The Awakening

The Awakening and the Duality of Life
The duality of life is a concept that most people have no idea that they are living until fresh experiences open their eyes and mind to the obvious notion that we all have multiple lives intermingled with a variety of personal relationships. Mrs. Pontellier has a variety of issues that she must come to deal with that no only affects her life, but also her immediate family’s relationship to her. She is a woman in need of the removal of the accepted family and social norms of the day. This need to escape is the only way she feels able to gain her freedom to do as she pleases. Edna’s battle to assume a new life gained through her various experiences with multiple characters ultimately led her down the path to her own destruction. The finality of death gives Edna the release she so much longed for after giving up her family that not being accepted by the man she obviously thought had loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life; was enough to make her take her own life.
Early on in The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Edna decide that she has grown tired of the usual entertainment surrounding her at vacation time so she makes up her mind to attempt swimming without any help, Chopin writes “How easy it is! She thought. “It is nothing,” she said aloud; “why did I not discover before that it was nothing? Think of the time I have spent splashing about like a baby!”(590). Edna obviously feels that she has been living a life that she feels has been neglected due to her inability to take a chance. When her husband does not recognize her for the accomplishment that she has made it only makes her more irresponsive to him. Edna’s husband did not help her to deal with her fragility since he looked upon his wife as if she was another “belonging” of his. Being ignored by Leonce was a point that also stimulated her need to gain her freedom.
There is a game of cat and mouse going on between Edna and her husband. He seems to run off and claim he has business dealings in town while she has her “other” life of experiencing new sensations without her husband. During the hammock episode, Edna hints to Robert about what may be a possible problem with her relationship with her husband, “Did you say I should stay till Mr. Pontellier came back?”(592) after reading this I got the notion that Edna had no intentions of waiting for anyone to give her warmth from the cool breeze of the night air. Edna needs to feel that she is being accepted by those new found relationships that she is creating for herself. Later on Edna comes to find out that no matter how much she does or changes in her peripheral surroundings there is no change that will give her the freedom that she so much longs for. In fact, she attempts to bring back a part of her childhood by going to the racetrack with a rather shady group of people,
I worry about whether Mrs. Pontellier comes to realize that her family needs her and that she may only be feeling the need to be talked to more as an adult and not as a piece of Leonce’s fixtures in the house. We are not given any insight into what happens to the ties that Edna has made with her shady acquaintances, so the story by Kate Chopin seems to leave the reader wondering whether Edna had any affect at all on the second life that she tried to assume for herself. Assuming that Leonce has come to terms with his wife’s death, I can only assume that he will finally get to add the necessary items and furnishings to his house that only he seemed to care about. As for the children, Edna had already distanced herself from them; so perhaps, the children really didn’t know their mother all that well.