Kate Chopin is an American writer, best known for her description of culture in New Orleans, Louisiana, and of women's struggles for freedom. Many of her works including The Awakening, were examples of "local-color" and helped establish Chopin as a contributor to Southern regional literature. The Awakening attracted a lot of negative criticism for its description of a woman's developing independence and sensuality. This novel portrayed the progress of a wife, mother, and a lady addicted to finding love under her own control, and throughout the novel she undergoes awakenings that will eventually lead to her suicide.
             One of the first awakenings that Edna has is a marital awakening. For Edna, the marital awakening at first had a positive influence on her. One positive effect that it had was that it a sense of good things that were going to happen, "Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But her small boot heel did not make and indenture, not a mark upon the little glittering circlet."(56). Edna's attempt to smash the ring, is her trying to end the repression of her husband that it causes. This is very similar to the repression that Hester felt by the "A", and the freedom she craved when she first removed it in the woods. Another positive effect Edna experienced was the sense of well being, and not suffering,
             "Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle, a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish...