ed her conventionality and the male authority, symbolized by Leonce, that goes with it. She realizes how often she has responded automatically to his commanding tone, "But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded" to him before (Chopin 78). When she finally goes to bed it is on her own terms, and in her own time.But the struggle to leave conventionality behind and to follow her instincts is not an easy one for Edna. As Mme. Reisz warns her, "The artist must possess the courageous soul..," "the soul that dares and defies" (Chopin 115). In the end Edna realizes that she cannot completely abandon the conventions of her world and remain within it. She returns one last time to Grand Isle, for one final swim.On the surface her swim is simply a suicide. It appears that Edna has given up, that she hasn't "the courageous soul" of which Mme. Reisz spoke. But symbolically it is much more. It is in fact the final triumph of her instincts over her conventionality. The swim is her final repudiation of the conventions which continue to try to reclaim her. Notice that Chopin never actually tells us that Edna is dead. What she does tell us is that Edna "felt like some newborn creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world it had never known" (Chopin 175).The last sentences of the novel describe Edna's thoughts as nostalgic, fastening on to some of the happier symbols and images of her life. Edna, in fact, is swimming not to her death, but rather towards life, "back into her own vision, back into the imaginative openness of her childhood" (Sandra M. Gilbert, in Chopin 31).Thus we see the final difference between James' and Chopin's portrayal of this theme. James' Winterbourne and Chopin's Edna Pontellier face the same internal struggle between conventionality and instinct. Whereas Winterbourne returns to conventionality, however, Edna leaves it behind her and swims towards a new life, a life where her instincts hold ultimate sway.Yet the ...
