Although not a particularly strong or rebellious spirit in the past, during her summer on Grand Isle, Edna develops a devotion to the pursuit of passion and sensuality, two qualities lacking in her marriage and home. She has a great weakness for the melodrama of unrequited or unfulfilled love.
The passion she develops for Robert over the summer becomes her all-consuming occupation and, in part, instigates her radical departures from convention upon returning to New Orleans. Her obsession with Robert is ultimately suspect in its sincerity, given her instinctive attraction to adversity in love. Also key in her development are Mademoiselle Reisz's piano performances, which stir up great emotions in Edna and both feed and enflame her need for some drama in her life. Edna's days at the racetrack function in the same way: Intoxicated by success at betting on the horses, she is reluctant to come back down to earth.
While she has no romantic feelings for him, she feels a potent physical attraction to him, an attraction that results in a sexual awakening just as Mademoiselle Reisz's piano performances brought about an emotional awakening.
Seeking to improve her skills as an artist is another result of her increasing need for self-fulfillment.
Edna step by step relieves herself from the obligations of her surrounding and undergoes a development that leads to new strength and independence.
However, Edna never succeeds in reaching full individuality and goes the only possible way: she commits suicide. Edna has issues below the surface that spawn her irrational, selfish, and uncaring actions. She does this numerous times throughout the book with both Robert and Alcee. Edna Pontellier is a respectable woman of the late s who not only acknowledges her sexual desires, but also has the strength and courage to act on them.
Breaking through the role appointed to her by society, she discovers her own identity independent of her husband and children. Why does Edna visit Mademoiselle Reisz? Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. These realities are her love for Robert, her husband and children, and the numerous other demands of Victorian womanhood.
Still, after this first awakening she is able to spend a glorious day away from the island with Robert and takes up painting with renewed vigor. She is literally a new woman after this experience. When Robert leaves for Mexico, she is left alone with her new understanding of self-awareness and for some time does not seem to know what to do with it.
It is at this point, when the family returns to the city, that manifestations of her awakening at Grand Isle become apparent. Much to the dismay of her husband, she stops attending and holding perfunctory social obligations at the family home and she becomes increasingly involved with her painting. She has been transformed not only in her own eyes but those of others. This wild image of a strange beast stays with the reader, especially as there is a latent note of animal sexuality behind it that will later emerge in her affair with Alcee.
The second major part of her awakening comes with her removal to her own house and her affair with Alcee because it is the most socially observable act of her defiance and freedom. Now she is able to explore her repressed sexuality in a setting that allows her to be free and this leads to her understanding of herself as a female and sexual being. More importantly than this, however, is the house itself as a symbol of her freedom and new awakening to herself.
Every step which too toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual" In such a place she is free to explore her sexuality and creativity. In essence, it is a place where she can live out her fantasy of being an independent woman. The problem with this, however, is that she cannot ignore society completely, nor can Robert. When Robert shows back up in her life, Edna behaves much like the mythical phoenix. She has risen to such great heights, carried on the wings of her newfound creativity and hopes that Robert will return.
When it turns out, however, that he is unwilling to abandon the pressures of society, Edna is crushed—she has flown too close to the sun and is now irreversibly burnt and damaged. For the first time in the haze of her awakening she realizes that it is impossible for her to live outside of society completely, to be herself and have what she dreams of, and it is this that eventually leads her to commit suicide.
This begins the cycle of thought that reminds her that no matter how much she may want to be free and live the life of her dreams, there is no escaping reality.
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