However, in the summer vacation at Grand Isle Edna begins to understand that she does not want to be oppressed any longer. Slowly, she frees herself from all the duties and refuses the world she has been living in. She lets go of everything around her: her friends and family, but also the security and support from them. She brakes free from financial as well as domestic domination, and even leaves her children to seek for her desires.
In the 19th century the supremacy of a woman was motherhood, and they were judged by their qualities as mothers and wives. Edna, however, does not want to be possessed by her husband and children, and she refuses to self-sacrifice herself for them. She feels that not only the duties of caring for her children, but also motherhood itself limit her independence to become an individual.
As Edna sees no future in combining motherhood and selfhood, the only possibility for her is to commit suicide, which offers her the only way of eluding her children. This hints at the impossibility to be mother as well as individual.
In committing suicide Edna gives up everything and leaves nothing that could get destroyed. Edna continues happily along in her life until Robert decides to leave for Mexico.
Her bubble of happiness is burst, and she realizes she cannot have both Robert and her current, married life. As she considers the situation, Edna comes to a realization about herself.
To make the conscious decision to never be married again, even to the man she loves, is a huge step for Edna. She has finally decided what she wants and is willing to act upon those impulses. Edna has become aware of herself emotionally and physically, realizing she has been looking to the wrong sources her influential, high society husband for fulfillment.
Though her actions are not totally agreeable, they are somewhat noble. Edna totally shuns the commitment she has towards her children for her own selfish reasons.
At the same time she is strong enough to declare what she wants and act upon her declaration as almost everyone around her tells her that her actions are totally wrong. In the beginning of the novel Edna is, as Walker suggests, acting without thinking.
The tragedy that befalls Edna is that she has had this awakening, and because of it she desires to reach new heights and do things that no woman has done before.
Chopin critiques the society Edna lives in, but also critiques moving away from society. Chopin was being courted by a man, yet she made the decision to remain single and move back in with her mother Toth The main difference between Edna and Chopin is found in their upbringing.
Edna returns to society awakened and thoroughly changed. When Chopin is presented with pleasure she is able to enjoy it while also remaining emotionally distanced, most likely because she was raised by strong, independent women. She does enjoy these pleasures, but she never lets them rule her life as Edna does. A soft, firm, magnetic sympathetic hand clasp is one.
A walk through the quiet streets at midnight is another. And then, there are so many ways of saying good night! Chopin enjoyed the company of men, yet unlike Edna let them come and go without becoming overly attached to any of them. Pontellier she is leaving him. But the society that Edna belongs to is based on a very strict set of rules known as the Napoleonic code. Women had little rights and were considered property of their husbands.
Women had no rights, and were legally bound to do whatever their husbands decided was best. Women of any age whatsoever. Male children who have not attained the age of sixteen years complete. Persons who are insane, deaf, dumb or blind. Women were placed on the same legal level as children, invalids and the incarcerated, and notably, they are the first on the list, as if the author wanted to make especially certain that women were included in this law.
The society Chopin wrote about and lived in oppresses women in every way possible. Once married, they are transformed into property and have the legal status of a slave. In this concession, her hard-won indifference to society's demands is defeated, likening her to the bird she sees on the beach, "reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water. Thus she spares her family the scandal that would accompany a suicide, another concession to cultural prejudice.
Yet she is, in a sense, not utterly defeated. She had renewed her life by giving rein to her childlike desires to always have her way despite the wants and needs of others. Now she regresses even further, feeling "like some new-born creature, opening its eyes" while standing naked on the beach — naked as newborns arrive.
Further, her final thoughts are those of her early childhood. Again, she remembers the seemingly never-ending meadows of which the sea reminds her, recalling her revelation to Madame Ratignolle in Chapter 7 that "sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided. In the midst of this return to childhood on the beach is her mature understanding of the nature of her feelings for Robert: "she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone.
For her, the joy of such romantic obsessions lies in feeling them rather than consummating them. How appropriate, then, that her last thoughts return to the subject of her first infatuation, the cavalry officer; she hears how his "spurs.
Given Edna's love of sensuality, her choice of the blue Gulf waters as her final resting place, the scene of her final stand, is appropriate. Chopin emphasizes not only how the water's "touch. In the sea, Edna finds an everlasting love, one who will not "melt out of her existence" like Robert and the cavalry officer. By drowning herself, Edna is taking command of her situation as best she can, sparing Raoul and Etienne the trauma of her socially unacceptable behavior, sacrificing "the inessential" her life because she would never "sacrifice herself for her children," as indicated in Chapter
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