The Awakening by, Kate Chopin Edna Pontillier Wants to Swim Edna Pontillier is a woman playing the role of the wealthy New Orleans housewife. She has a generous husband, children, financial stability, and a great deal of friends. What she also has, unfortunately, is a kind of generic happiness that is the result of such a conventional society. Edna begins to change, and like a small chip of ice breaking away from a huge iceberg, …showed first 75 words of 873 total…

…showed last 75 words of 873 total…what she felt like doing at the time, and since she had the freedom to, it was her final act of independence. She couldn’t stay in the life she had now, and she didn’t want to run away from it either. She gave in to the water of the ocean and to the deep sleep, two themes that were part of her life. However, this is the nap she would never awaken from.