The figures that, during the novel, have the greatest role in shaping Edna Pontellier's character, and therefore the figures from whom she must escape, are her husband and children. It is her role as wife and mother that is supposed to define her, as it did for much of recorded history. Women were thought to have very little value outside of the home, especially in the higher classes (when it was unnecessary for women to earn an income or engage in labor for any other reason). Thus, it was her interactions with and devotion to certain specified others that was supposed to define her. As she awakens to the reality of this construct, she reflects, "I would give up the unessential [for my children]; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself (Chopin, Chapter 16). Once she realizes that she truly as an identity of her own, she is unwilling to have it subsumed by anyone else.
Edna's foil throughout the novel is the unflappable Madame Ratignolle, who embodies society's ideal conception of the female identity. She is fully engaged with her children and her husband, and even spends her summer knitting winter garments for her coming baby. Though she and Edna Pontellier are the best of friends, they are also complete opposites in this regard. The novel refrains from judging either woman on the...
Just so, though Madame Ratignolle appears a touch too subservient in her role as the caretaker of her family, it is clear that this role makes her immensely happy and does not mark any lack of fulfillment on her part. Edna sees her as a representative of "women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals," but the book ends up disputing such outright judgment with the well defined character of Madame Ratignolle (Chopin, Chapter 1).
Madame Ratignolle dies in the novel, as well; both women, on very different paths and with remarkably different senses of feminine identity, end up leaving the world and themselves behind. Chopin never explicitly determines which is the proper way of behaving for a woman -- in fact, The Awakening is far more about having the ability and the opportunity to choose an identity, whatever it may be. This si the essence of the feminist struggle, and the reason it must take so many different forms. Feminism is about individual independence for women, and forcing individuals to follow the same rules, even in a fight for liberation, could ever be truly liberating.
