Edna's suicide in Kate Chopin's AwakeningAt the end of Kate Chopin's novel “Awakening,” the protagonist Edna commits suicide. The remaining question for the reader is: does Edna's suicide show that she succeeded or failed in her struggle for independence? Edna's new life in independence seems to be going well, especially after Robert's return from Mexico, the lover, whom she met while on vacation in Grand Isle, tells her that he loves her and that he wants. to marry him. But her mood changes when her friend Adèle tells her that she should care more about her family because she doesn't spend enough time with her family because of her adventures. Robert leaves Edna behind because Edna doesn't give a clear answer to his question. his marriage proposal. She then begins to think about her life, her psychological and physical "awakening" and her children. She invites her friends over for dinner and returns to Grand Isle, where she pretends to go swimming but never returns from the water. In my essay, I would like to think about the options and decisions Edna could have made to avoid suicide. A solution could have been to marry another man or to stay married to Léonce and stay with her children. This option is not possible for her because she would become a male trophy again and would not be able to maintain her ideas of independence. On top of that, it would imply that she loses everything she fought for or everything she gained throughout the liberation process. The man of that time would have wanted her to live as a "mother woman", "a woman who idolized her children, adored their husbands and considered it a holy privilege to stand aside as individuals and to grow wings as ministering angels” (Chapter IV). Edna is not a mother who... middle of paper ... her just anyone. The novel ends very abruptly. This makes it difficult to say whether suicide is an act of desperation or whether it is about showing society that it is willing to die for its beliefs. In my opinion, this only shows that she saw no way out of misery. and she chose suicide to protect her children from social problems. There is no objective answer to the question: Edna's suicide, failure or success? Both answers make sense and for both answers you will find reasons. I think her suicide shows that she failed. Society was simply not ready to accept his revolutionary ideas. She failed because she couldn't find people to support her ideas. In today's world, where society is more liberal, it probably would have succeeded, but not in the society of the 1890s. And it is no coincidence that the novel became famous 50 years later!