The Awakening: Edna Pontellier's Spiritual Awakening

Part I of Essay
Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening relates the emotion-driven story of Edna Pontellier. Her story is a happy one. Not because of some typical fairy tale ending where they all live happily ever after, but in that she accomplished her goal in life. She never “sacrifice[d] h ....

Part II of Essay
.... she knew a way to elude them.” (p. 115) Her actions around her suicide greatly symbolize everything she hope to achieve in her life, and finally found in her death. As she walked down to the beach for the last time she put on her bathing suit. When she arrived at the shore, “she cast the unpleasant, pricking garments from her.” That symbolized the shedding of her “unpleasant” and “pricking” life. “For the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air.” (p.115) She was on her way to being free. “She felt like a new-born creature, ....