our actions. We are never given the chance to see how our lives might be had we made different decisions . But, the story of Edna Pontellier, the wife, mother, hostess and friend, showed all too clearly a woman who was really a lover, a painter, an outcast, and a soul who knew to well what might have been. Upon telling Robert goodbye after a serendipitous meeting in a secret garden, Edna returned to the sea. She swam out to the place where she once felt fear....and then she kept going, swimming her way to the only answer she knew to her inner desire for independence --death. In her novel, The Awakening, Kate Chopin shows Edna Pontellier?s confrontations with society, her imprisonment in marriage and Edna?s exploration of her own sexuality. Chopin also portrays Edna as a rebel, who after her experiences at Grand Isle wants to live a full and a free life and not to follow the rules of society. Edna?s life ends in her suicide, but her death does not come as a surprise. Chopin foreshadows Edna?s death by the use of nature and Edna?s connection to it; also by the use of symbols, especially the symbolic meaning of a bird; and by the use of many different characters in the novel, such as Robert Lebrun, Mademoiselle Reisz and Madame Ratignolle. Edna is a very romantic character, who turns to nature for comfort. She "seeks herself" in nature (508). But her surroundings are not comforting to her. She hears voices "from the darkness and the sky above and the stars" that are "not soothing"; the voices "jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid even of hope" (508). Edna wants to feel the embrace of nature upon her but instead she doesn?t feel "uplifted" and hears a "mournful lullaby"(471). This gloomy presentation of nature foreshadows the future events in Edna?s life. Kate Chopin uses the symbolic meaning of a bird to deepen the meaning of the story and to foreshadow the upcoming events. In "The Awakening" a bird symbolizes Edna Po...
