The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a story about a married woman who like a new born child is going through life trying to set their individuality in this world without the guidance of others. This book starts off with the introduction of two caged birds. This sets the theme up with the thought of how birds in a cage are looking for a way out. How they are looking for a way to spread their wings and fly away. That is what Edna Pontellier the main character of the story or the protagonist of The Awakening is trying to do from the marriage or "cage"� she is in with Leonce Pontellier. Leonce Pontellier goes on through the start of the novel with trying to make Edna confirm to the mother-women ideals. That is also a "cage"� that Edna is trying to escape. She wants to be her own person.
English: Edna May
English: Edna Goodrich.
English: Publicity photo of Edna Purviance from Th...During her vacation on the Grand Isle, Edna begins a series of awakenings. She wants to separate the identity of a wife and a mother. Art is a way of satisfaction to express herself. She then falls in love with Robert Lebrun and has an affair with Alcee Arobin. She does this act of non- "" mother-woman to try and satisfy her search of independence. She then realizes that Robert her "love"� views Edna as a possession as does Leonce. She also being a mother realized that she has to give up her individual identity to become the ideal mother and these two ideas force her to at the end of the book. Throughout the book Edna goes through the stages that many newborn children go through in becoming an individual. The rare matter of this case is that Edna at the point of her is 29 years old...