The Awakening

We finally finished The Awakening by Kate Chopin in AP Literature. Overall, the novel was great! However, I found the protagonist (which I suppose is Edna) not very likeable. Although I am a female, Edna's awakening wasn't one that I could not agree with. Yes, I did admire the courage she had to stand up against the stereotypical roles that were assigned to each women during her time. She had the guts to go against her husband and show unwomanly characteristics to the males in her town. The way she stood up for herself and her independence was respectful, and as a woman, I don't know if I would have been able to do that if I was in her shoes. Nevertheless, a lot of the respect I had towards her disappeared when she commited suicide at the end. I hated the ending and believed that the life that Edna boldly stood up for, was broken and gone by the lame act she committed.
It frustrates me that Edna was killed, not by others, but by herself. I believed that Edna was a strong and very powerful female who had control over her life. Her previous acts showed that, and that was what I liked about her: her dependence on herself. She didn't rely on her husband, her friends, her family, but only herself. However, this view changed when I read that she was unable to stop her physical desires and irrationally filled those desires with another man. She was even angry with herself for kissing a man, not out of love, but of lust. These sort of later actions of Edna made me question her actual desires. Did she really want to free herself from society? Or did she want to go and live happily with the one she loved, Robert? If it was really to free herself from society, why did she kill herself by drowning? Her actions showed me that all she wanted to do was free herself from her current husband to live and freely love with the one she had an affair with. Her claim, that an awakening had occured to her, and that her actions were supported by the fact that she had the right to live without societal pressures, seemed only like an excuse to be with Robert. If I looked at it in one way, Edna was never free from the society. Although she wasn't under the control of her husband, it seemed pretty obvious that she was under the control of Robert. She was in an emotional breakdown when Robert said his final good-bye, leaving her forever, which led her to commit suicide. She was always under the rule of a man. That's how I saw Edna after all the later events that occured in the novel. She was tired of not being able to get things her way, realizing that the world didn't revovle around her, and that she was just a weak woman, who was unable to change the way life was. Maybe if she was more courageous, and lived until she was naturally put to death by an outside force, but not by her own will, maybe then would I have a more positive view of Edna Pontellier. This would show that Robert wasn't the only reason for her change and the only reason she lived. This would show that she was a woman of courage, one who fought for her freedom until the end.