Stone relates the growth of the protagonist, Edna Ponteller, in Kate Chopin’s book The Awakening as the character descends into self-actualization, and begins an artistic journey. Stone claims Edna’s regression into childhood depicts, a budding artist rather than a hedonistic woman who holds no regard for her maternal responsibilities.
Stone establishes several conditions impelling Edna into her life as an artist, nostalgia, learning to swim in the ocean, and her yearning for maternal nurturing. Stone also contrasts the merits and obstacles of Edna’s relationship to three people in The Awakening. First, illustrating how Adele helps Edna express emotions and voice her memories. However, Adele is also establishes Edna’s failings as a wife and
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He awakens her sexuality and prompts her rebirth into creativity extending beyond the realms of childbirth. Robert encourages her artistic endeavors, and incites passion and imagination. They have fun together and she later embellishes and retells their stories, which shows, according to Stone, Edna’s imaginative processes are maturing. Stone reminds us how Robert disappoints Edna, forcing her to confront her autonomy. Heartbreak, and the traumatic participation in Adele’s giving birth, stone suggests, shatter Edna’s idealistic illusions about love. However, Stone Illustrates, how disillusionment with love and the pleasure of childbirth, is actually a part of Edna’s growth toward artistic self-realization.
Edna’s final claim to artistic authenticity, Stone suggests, is Edna’s suicidal return to her all-encompassing lover, the sea. Stone proclaims, “Edna drowns herself because she cannot live as a conventional wife or mother any longer, and society will not accept her newfound self. The solitude she enjoys makes for artistic growth, but she is bound to children, home, social duty. She will not sacrifice her new autonomy.” Stone surmises, Edna realized she could part with her Ideas about love, but Edna could not walk away from the woman she had become, an