Edna Pontellier In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is a character who conforms outwardly, but inside she is questioning her life. She is a wife and mother who challenges her submissive motherhood. While having these duties she inwardly wonders about what her individual self wants. Edna struggles with the inner and outer wants of her life which contributes majorly to the novel. Chopin uses the tension with this conflict to display her message of feminism and women wanting more for their individual lives. At the beginning of the novel Chopin uses a bird to symbolize Edna. The birds represent Edna and her caged life she lives compared to what she desires to be doing. Edna is trapped in this life of just being a wife and a mother and she feels …show more content…
Her husband is Creole and divorce is unthinkable, however, Edna knows this so she maintains her role as Mrs. Pontellier while still questioning her life inwardly. During this time, she is beginning to associate herself with characters who are “free” and have individual lives that Edna desires to have. Mademoiselle Reisz, Alcee Arobin, and Robert Lebrun, in all different ways, show Edna what she wants and help her to examine a decision. These three relationships show Edna that all her friends live how they want to and do the things they want individually with their lives. Edna wants that feeling too and they inspire her to branch out of her basic “mother-woman” duties and have an awakening in her life. In the novel, the speaker states, “A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her-the light which, showing the way, forbids it” (Chopin 29). This explains that she still knows down inside that she is not supposed to want this freedom like her friends have. This continues build-up of pressure for Edna’s feelings because she now has friends to motivate awakening. Chopin uses the accompanying characters to support her meaning of women being