growaw Edna Pontellier’s Search for Self in Kate Chopins The Awakening :: Chopin Awakening Essays

The Search for Self in The arouse In The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, Edna Pontellier is a married woman with squirtren. However some of her actions seem like those of a child. In fact, Edna Pontelliers life is an irony, in that her immaturity allows her to mature. Throughout this novel, there are many examples of this because Edna is continuously searching for herself in the novel. One example of how Ednas immaturity allows her to mature is when she starts to cry when LeVonce, her husband, says she is not a good mother. He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual cast of the children. If it was not a mothers place to look after children, whose on earth was it?(13). Edna, instead of telling her husband that she had taken help of her children, began to cry like a baby after her husband reprimanded her. Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake. She began to cry a littleKshe thrust her face, steamer and wet, into the bend of her arm, and she went on crying there, not caring any thirster to dry her face, her eyes, her arms,(13,14). These tears made Edna look as if she was still a child and that she is tired of being treated as a child by her husband. These tears also showed her she did not like where she was, a score of maturity. Her tears symbolize her get-go awakening. Although the next morning, after Edna had cried the night in the lead had to go and say good-bye to her husband because he was leaving on a business trip. Edna acted immaturely around him again when he gave her half the m whizzy he won the night before. It will buy a handsome wedding present for Sister Janet she exclaimed, smoothing out the bills as she counted them one by one,(15). Edna is spoiled by all of her husbands money. Another example of how Ednas immaturity allows her to mature is when Edna swam like a baby when she went swimming for the first time, and she had over estimated her power. Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the peopl e she had left there. She had not bypast any great distanceKshe made no mention of her see to it with death and her flash of terror, except to say to her husband, I thought I should have perished out there alone.