The Awakening By Kate Chopin: Character Analysis

The novel, The Awakening, Kate Chopin chooses the town of Grand Isle, Louisiana in the late 1800s to be the main part of the story’s setting. The main character in the story is Edna Pontellier, who happens to not be a Creole. Adele, Mr. Ratignolle, Robert Lebrun, Mademoiselle Riez and Leonce Pontellier are a few of the other important characters in the story. They are all Creoles except for Edna. The Creole groups, or society, think that the men should be dominant. They rarely bring people from outside their ways into their social circle, and the women are supposed to keep the home clean and have children and provide the needs of everyday life for their family. Edna and Adele are companions but the way the treat their husbands and the way they want to

Edna has grown to be a woman that goes away from her husband’s ways and thinks he becomes a chauvinistic pig. Adele respects her husband. She can be thought of as the “dream wife” because she stays loyal and respectful to her husband. Since Edna happens to not be a Creole, the relationship she has with her husband, Leonce gets difficult. In Leonce’s mind, she has not done the duties as a wife and a mother should do to her children. What her husband expects from her she never does except rarely taking a few phone calls on Tuesdays. One night, Leonce goes home in the middle of the night and begins to talk to her. He also says that one of their children is sick and she should go check on him. I do not think Edna had the desire to have children any way. She did not see herself as a “mother- woman”. She rather the quiet sound of alone time sometimes. She felt like the children did not need here twenty- four hours a day. She never felt that she was going to be part of the Creole society.