She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command. She held up her hands, strong, shapely hands, and surveyed them critically, drawing up her fawn sleeves above the wrists. At that early period it served but to bewilder her. He was a man of forty, of medium height and rather a slender build; he stooped a little. The novel unfolds the life of a woman who feels dissatisfied and restrained by the expectations of society. ", "She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. ", "That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that colored and changed her environment, she did not yet suspect. A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her—the light which, showing the way, forbids it. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. ", "The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening is the famous tale of Edna Pontellier, who leaves her family, commits adultery, and begins to rediscover her true self--as an artist. I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me. The present alone was significant...", "I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn't give myself. ‘Are you coming in, Leonce?’ she asked, turning her face toward her husband. Il est considéré comme l’ un des plus importants textes féministes début. Your support helps us continue to discover and share incredible kids books! ", "She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet, half-darkness which met her moods. There are constant boundaries and restrictions imposed on Edna Pontellier that initiate Ednas struggle for freedom. #4 Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic, and we need seek no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier. ‘Are you coming in, Leonce?’ she asked, turning her face toward her husband. ", There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone. ". She tottered up the steps, clutching feebly at the post before passing into the house. He was a man of forty, of medium height and rather slender build; he stooped a little. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. It is considered to be one of the most important early feminist texts. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she then did.”, “The tears came so fast to Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes that the damp sleeve of her peignoir no longer served to dry them. His hair was brown and straight, parted on one side. ", "'Woman, my dear friend, is a very peculiar and delicate, "Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we would assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”.