The Awakening Reaction

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My Reaction to The Awakening
Honestly, I felt kind of stifled throughout the whole book. I always felt as if Edna was on the verge of something great but could never quite get there. It’s as if she kept taking me two steps forward and then one step backward, starting with her first experience of being able to go out into the water and swim on her own. This was a pivotal point in the story. She realizes how it easy it is and then admonishes herself for all the time she had wasted before, “splashing about like a baby!” (Chopin,Ch X) Then when she turns around and looks toward shore, the distance she’d just traveled now seems like a great feat she might not be able to overcome on the way back. Later that night when she first defies her husband by staying out in the hammock, I thought, “Ok, she’s standing up for herself.” And she does but only to a certain extent because she tires and ends up going back to bed before her husband, who stays up finishing his cigar.
I realize that Edna’s awakening is a process and that it’s not one to come all at once, but yet I still feel like Chopin, although posing a controversial subject in this book, was still holding back. Throughout the whole novel it’s like that. Edna steps forward and then backwards. She falls for Robert but doesn’t fully realize it until he leaves for Mexico. When she’s back in New Orleans she stops receiving visitors and then moves out. But yet when her father arrives she takes him to Adele’s and enjoys making sure he’s having a good time, or so it seems. When Edna tells Mademoiselle Reisz her reason for moving into the pigeon house, she says it’s because she’s tired of looking after the big house. Mademoiselle Reisz has to get Edna to admit her real reason is because she wants to be independent. Edna can’t even begin to really open herself fully, not even to Mademoiselle Reisz.
It seems like Edna is trapped in this never-ending quest for fre...