The Awakening: the Uncaring and Unselfish Aspects of Edna Pontellier

The Awakening is a short novel that is written by Kate Chopin. This novella is about Edna Pontellier, a wife and a mother of deuce sons, who had a strong desire to experience the freedom or emancipation a woman, can shake up. She tries to pass on this desire, with many selfish decisions. In those days, in eighteen hundreds, many had an orthodox heap on feminism. This social emplacement deprived many women with the power to live an independent life or do whatever they pleased in life.The only role women had to nonplus with no choice were to either be housewives, nurturing mothers, or both. However, those who showed their unorthodox view of this social attitude were considered to have a bad reputation in society at that time. In the novel, the importance of being a nurturing, lovingness mother and an ideal housewife is emphasized. Edna, however, al most(prenominal) completely ignores these priorities and only does it when she has been forced. For example, when Leonce returns fro m playing billiards, he went to check on his kids and found out that one of them have fever.However, when he tells her this she responses in a bring offfree tone that nothing is ill-use with them and returns back to sleep. However, after much prodding by her husband, she wakes and goes to take care of the child (Chopin 48). This shows her selfishness, because she cares more for her sleep than being a nurturing mother and free priority to her kids. Another example is that she leaves her children under the care of their grandmother, without any hesitation. It makes it reckon as though she wants to be away from them so that she can achieve her independence.Furthermore, she explains that she simply wants her own way, although she acknowledges the difficulty of this, especially when it means she must tread upon the lives, the hearts, and the prejudices of others. Edna Pontellier at first has an part with a young man, Robert LeBrun, whom she wants to settle pour down with, runnin g away from her marriage in which she feels like a possession. Moreover, when she was with Robert she felt up this form of happiness, which actually made her pleased with life.However, she also finds happiness with Leonce, because he shows his care for her at times and treats her lavishly, which she appreciates, exclusively that does not entirely pass a base of her happiness. Therefore, it is expected for her to involve in another affair, but at the same time it is still selfish, because she is betraying her husband. However, what is even worse is that, she has an affair with another man named Alcee Arobin, after Robert leaves to Mexico.To elaborate, if Robert was her true love, Alcee Arobin should have neer even appeared in the picture. All in all, agreeing with the author of the essay Edna Pontellier Selfish, Adulterous, and suicidal, the fact that she embraces Alcee, is married, and is supposedly in love with Robert, just puts emphasis on the selfish nature of Edna. In the e nd of the novel, Robert leaves her once again because this time, he does not want to be another step involved in Ednas selfish search for independence and her marriage.Edna cannot live with Roberts decision of going her and she commits suicide, leaving her kids to become motherless at a young proffer age, and not thinking about how their upbringing would be without her or the steamy breakdown Mr. Pontellier can go through. In conclusion, Edna showed importance mostly to herself for most of the time. She was a selfish woman who tries to break out of the social norms, commits acts of adultery, travel in love with a man she cannot have, and who commits the ultimate act of selfishness by committing suicide.