"The Awakening"

Though it is strikingly apparent in the text the comparison drawn between Kate Chopin's character, Edna Pontellier, and Martha H. Patterson's picture of the "new woman" in her novel, Beyond the Gibson Girl, I am hesitant to claim that Edna is a picturesque version of a "new woman." Though she does in fact experience a sort of awakening in her identity, learning how to swim, taking on painting as an aspired career path, and asserting her independence from her husband, isn't it true that she only did so after being so strongly affected by another man? By the first half of this novel, I'm unconvinced that Edna was always so defiantly independent, and more so convinced that it isn't her search for women's independence and equal opportunities that she seeks, but more so that she's a woman no longer attracted to the life that she has knowingly built for herself. For so long Edna had been a woman influenced solely by her practical views on love, life, and commitment,  and because she acquires so suddenly such strong romantic and sexual feelings for Robert, her whole realm of being is affected, and her views turned upside down. Like any woman falling in love for the first time, she's changed from her former self in a seemingly permanent manner. Most notably was Edna's first realization of the strength of her feelings towards Robert, " She wondered why Robert had gone away and left her. It did not occur to her to think he might have grown tired of being with her the livelong day. She was not tired, and she felt that he was not. She regretted that he had gone. It was so much more natural to have him stay, when he was not absolutely required to leave her." (Pg. 39)