Did Edna commit suicide at the end of The Awakening?

Introduction

In the novel The Awakening by Kate Chopan, Edna Pontellier struggles with two powerful forces that tug her life in opposite directions. The forces are so powerful and all-consuming that at the end of the novel Edna commits suicide. (Treu, 17).

There are many ways of looking at the suicide, and each offers a different perspective. It is not necessary that you like the ending of the novel, but you should come to understand it in relation to the story it ends. One way to come to terms with her death is to construct a different ending. How would you have ended the story? What would you have Edna do? Would you have her reconcile with her husband? Have Robert stay with her and they be lovers? Have her divorce her husband and marry Robert? Have her move away from New Orleans and live alone? Have her do this, but with a chosen lover? These options are just some of the paths Edna could have followed.

Discussion

Try to fit your ending into one of these categories: she can be with her lover (in any manner she wishes), she can be married (to a man of her choice), she can live alone. Each of the first two hypothetical endings would betray the point of the novel. Edna does not awaken to sex. She is liberated and does become a very sensual woman, but it is not to sexual expression that she wakens. Therefore, all options involving a lover fall short of fulfilling the meaning of her awakening. If she remains married or marries another, this would put her back (in terms of Webb) at the start of her circle: all the learning and struggling would be for naught. She would once again be a man's possession. Before rejecting the idea that marriage is equivalent to ownership in the world of the novel, remember how Robert speaks to her about their future together. He does not see her living an awakened life with him; he sees her leading the traditional life of a wife with him. The final option is the most difficult to reject. It would be nice to imagine her living and painting alone in a small house somewhere far away from New Orleans. This is not a real option: to see why, think back to the text. Who lives their life this way in the novel? Mademoiselle Reisz does. Is that life shown to be exemplary? No, by portraying Mlle. Reisz in the way Chopin does, she is instructing the reader that Mademoiselle's life is not one to which Edna should aspire.

The fact that readers do not like the ending,that they struggle to make sense of it, is reflected in the body of criticism on the novel: almost all scholars attempt to explain the suicide. Some of the explanations will make more sense to you than others. By reading them you will come to a fuller understanding of the end of the novel ...