orders Edna to tend to their sick child, believing this duty to be a "mother's place." Uncharacteristically, Edna appears bewildered and distraught after her husband's outburst. "An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish" (14). She begins to suspect that a deeper relationship is possible between a man and a woman, more fulfilling than what she has known. Her dissatisfaction with her own marriage hits her with full force.Edna's self-discovery is driven by the "voice of the sea" which is "seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude" (25). When she is swimming in the sea, Edna is aware of an intense cleansing and renewing which allows her to find the vast solitude that is within her. When at last she learns to swim on her own, Edna yearns to "swim far out, where no woman had swum before" (47). She yearns for greater freedom in a world which she both loves and fears. Her new awakened state leads her to face her husband directly, as an equal. Having shed the persona of lady-wife, she tells her husband, "Don't wait for me," while he expects her to accompany him to bed. Her husband is surprised and disturbed by his wife's newly found independence. Furthermore, Ednas courage in defying her husband does not fade with the tropical morning light when she awakens to discover a new sense of self: "She was blindly following . . . alien hands . . . [which] freed her soul of responsibility" (55). Separated form her normal day-to-day self in the city, Edna is lead into a new land of discovery on the exotic Creole island. As the influences of Grand Isle allow her release from the conventions of society, Edna makes a full declaration of female independence, stating that "she would never sacrifice herself for her children, or for anyone" (79). She refuses to dedica...
