The Awakening by Kate Chopin explores Edna's journey towards defining herself as a person separate from her husband, children, and domestic life. Edna realizes her desire and her need to define her selfhood. Her awakening, however, fails to free her from the constraints of traditional expectations for women. She purveys the "prevailing stereotypes of passive femininity" (Martin) through her inability to connect herself to her own will, emotions, and sexual feelings.
             The fact that Edna's awakening occurs by means of her relationships with men reveals the irony of her quest to define her selfhood. Edna is not intimate with her husband because, "She fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken" (Chopin 32). Edna does not love her husband, but she "fancies" her marriage in order to keep up the appearance of love and submits to her role as wife and mother despite her inner feelings of rebellion. Chopin also attributes Edna's tendency to submit to her own will and desires. When she refuses to enter the house at her husband's command, "She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted" (Chopin 53), feeling so controlled by an impulse to refuse. Edna yields to her own will like she becomes "supple to [Arobin's] gentle, seductive entreaties" (Chopin 154). She is
             unable to connect herself to her own will and feelings because, "Hers is the realm of the unconscious, the subjective, of receptivity and reverie," stereotypes she purveys as "characteristics traditionally ascribed to the female psyche." (Martin). Her unconscious self-estrangement results in her feeling as though she is not responsible for the state of her life, a notion contrary to her struggle for selfhood. She avoids facing the irrationali
             ...