Chopins The Awakening O Death Where Is Thy Sting

As a comment on the resolution to Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, an anonymous figure once stated, â€Å"A defeat and a regression, rooted in a self-annihilating instinct, in a romantic incapacity to accommodate to the limits of reality.† The main protagonist of The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, is initially met with joy and excitement with her transition from complacency and dissatisfaction to newfound independence and self-expression. However, as the anonymously declared statement implies, signs that appear throughout the story point towards a sort of self-annihilation to come, which in fact did come in the form of Edna’s implied death. Three main factors foreshadow a premature end to Edna’s ecstatic behavior and newly awakened persona:†¦show more content†¦Death serves as her greatest escape from all of these things, from the reality of her complex situation. Finally, Edna’s vulnerability to love and passion serves as a major contributing factor to her â€Å"defeat and regression† in the sense that it directly impacted some aspects of her despair and desire to escape from reality. The narrator reveals in Chapter VII, â€Å"[Edna’s] marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident,† (Chopin, 24). She simply becomes caught up in a moment of passion and impulsiveness, satisfied at the fact that her marriage would upset both her father and sister. In this sense, her rushing into marriage without a basis of love may be the root of her depressive episodes. Additionally, after Robert leaves for Mexico, Edna becomes overly anxious to receive letters from him, actually breaking into tears upon finally laying her eyes upon a letter from Robert addressed to Mademoiselle Reisz (Chopin, 86-87). This is a prime example of Edna’s vulnerability to love; her emotions are controlled by her â€Å"lover’s† presence and lack thereof, influencing and even worsening her sudden moments of dread and despair. Also, Edna succumbs to seduction by Alcee Arobin’s charm, first with a kiss (Chopin, 112) and then through sleeping with Arobin (Chopin, 125). Edna’s adulterous actions with Arobin are representative of the independent will she now possesses and has displayed in the past in her