"The Awakening" - Part Two

While my opinion of Edna while reading the first half of the novel was one of admiration and respect, my opinion only continued to deteriorate in reading the final half of The Awakening. Though I first suspected that Edna was a woman trapped in a life she had unknowingly built for herself, fighting desperately to change her circumstances to better the lives of herself, her husband, and her lover, I've come to conclude that she's nothing more than a woman too strongly wrapped up in passions and disillusions. (Ironic, given that at the beginning of the novel this was exactly what she claimed never to want with her life, and with her marriage to Leonce) Though I respected that she wanted to better her life in learning to swim, and in pursuing a career in painting, I found it intolerable that she'd leave her helpless children, selfishly ask not to be held responsible for her actions, and commit suicide despite having an enviable life many would dream of. It was most notably irritable when Edna explained that she simply wanted her own way, even if that meant that she must “trample upon the lives, the hearts, the prejudices of others.” If it was Kate Choplin's idea to create an image of a "new woman" in her characterization of Edna, I'd say she did so in a disappointingly lackluster manner.