As Elaine Showalter puts it in her criticism of The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is a woman
             Caught between contradictory definitions of femininity and creativity, and seeking either to synthesize them or to go beyond them to an emancipated womanhood and an emancipated fiction. (Chopin 204)
             The expectations of tradition, coupled with the limitations of law, which gave women of the late 1800s very few opportunities for individual expression, not to mention independence. Expected to perform their domestic duties and care for the health and happiness of their families, Victorian women were prevented from seeking the satisfaction of their own wants and needs. Yet, when Edna begins to verbalize her feelings of independence, she soon meets resistance from the constraints - most notably, her husband - that weigh on her active life. And when she makes the decision to abandon her former lifestyle, Edna realizes that independent ideas cannot always translate into a simultaneously self-sufficient and socially acceptable existence. Edna thinks of her self and soul as independent of her family. Edna will give her life if necessary, but she will not give her soul, which is the person she truly possesses, but it kept from exploring. Edna does not want to depend on anyone and does not want anyone to depend on her. She wants her independence, to become her own woman in her own way, and not to give her entire life and soul for her children. Edna will not be the typical female of the Victorian time and give up her entire world – her entire soul and self for her children; she wants to be free to have a life of her own.
             In her strive for independence, Edna finds herself hindered by the treatment from Leonce, which adds to what is driving her away; she is not equal, but property. In Chapter I, Leonce's looking at Edna's sunburned face as a damaged piece of his property shows male chauvinism at its height: ""You are burnt...