SOURCE: Malzahn, Manfred. “The Strange Demise of Edna Pontellier.” Southern Literary Journal 23, no. 2 (spring 1991): 31-9.

In the following essay, Malzahn examines the narrative of The Awakening for an explanation of Edna's motives for committing suicide.

For a long time, critics have been puzzled by the self-inflicted death of Edna Pontellier, the heroine of Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899). At the end of her process of awakening, which begins with a summer infatuation and leads to a breakaway from the family home and from the role of wife and mother, Edna is not a victorious New Woman, leading an independent life of spiritual and sensual fulfillment. She is quite simply dead, to the relief of contemporary commentators such as the unnamed author of the “Book Reviews” column in Public Opinion of 22 June 1899, who presents himself as the representative of the general reading public when he asserts that “we are well...