Edna is called to witness her friend Adele’s labor during the closing chapters of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. In a novella revolving around the domestic sphere inhabited by women of the 19th century, a scene of child birth affirms the central role presented to a woman of the time: “The [mother-women] were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels” (11). Chopin describes the mother role with religious imagery of angels and worship that would position it as an elevated position, and yet, her central character rebels against this maternally defined identity. What Chopin does in her depiction of Edna’s experience of Adele’s
