Edna's Search For Freedom Analysis

Words: 573
Pages: 3

Freedom- "She handled her brushes with a certain ease and freedom which came, not from long and close acquaintance with them, but from a natural aptitude." "How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! how delicious! She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known."
In these quotes Edna is completely free. The way she felt towards painting and the way she felt at the ocean before she killed herself are two examples of how Edna used to get her freedom and how she finally received freedom at the end of the book. Edna's search for freedom is a constant effort that leaves her with only one answer in the end.

Sexism- "Most women are moody and whimsical." "He reproached his wife
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Private- "Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory impulses which impelled her." "He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it?"
Edna struggles with her public and private life throughout the book. Her husband is a jerk in private and nice in public and Robert is a friend in public and her lover in private.

Search for Self- ""You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both." ""I love you," she whispered, "only you; no one but you. It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream. Oh! you have made me so unhappy with your indifference. Oh! I have suffered, suffered! Now you are here we shall love each other, my Robert. We shall be everything to each other. Nothing else in the world is of any