The Awakening II

When I began to read the second half of The Awakening a few things distressed me about Edna's character. She seemed to find fleeting happiness in small details of her life, but never followed through with them. For instance when Leonce left for New York and she had the house to herself. She lovingly sent her husband off and acted very content with him being gone. She read as she had wanted to do and ate her dinner casually by candlelight, but then as soon as she was alone in bed she began to long for her husband. This happened in a few situations where she was blissfully happy and then all of sudden nothing could console her. She kept looking for happiness in relationships with men never within her self. Edna represented progressive thoughts and then contradicted them with her fickle romantic endeavors, which always let her down. She always assumed the next man wouldn’t treat her as a possession in a society that knew no other norm. I guess I was hoping she would be a model of the “new woman,” but instead her suicide gave the movement a despairing set back.