Overview

The Awakening opens in the late 1800s in Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular with the wealthy inhabitants of nearby New Orleans. Edna Pontellier is vacationing with her husband, Leonce, and their two sons at the cottages of Madame Lebrun, which house affluent Creoles from the French Quarter. Leonce is kind and loving but preoccupied with his work. His frequent business-related absences mar his domestic life with Edna. Consequently, Edna spends most of her time with her friend Adele Ratignolle, a married Creole who epitomizes womanly elegance and charm. Through her relationship with Adele, Edna learns a great deal about freedom of expression. Because Creole women were expected and assumed to be chaste, they could behave in a forthright and unreserved manner. Exposure to such openness liberates Edna from her previously prudish behavior and repressed emotions and desires.Edna's relationship with Adele begins Edna's process of awakening and self-discovery, which constitutes the focus of the book. The process accelerates as Edna comes to know Robert Lebrun, the elder, single son of Madame Lebrun. Robert is known among the Grand Isle vacationers as a man who chooses one woman each year-often a married woman-to whom he then plays attendant all summer long. This summer, he devotes himself to Edna, and the two spend their days together lounging and talking by the shore. Adele Ratignolle often accompanies them.

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