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The novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin is set in the late nineteenth century, in Louisiana. This is a place and time for women to submit themselves to the wants and needs of husbands and families. The protagonist, Edna Pontellier, isn’t content with being a mother-woman, one of the ordinary, traditional women who, "...idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it to a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings …

…nothing for her to do but end her life. If Edna had been born in a different time and had been faced with the same situation, it would have been a different story. works cited Hollister, Michael. “Chopin’s The Awakening.” The Explicator 51.1 (1993) : 90-92 Showalter, Elaine. Sister’s Choice: Tradition and change in American Women’s Writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Spangler, George. “Ways of Interpreting Edna’s Suicide.” Kate Chopin Study Text Online. Neal Wyatt, 1993.