Edna Pontellier's Transformation In The Awakening

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"The Awakening" is a phrase which symbolically describes what happens to the main character, Edna Pontellier, as she becomes an aware and conscious human being in the course of this book. What is she conscious of? Mostly the fact that her life has been constrained by her role in her family, and that there’s more to Edna than wife and mother extraordinaire. symbolism, metaphor

16- at a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life- that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.

In order to understand Edna’s transformation, one must first understand her starting point.

There are two Ednas – an Inner Edna and an Outer Edna – and the two do not match up. The Outer Edna conforms to societal expectations while the Inner Edna questions her actions. Over time, we see the Inner Edna begin to dominate the Outer Edna, and she becomes much more whole.

Who

I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me’.

Not only is Edna's emerging sense of self revealed in this chapter, but also revealed is her unwillingness to give up this self that is becoming better known to her during this summer of awakening. Her sense of self is based on the sum of her private thoughts and unspoken emotions. Such thoughts constitute a self apart from her identity as a mother, an identity based on externals: certain behaviors, attitudes, and activities constitute motherhood for Edna, rather than an innate sense of connection with or responsibility for her children.

Edna feels she is entitled to a private emotional life, a hidden self. Edna reveals her idea of the self in a conversation with Madame Ratignolle, insisting that although she would give her life for her children, she would not sacrifice her self, a distinction that Madame Ratignolle fails to