as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to look upon and comprehend the significance of life. . . .” Her only regret is that her kiss with Alcée was not motivated by love.
Summary: Chapter XXIX
Without waiting for Léonce’s reply to her letter, Edna prepares to move to the house around the block, which one of Edna’s servants dubs the “pigeon house,” likening it in size and appearance to the dovecotes in which the upper classes would keep domesticated pigeons for show or sport. When Alcée arrives, he finds Edna dressed in an old dress and kerchief, packing only the possessions that Léonce did not buy for her. She is neither rude to her friend nor is she particularly attentive. Rather, Edna is totally absorbed in her work. Alcée reminds her of the dinner celebration she had planned, and she tells him it is set for the night before her move. He begs to see her sooner, and she scolds him but laughs as she does so, looking at him “with eyes that at once gave him the courage to wait and made it torture to wait.”
Summary: Chapter XXX
The dinner Edna hosts in celebration of her new home is small and exclusive. Her guests include high-society friends from the racetrack, as well as Mademoiselle Reisz, Victor Lebrun, and, of course, Alcée. Adèle, who is unable to come because she is nearing the end of her pregnancy, sends her husband in her place. Edna has decorated the table and surroundings decadently, and the entire room shimmers with gold and yellow accents. She announces that it is her twenty-ninth birthday and proposes that the party drink to her health with a cocktail invented by the Colonel to commemorate Janet’s wedding. Alcée proposes that they drink to the Colonel’s health instead, to celebrate “the daughter he invented.” In her magnificent gown, Edna seems a woman who “rules, who looks on, who stands alone.” However, she is inwardly overtaken with longing and hopelessness, her thoughts fixated on Robert.
Mademoiselle Reisz and Adèle’s husband take their leave and the remaining guests turn their attention to Victor, whom Mrs. Highcamp has decorated with a garland of roses and a silken scarf, which turn him into “a vision of Oriental beauty.” Someone begs Victor to sing and he accepts dramatically, looking at Edna and beginning, “Ah! Si tu savais!” Edna orders him to stop, slamming her glass down so heavily that she breaks it. Victor, however, continues, until Edna clasps her hand over his mouth and repeats her demand. He agrees, kissing her hand with a “pleasing sting,” and the guests sense that the night has come to a close.
Summary: Chapter XXXI
Alcée stays with Edna after everyone has left and assists her as she shuts up the big house. He accompanies her to the pigeon house, which he has filled with flowers as a surprise. He tells her he will leave, but when he feels her beginning to respond to his caresses he sits beside her and covers her shoulders with kisses until she becomes “supple to his gentle, seductive entreaties.”
Summary: Chapter XXXII
The pigeon-house pleased her . . . There was . . . a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Léonce writes a letter of stern disapproval in response to Edna’s move. He does not question her motives but worries that people will think he is suffering financial difficulties. To avert these suspicions, he arranges to have his home remodeled by a respected architect. In a newspaper, he advertises his intention to take a vacation abroad with Edna while the remodeling is under way. In her husband’s continued absence, Edna feels her sense of individuality and spirituality growing. She visits her children at their grandmother’s country home in Iberville and enjoys herself so much that she continues to think of their voices and excitement throughout her trip back to New Orleans.
Summary: Chapter XXXIII
Adèle pays Edna a visit. She inquires about the dinner party, inspects her friend’s new home, and complains that Edna has neglected her. She confesses to Edna that she worries about the impulsive and reckless nature of her actions, adding that perhaps she should not be living alone in the little house. As she leaves, she warns Edna to be careful of her reputation, as there is gossip about Alcée’s visits and “his attentions alone are . . . enough to ruin a woman’s name.” After a stream of callers interrupts Edna’s painting, she decides to visit Mademoiselle Reisz. The pianist is not at home, however, so Edna enters the apartment to wait for her. She hears a knock at the door and gasps in surprise when she sees the caller is Robert, who has been back in town for two days. Edna begins to doubt his love, wondering why he hadn’t come to see her immediately. Robert’s speech is rushed and embarrassed; only during a brief pause do his eyes reveal to Edna the same tenderness she had seen on Grand Isle. She asks why he broke his promise to write her, and he replies that he never supposed his letters would interest her. Edna says that she doesn’t believe his excuse, and she decides that she will not wait any longer for Mademoiselle Reisz’s return.
Robert walks Edna home, and she invites him in for dinner at the pigeon house. She revels in the thought that her dreams are now coming true. At first Robert declines her offer, but, when he sees the disappointment and pain in Edna’s face, he soon consents. Inside, Robert discovers a photograph of Alcée that Edna claims she has kept as a study for a sketch. His repeated questions about the photograph manifest his suspicions and Edna quickly changes the subject to Robert’s experiences in Mexico. He tells her that he worked machine-like the whole time, devoting his thoughts solely to the time he spent with Edna on Grand Isle and the Chênière. When he asks about her own experiences in New Orleans, she echoes his nostalgic words almost verbatim. He tells her, “Mrs. Pontellier, you are cruel.” They remain in silence until dinner is announced.
Summary: Chapter XXXIV
During dinner, Edna and Robert lose their earlier honesty and vivacity and become stiff and ceremonious. After they have eaten, they sit in the parlor, and Edna questions Robert about the young Mexican girl whose gift of a tobacco pouch has become the topic of discussion. Alcée drops by with a message for Edna about a card party. As soon as he sees Robert, Alcée begins to talk about the seductive beauty of Mexican girls. Robert is on edge and answers somewhat coldly. Soon afterward, he takes his leave of Edna, who remains with Alcée. Alcée asks Edna to go out for a nighttime drive but she sends him away, preferring to be alone. For the rest of the evening she thinks over her encounter with Robert, feeling suddenly distant from him and moved by pangs of jealousy as she imagines him with a beautiful young Mexican girl.
Summary: Chapter XXXV
The next morning Edna awakes with hope, convinced that she has overreacted to what she perceived as Robert’s reserve of the night before. She tells herself that she will undoubtedly receive a visit from him that afternoon or evening. At breakfast, she reads letters from Raoul and from Léonce, who indicates his plans to return in March to take her on a journey abroad. Alcée has also sent a note, declaring his devotion and his trust that, however faintly, Edna returns his affection. She writes back cheerfully to her children and puts Alcée’s note under the maid’s stove-lid, choosing not to respond. Her response to Léonce’s letter about the proposed trip is evasive. Edna does not intend to mislead her husband, but she is unable to conceive of the vacation or, for that matter, of reality, because “she had abandoned herself to Fate and awaited the consequences with indifference.”
Days pass without a visit from Robert. Edna does not wish to visit Mademoiselle Reisz or Madame Lebrun because she fears that they may think she is eager to seek out Robert’s company. She awakes each morning in a state of hope and expectation, but retires each evening in despair. One night, she accepts Alcée’s invitation to accompany him out to the lake; afterward they return to her home, slipping into the physical intimacy that has become more and more frequent between them. Lying in bed that night, Edna feels freed of despondency, yet the next day she fails to feel the sense of hope that has greeted her on the past several mornings.
Summary: Chapter XXXVI
One day Edna bumps into Robert in her favorite garden café, which is nestled in the suburbs of New Orleans. Robert reacts with uneasiness and surprise at the unexpected encounter but consents to stay and dine with Edna. Although Edna had decided to act with reserve if she were to see Robert, she cannot help but be plain and honest with him. She expresses her disappointment at his own seeming indifference, telling him he is selfish and inconsiderate of her emotions. She emphasizes that she is not afraid to share her opinions, however “unwomanly” he may think them. He responds by accusing her of cruelty, of wishing him to “bare a wound for the pleasure of looking at it, without the intention or power of healing it.” Retreating from his display of anger, Edna returns to pleasantries and thoughtless banter.
The two go to the pigeon house, arriving after dark. When she returns to the room after leaving to wash up, Edna leans over Robert as he sits in a chair, and kisses him. In response, he takes her into his arms and holds her, kissing her back. He confesses that his trip to Mexico was an attempt to escape his love for her. In Mexico, he says, he fantasized that she could become his wife, that perhaps Léonce would “set her free.” Edna declares that the fantasy is reality, because she is no longer one of Léonce’s possessions and will give herself to whomever she pleases. Robert is shocked, perhaps even dismayed, by her announcement.
Edna’s servant interrupts to tell Edna that Adèle is in labor and wants Edna to be with her. Edna leaves, assuring Robert that she loves only him and that they shall soon “be everything to each other.” He begs her to stay, able to think only of holding and keeping her, but she tells him to wait because she will return.
Summary: Chapter XXXVII
Adèle is irritable and exhausted as she awaits the arrival of the doctor. Edna begins to feel uneasy as memories of her own childbirth experiences surface but seem removed, vague, and undefined. Although she stays by her friend’s side, she desperately wants to leave. She watches the scene of “torture” with a feeling of “inward agony” and a “flaming, outspoken revolt against the ways of Nature.” When the ordeal is over, Edna kisses Adèle good-bye, as Adèle whispers earnestly, “Think of the children, Edna. Oh think of the children!”
Summary: Chapter XXXVIII
“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Doctor Mandelet, who is also Adèle’s doctor, walks Edna to the pigeon house. He voices his concern that another, less impressionable, woman ought to have stayed with Adèle. He asks Edna if she will go abroad with Léonce, and Edna replies that she will not and that she refuses to be forced into anything anymore. She begins to say that no one has any right to oblige her to do what she does not wish, excepting, perhaps, children. Although Edna trails off incoherently, the doctor grasps her underlying mindset. He notes sympathetically that youth is given to illusions and that he sees sexual passion as Nature’s “decoy” to secure mothers for the propagation of children. Dr. Mandelet adds that the passions given to us by Nature are on a level removed from moral considerations. Before parting, Doctor Mandelet tells Edna that she seems to be in trouble, and that if she would ever like to come to him for help, he would be a most understanding confidant. Edna responds that although she is sometimes upset, she does not like to speak of her despondency. She explains that she simply wants her own way, although she acknowledges the difficulty of this, especially when it means she must “trample upon the lives, the hearts, the prejudices of others.” She asks the doctor not to blame her for anything, and he leaves, replying that he will blame her if she does not come to speak with him but that she should not blame herself, “whatever comes.”
Edna sits on her porch, brooding over Adèle’s final words, and vowing to think of her children the following day, after her rendezvous with Robert. To her dismay, Robert has left, and there is a note that reads, “I love you. Good-by—because I love you,” in his place. Edna stretches out on the parlor sofa and lies awake all night.
Summary: Chapter XXXIX

The next day, on Grand Isle, Victor and Mariequita flirt and discuss Edna’s dinner party while Victor does construction work. Suddenly, they see Edna walking toward them. It is still long before the summer season, but Edna explains that she has come alone to the island in order to rest. She makes plans to have lunch with the pair and then walks down to the beach for a swim, ignoring Victor and Mariequita’s claims that the water is much too cold. The night before, Edna had thought of her one desire, Robert, and how one day even he would disappear from her thoughts. She had thought of her indifference to Léonce. She had thought of her consideration for her children, whom she had begun to see were the only real shackle binding her soul to the slave-like existence she has led for so long.
As she walks along the beach, Edna’s thoughts are completely different. She spies a bird with a broken wing flying erratically before crashing into the surf. She finds her old bathing suit, still hanging on its peg from the summer, and puts it on. Once she reaches the water, she removes the garment with no one in sight. For the first time in her life, Edna stands “naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her.” She feels like “some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.” She swims out into the water without a glance backward, thinking of Léonce, of her children, of Robert, and of Mademoiselle Reisz’s words: “The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies.” She thinks of Robert’s note to her and muses that he had never understood her and never would—perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have, but now it is too late. Eventually exhaustion overtakes her, and memories of her childhood fill her thoughts as she surrenders to the expanse of the sea.