After reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin, one has to wonder if Edna Pontellier is not some heroic female figure who fights for independence but instead an immoral and promiscuous woman who at the end 'gets what she deserves '.
             Edna was not an ideal motherly figure. She loved her children but would rather see them away, visiting their grandparents, then living with her. Edna was not exactly a neglectful mother, but she was rather indifferent when it came to her children. "She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them" (Chopin 19). It was not that she did not love them, but that they threatened her freedom. And when it came to sacrificing for her children, she would give everything for them but not herself. It seemed that as long as she did not have to give up any part of herself for her children, she could care for them and love them.
             It was not just her children that she treated with a half-heartedness. She treated her husband the same way. Edna was not proper and well-behaved like the women were suppose to be in Victorian times. She did what she wanted to, not what her husband wished. When he left to go on trips, she stayed behind alone. At times when her husband would question her, she would "refuse to answer" him (7). One major point of Edna's disregard for her husband came when she decided to move out of their home and into a small house, the 'pigeon house' as Edna calls it, to live by herself (81). She did all of this while her husband was away and without considering what his thoughts might be.
             However, Edna's biggest disrespect for her husband came when she had an affair with two men. She fell in love with Robert Lebrun during the summer but did nothing about it except fantasize. When he left to go to Mexico, she was left feeling lost and alone. After they headed back to th
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