Edna's Selfish Suicide

Now, please don't hate me for this because I've been here.

I feel that Edna's death at the end is completely premeditated and selfish. She went out to Grand Island to kill herself as it was the source of her greatest pleasure, pain, and her awareness of both. While she was caught for the longest time in the monotonous setting of the household she never thought of her own well-being, and definitely was, at the least, mildly depressed. With her moment of self-realization, she snapped into a world in which she had very little control. Her little lifeline in the hopes for a free life with Robert are shattered when he freaks out and leaves.

(I am inclined to the reading that he is freaked out by realizing that she is independent and thinking, along with knowing that she slept with Arobin. Far from being the paragon of virtue he remembered she has slept with the man about town, in conjunction with realizing that she won't settle down with him it is enough to make him slink out of town with his tail between his legs.)

Now, back to Edna. She went out on that beach with intent to die. She may have told Victor what she wanted for dinner, but she knew that she wouldn't make it. She was keeping up appearances for the children's sake. In many cases of suicide, the friends and family are very confused when they hear the news. Often they protest and say that the last time they had seen the departed it was the happiest they had been in a long time. They have made the choice to leave. They are done. It's the last 100 feet of a marathon run wearing ankle weights. They smile and laugh and cry and end it all. Edna made the choice even though she had a chance to get out. She had a support network, albeit a shaky one due to the lack of understanding of depression in the time period. There were people to help her. Chopin states that "[p]erhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him-" (p 116).

I know that recovering from depression is like crawling up the slippery slopes of Hell itself with weights on your ankles, but damn it, she just gave up and let go. That doesn't sound very awakened to me.

The (sexual) Awakening

I doubt that my post will live up to the title but, here it goes. During our initial discussion of The Awakening I was surprised at the amount of freedom Edna appeared to have. While she couldn't just take off and not come back for dinner like Mr. Pontellier did, she still goes off to the beach to go swimming (presumably) alone with Robert and she is left to her own devices with this young playboy for quite a while. Is it any wonder that some kind of sparks fly?

While her children do still need her, they are very independent, giving her a significant amount of time to herself. Isn't there some adage about idle women being wicked women or something like that? The thoughts that link idleness and inattentiveness to children leading to infidelity are silly, but if that was an established stereotype, then I can see this novel unfolding into a morality tale. Either way, I like Edna more than Bret. Not sure why, but i'll get a better handle on it as we read.