marriage and children. However, Edna chose to write her own ending to her tale. Choosing not to exist if existence meant living in the cage of society in which all men wanted her to reside. In the end Edna does as she pleases. She does not become a victim to social conventions. However, the question still remains, does Edna find true happiness? Has she found a setting in which she can truly be herself? The Awakening is a novel full of symbolism. Most of the scenes in the novel have a powerful symbol that adds meaning to the text and to underlines some point Chopin is making. It is important to gain appreciation of these symbols to get the full meaning of the story. Birds are major symbolic images in the story. The first lines tell of the caged parrot kept in the Leburn house. This represents the entrapment of women within the confines of their own homes. The parrot squawks and screams, but Mr.Pontillier just moves to another place in the house to read his newspaper. This shows that his wife’s strife for freedom and individuality, occurring later on in the novel, were just ignored by her husband. A second symbol is Edna’s clothes. She is fully dressed during the first part of the novel, and slowly removes her clothes, because of the summer heat. This can symbolize her shedding of society’s rules in her life and her growing awakening. It stresses her physical and emotional self, not the appearance of a person’s clothes. When she swims out to sea, she is finally naked. She has shed everything from her body, and consequently herself. “She cast the unpleasant, pricking garments from her, and for the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her” (McQuade 1732).Edna has tried all summer to learn how to swim. Her friends, her husband, and her children all tried to coach her. Chopin uses the id...
