The Awakening - Echos of Ennui

Chopin's main character, Edna Pontellier, may represent the "New Woman", but she is in no way a new character in literature. Her story of a listless acquiescence of her assumed role of wife and mother as prescribed by the society she belongs to, followed by a series of small defiances all leading up to an ultimate rebellion frames the character descriptions of several of classic literature's leading ladies. One novel which in many ways parallels Edna's journey in The Awakening is Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Chopin's novel, written nearly forty years after Flaubert's, echos the same feelings of boredom, a journey of self-discovery, a reclaiming of agency over one's own physicality and sexuality, shared by Emma Bovary. Both women enter marriages freely and by choice, but realize the disappointing realities of it shortly after, both exhibit attributes of neglectful mothers, and both seek to lose themselves within the throws of romantic adventures. Both women mean to gain their independence through these rebellions, but depend upon male attention to fuel their defiance. I am interested to see whether or not Edna's fate will   be similar to that of Emma's.