en were away, "she did not miss them except with an occasional intense longing" (18). These feelings show that Edna was not the normal "mother-woman" of that time. The largest and most criticized step Chopin takes is in The Awakening. Edna is having many mixed feelings about herself and her sexuality. In the novel, Chopin allows Edna to have an affair. This affair is not out of love but out of the need for passion in Edna's life. When Edna's one true love leaves, this allows Edna to face her changing feelings. Her true love, Robert, returns but they both realize it is not ment to be and he leaves again. He explains his action by saying, "I love you. Good-by, because I love you," (112). Much shock felt by the readers toward The Awakening and other stories by Chopin was the boldness she took in rejecting the conventions of other women's writing. In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier appears to "reject the domestic empire of the mother and the sororal world of women's culture." (Showalter 178). Edna seems to go beyond the bonds of womanhood, she did not have a mother of daughter and refuses to go to her own sister's wedding. This lack of a woman figure in Edna's life deeply affects the way she things and feels until meeting Adele Ratignolle, whom she feels is a "maternal figure." Adele is, in Edna's view, the perfect "mother-woman." Adele encourages Edna in her artistic ability, the way a mother would, by telling Edna that her "talent is immense" (Chopin, The Awakening 55). The relationship that Edna has with Adele causes her to recall the events, decisions and the consequences of these decisions.Chopin shows boldness in the way she makes her female characters defy their families on the subject of marriage. This is shown in The Awakening when Edna realizes that "her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident." He fell in love and "his absolute devotion flattered her." (18). Edna also marries Leonce because of "violent opposition of t...
