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Edna Pontellier's Suicide In The Awakening

693 Words3 Pages

Edna Pontellier, the main character in Kate Chopin’s, The Awakening, is portrayed as an incredibly independent woman and one who tends to reject almost all traditional societal norms, and instead chooses to fight her way towards emancipation from her husband, a foreign concept during the time period in which this novel was written in. Edna’s struggles to gain this independence so strives so strongly for, and in doing so she manages to separate herself from her husband, and reunite with a lover, Robert, from her past that she had forsaken when she married. All these events that work to emancipate Edna from her former life and get her the freedom she craves, ultimately leads her to her unpredicted suicide. While the motives of her suicide seems to be confusing, when looking into this issue more indepthly, Edna’s motives for killing herself can be more easily understood. …show more content…

While not only, knocking the idea of traditional female ideals, she also gets the chance to show her absolute disdain for commitment in marriage, most likely due to her affair with the man she truly loved, Robert. When Edna’s husband decides to leave her alone and goes on an extended trip, she finally puts her words of dissatisfaction into action and, as an act against societal norms and traditional obedient women ideals, moves out of the house that she shares with her husband, and instead, lives on her own in order to become more independant. A woman having any type of independence during this time period was a completely radical idea, and she struggles to find a normal

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Over 50 % of all people who die by suicide suffer from major depression. Depression itself is often seen as a growing dilemma in Edna Pontellier's life, as she grows more and more intolerant towards her problems of being enslaved by her children and dominated by men. However, throughout the storyline of The Awakening, Kate Chopin uses the sea and music as symbols to reveal Edna's compelling desires to be free and how one must break away from society to achieve an independent self unit. In effect, these symbols help the reader understand the ultimate surrendering Edna has to undergo to unshackle herself from Victorian reform.

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