Throughout The Awakening, water the main motif serves as a catalyst to the metamorphosis of Edna.

Adele Ratignolle serves as a foil to Edna, since she is the ultimate embodiment of the perfect wife and mother. Adele belongs to a group of women “who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels” (Chopin 10). Adele is everything that Edna is not as a mother. Despite this, Edna and Adele find themselves in similar situations. Adele too cannot escape her children, so much so that “she has no way of conceiving of herself as a separate person” (Bogarad 160). Edna herself recognizes Adele’s entrapment, feeling “pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor of blind contentment…” (Chopin 74). The only difference between Edna and Adele is that while Edna rejects her role, Adele blindly embraces it. Conversely, Mademoiselle Reisz is unmarried with no children. She is free. Mademoiselle Reisz expresses herself through her music and she is not afraid to reveal her emotions, causing her to be seen as an “eccentric, unpleasant ‘old maid’” (Bogarad 160). Despite this, Mademoiselle Reisz’s lifestyle is what Edna desires for herself. When Edna attempts to paint she finds she only is able to when she is feeling content. She wants to express her feelings towards Robert yet they are suppressed. Mademoiselle Reisz does not face these challenges, proving that the

She leaves the care of her children to her grandmother, abandoning them and her husband when she leaves to live in the pigeon-house. To her, leaving her old home with Léonce is very important to her freedom. Almost everything in their house belonged to him, so even if he were to leave, she would still feel surrounded by his possessions. She never fully becomes free of him until she physically leaves the house. That way, Edna has no ties whatsoever to that man. Furthermore, Edna indulges in more humanistic things such as art and music. She listens to Mademoiselle Reisz’s playing of the piano and feels the music resonate throughout her body and soul, and uses it as a form of escapism from the world. Based on these instances, Edna acts almost like a very young child, completely disregarding consequences and thinking only about what they want to do experience most at that moment. However, to the reader this does not necessarily appear “bad”, but rather it is seen from the perspective of a person who has been controlled by others their entire life and wishes to break free from their grasp. In a way, she is enacting a childlike and subconscious form of revenge by disobeying all known social constructs of how a woman should talk, walk, act, and interact with others.

As Edna becomes her own person, she also becomes a better artist. Being an artist comes with responsibility in the novel. Prior to her awakening, she does not consider herself as an artist. The novel states, “Mrs. Pontellier had brought her sketching materials, which she sometimes she dabbled. She liked the dabbling” (13). After she awakens however, her artistic abilities increase and she begins to sell her artwork. Ironically, Edna and Mademoiselle Reisz have similar characteristics. Mademoiselle Reisz is Edna’s spiritual mother in a way, and the two have a love hate relationship. Mademoiselle Reisz is a key factor in Edna’s awakening, and she encourages her as she goes towards her heart’s desires. She knows that Edna does not want to answer to her husband or always watch after her children, and the best way to do so is to be like Mademoiselle Reisz.

Edna’s children are different from other children, if one of her boys fell “…he was not apt to rush crying to his mother’s arms for comfort; he would more likely pick himself up, wipe the water out of his eyes and the sand out of his mouth, and go on playing”. Edna is not a typical Creole “mother-woman” who “idolized her children (and) worshipped her husband” (8) and at times that results in her husband’s claims that she neglects her children. Edna’s children leave her attached to her husband, and even if she is somehow able to escape the relationship with her husband she will never be able to escape her children. She realizes this and whether consciously or not, doesn’t care for her children the way this is expected of a woman in her time period. When Adele Ratignolle reminds her to, “Think of the children!…Oh think of the children! Remember them!” Edna finally realizes her decisions affect her and her children. Instead of accepting her responsibility as a mother Edna decides to give up, and does so by committing suicide.

Edna's feelings of despondency fade as the sea's spell reaches out for her again. The narrator points out that "[the] voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in

Mademoiselle Reisz is the epitome of what Edna wishes she had become, Edna is covetous of Mademoiselle’s lifestyle. Madame Reisz is a carefree woman who could not care less about what society thinks of her. Edna sees what kind of person Mademoiselle is through her music. “The woman, by her divine art, seemed to have reached Edna’s spirit and set it free.” Through Edna’s friendship with Mademoiselle Reisz, Edna starts to find herself as a woman. “She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet, half-darkness which met her moods.” Mademoiselle Reisz shows Edna that she can be herself and be independent

This is the point in the story where Edna starts listening to her voices inside her gives into her inner desires. She continues to struggle with the fact that she married out of convenience and she has two sons that she really does not want to mother as well as the fact that she loves being an artist. In chapter x, Edna goes to the sea only to realize that all her swimming lesson had finally paid off that summer and she was swimming. Chopin describes this even like a baby finally getting enough confidence to walk and the baby walks realizing its own strength and power. While swimming, she soon gets tired and has quick feeling overcome her of the possibility of drowning but quickly swims back to shore. She has conquered her greatest fear and now feels like a new woman that is no longer afraid of her true feelings. Edna’s affair with Robert continues and he eventually leaves Grand Isle and her and her family returns home.

Through the story Edna becomes more and more uneasy about not being able to do and have what she really wants. This can be shown from the beginning when she lets her children play by themselves and doesn’t miss her husband when he is away from home. Edna tried to be a good mother by becoming friends with an old fashioned woman, Madame Adèle Ratignolle, who devoted her life to her husband and children. However, when Edna was not around Madame Adèle Ratignolle, she forgot how to be like Adèle Ratignolle and instead busied herself with what was considered to be her “childish ways”. She would try to make herself as happy as possible; she was not her happiest with her husband and kids. When Edna discovered her passion for art, she embraced it and neglected her family even more so than before.

“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, and inviting the soul to wander for a spell in the abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation." (Chopin 13). Edna was a person that found passion within arts of life, her admiration to her most intimate friend who had the gift of writing, a personal way of expressing, as well as Mademoiselle Reisz who played the piano with a passion that broke tradition for which Edna was the only one to appreciate it, Mademoiselle Reisz music evoked a waking with Edna 's body and soul that could not compare to nothing else - "But the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it lashing it as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her"(Chopin 27). Approximating the end of the summer Edna also nears a personal growth within, she learns to swim, simply ineffable to Edna but ordinary to many other people would not care for its gift, she learned to swim and she went as far into the ocean where no woman had swum before, a point in Edna 's life that prepares her to open herself up for new choices. She choices to find shelter in a man that had aroused herself as a young beautiful woman, she choices to dream and long for Robert Lebrun like the other forbidden men in her childhood, but its only when she returns to her charming home on

She is moved by music. During that summer Edna sketches to find an artistic side to herself. She needs an outlet to express who she is. Edna feels that art is important and adds meaning to her life. After the summer is over and they are back to the city and Edna is a changed woman. She makes many steps towards independence. She stops holding "Tuesday socials", she sends her children to live in the country with their grandparents, she refuses to travel abroad with her husband, she moves out of the Lebrun house on Esplanade Street, and to earn money, she starts selling her sketches and betting the horses. She also starts a relationship with another man Alcee Arobin. He meant nothing to her emotionally but she used him for sexual pleasure. Edna evolved above her peers she did not believe that sexuality and motherhood had to be linked. The last step of her "awakening" is the realization that she can not fulfill her life in a society that will not allow her to be a person and a mother. Edna commits suicide in the ocean at Grand Isle.

She was pressured to marry Leonce by her father and older sister. Along with marriage came the pressure to have children. She is forced into these roles but never actually succumbs to them. Edna not only has Madame Ratignolle's friendship and her marriage to wake her up to her dreams and emotions, her affairs wake up to her desires. The way the different male characters treat her reminds her that she will never happily fit into the role of a wife and mother, therefore awakening her.

The ocean is a symbol of both freedom and danger, and freedom brings as sense of danger in Edna’s time for women.

Edna’s indulgence in art exemplifies the importance she has placed on personal fulfillment, an attribute of feminist ideals. Edna characterizes herself as an artist. This demonstrates her desire to be set free from the familial expectations placed on her. Art represents a freedom of expression. Edna’s association with her artistic passion, not necessarily ability, foreshadows her desire to break free from society’s norms. Edna seeks the guidance of a liberated woman, Mademoiselle Reisz, who is the ideal feminist woman that Edna aspires to be. Reisz connects with her artistic hobbies through music. Her music inspires and provides her with the strength not to live under the maternal expectation. Edna enjoys painting although she does not consider

In direct contrast with Edna was her friend, Adele Ratignolle. As Mr. Pontellier states in chapter four, Adele was the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm. Mrs. Ratignolle was the queen or ideal mother-woman. This separates Edna and Adele throughout the story. While they are good friends, it is obvious that they think and feel very different when it comes to marriage, children and their place in society. It is also quite apparent that Adele is disapproving of Edna’s lifestyle. Adele Ratignolle seems to be completely oblivious to the oppression of women. She often attempts to serve as a conscious for Edna, constantly reminding her to think of her children and emphasizing how certain behaviors may appear to others. She even goes so far as to tell Edna that her husband will not allow her to visit Edna anymore if Edna does not

“Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her” (547). She looked at and heard things as if for the first time. “The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon the piano sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier’s spinal column” (556). She decided that she would move out of her house with her husband and children and would move into a small apartment by herself. This is something that women of her day simple did not do. Edna was different.