Edna Pontellier In The Awakening

The Awakening Essay

Edna Pontellier in The Awakening strives to find her individuality and personal freedom. However, Edna lives in a time when women are expected to live their lives as wives and mothers, not as people with their own volition. When she begins to awaken from her state of submission she finds herself and strays outside the realm of social acceptance in doing so. She does not obey her husband’s will without question, she is not a mother-woman who devotes herself solely to her children. She would rather be wandering the city or painting than taking callers and keeping up the house. When Edna chooses to find herself as an individual, she sacrifices her social acceptance so that she can become a full fledged individual with opinions and aspirations of her own.

Once a week every week, before her final trip to Grand Isle, Edna spent an entire day entertaining callers from various social circles in her home. But after she returned to the city from Grand Isle, she stopped devoting a day to socializing with visitors. She decided

She gets to know him better and grows closer to him, going out with him and having discussions with him over dinner. But when she tells him that she will not attend her sister’s wedding, he becomes livid. “Edna and her father had a warm, and almost violent dispute upon the subject of her refusal to attend her sister’s wedding.” He does his best to persuade her into going and leaves angry when he cannot. Edna loses the social acceptance of her family when she tells her father that she will not attend her own sister’s wedding. Her father tells her that he doubts that her sisters will ever speak to her again. Edna feels that she should not attend the marriage of her sister when her own marriage is responsible for her unhappiness. She gains a bit more of her own say in her life, and loses the acceptance of her father and