The Awakening Edna's Sacrifice

In The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, struggles to maintain her sense of self and her true values in an intense society. Edna marries Mr. Pontellier and is catapulted into the lifestyle of the Creoles. She is not originally from their society, which makes her isolated from the rest of the community. Edna continually fails to meet the high expectations of the people who surround her; her chronic efforts to try to fit in and find herself generate individual awakenings. These realizations provoke issues between her and her husband and her and her children. The pressures of the Creole society and her unwillingness to conform to their ideals lead her to sacrifice her life at the end of the novel. Her sacrifice ensured

that she would be able to oppose the regulations of the Creoles and protect her individuality as a women. She did not follow the specific expectations of their society, disclosing the deeper importance of staying true to one’s identity, even where one does not fit in.
Edna Pontellier chose to surrender her own life in order to awaken a personal happiness in herself that did not include a relationship with her husband. Marital separation was completely unacceptable in the Creole society. No matter how unhappy a person or couple was, divorce was not an option. When Edna received a box from Mr. Pontellier in front of other women, Edna was “forced to admit” that Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world (p. 8). Chopin uses the word “forced” to show that Edna could not reveal her ill feelings about her husband or their marriage because of the strict societal ideals of the Creoles. Her personal struggle to maintain independence is clear when Edna tries to find individual content by flirting with many other men and moving out of her home with Mr. Pontellier simply because “the money that provides for [the house], are not [hers]” (p. 93). Edna wanted to be free; she wanted to own her own place, paint freely, and gamble. Each of these actions were extremely despised by the Creoles. However, instead of completely leaving Mr. Pontellier to do these things, she chose to kill herself quietly and not create a big scene. This further revealed the novel's meaning as a whole that her happiness is what she valued most and that sacrificing her relationship was her best option in order to maintain her independent values.
The only way that Edna could preserve the notoriety of her children while continuing to protect her ethics was to drown herself.

Although Edna was not the ideal mother in the Creole society, she still deeply cared for her children and knew that her actions determined the fate of their lives. She was not willing to give up the future of what she admired for her own peace of mind. In Chapter 16, Edna tells Madame Ratignolle, “‘I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself”, demonstrating that even if she were to give up her life, her personal ideals would still remain. The stress of the Creole society taught her that her actions would affect her loved ones and she knew that she had to sacrifice her life in order to keep her happiness. It was extremely important for mothers to take care of their children. However, for Edna, when her children were away at their grandmother’s home, “their absence was a sort of relief... It seemed to free her of a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her” (p. 21). Her mindset of her children contradicted those of the Creole women, more deeply expressing her seclusion from their society and giving her another reason to search for a way out. The meaning of a work as a whole was unveiled after she found her way out. The suicide allowed her to save what was most important to her: her place as a female in a strict

society.
During the 1890’s, there was no place for radical women, like Edna, and those who were extreme were obligated to sacrifice their personalities for the purpose of conforming to their society.

The author mentions that Creole women “were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels” (p. 9). Edna Pontellier possessed actions directly opposite of these because she was not raised within the Creole society. She did not idolize her children nor worship her husband; she did not notice her own child was sick and ran off with other men while still married. Mr. Pontellier believes that “his wife failed in her duty toward their children” and it was obvious that Edna was not the perfect mother (p. 8). The constant pressure of feeling the need to sacrifice herself in order to fit in became too much for her. She could not sacrifice her children because of the repercussions that would succeed her selfish actions. In contrast, she had to sacrifice her marriage in order to achieve contentment within herself. In order to save herself and her values, Edna disappeared into the ocean and did not return. This method illuminated the meaning of the work as a whole that she would not conform to the normalities and regulations of the community and would stick to her independence as a

woman.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin describes how a woman, Edna Pontellier, struggles to find herself in a world where she is detached from the people around her. Living in the society of the Creoles, she realized that something was missing and she had to find a way to attain it. That something was her true happiness. With the countless role expectations appointed to her by the Creole society, she felt as though she could not be her true self. Through multiple awakenings in the novel, Edna was able to identify her true values and sacrificed her life to keep them pure. If she were to blatantly express her desires in their society, her actions would have been considered shameful. Nonetheless, by choosing to sacrifice her life, Edna was liberated from the traditions of the Creoles and was able to protect her values in a society where women were not free to have their own ideals.