Edna's Independence

Chopin a writer and feminist in the late 19th century wrote of freedom, independence, and sexuality in the Awakening. The Awakening is a heartfelt story of a woman who is discontented in her marriage without realizing it until someone "awakens" her. Over the course of the story, Edna falls in love, leaves her husband, has an affair, actually does things that make her happy, and in the end commits suicide because of this love. While Chopin brought many new and interesting ideas into her stories, she also demonstrates through Edna that she believes that marriage without love is harmful for a woman.

Kate Chopin was born Kate O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850. Chopin lived at home with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, all of them widows. Chopin grew up surrounded by smart, independent, single women. Until Chopin was sixteen, no married couples lived in her home, although it was full of brothers, uncles, cousins, and borders.

In 1870, at the age of twenty, she married Oscar Chopin, twenty-five, and the son of a wealthy cotton-growing family in Louisiana. After their marriage, they lived in New Orleans where she had five boys and one girl, all before she was twenty-eight years old.

As the book begins, Edna is a married woman who seems vaguely satisfied with her life; however, she cannot find happiness with Leonce. Edna's marriage to Leonce is safe, but there is no passion or excitement. "She grew fond of her husband, realizing with some unaccountable satisfaction that no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby threatening its dissolution" (Chopin, p. 37).

While this lack of emotion is enough to satisfy Edna for the majority of her marriage, after she begins to allow her true self to come forth, she feels trapped and seeks a way to escape. She realizes that she needs intrigue and flavor in her marriage, especially, in her life.