The "Awakening"? Really?

Spongebob is Awakened

Awakening- an act or moment of becoming suddenly aware of something. “The Awakening” is symbolically used to describe what happens to Edna Pontellier throughout the course of this novel. By the end of the book Edna has become a more conscious human being. What has she become conscious of? Her whole life is has been constricted by the role she has to play in society. Edna is more than a mother and wife, many times throughout the novel this idea is presented. In the beginning of the novel we see Edna as the “meek and meager” wife she is trying so desperately to play. “Looking at them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband before leaving for the beach. She silently reached out to him, and he, understanding, took the rings from his vest pocket and dropped them into her open palm. She slipped them upon her fingers”(Chopin, 3). As the novel progress we see multiple sides to Edna appear. Two specifically are her surface and inner Edna. “Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions” (Chopin, 18). The surface of Edna is the one that conforms to society. As our novel progresses inner Edna, the one that questions her actions, takes over surface Edna. Her summer on the island truly opens her eyes and invigorates her soul, Edna experiences both immense joy and terrible sorrow as her newly awakened self. “There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested. There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why—when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood” (Chopin, 78)