“One
of these days,” she sad, “I’m going to pull myself together for a while and
think-try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don’t
know. By all the codes, which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked
specimen of the sex. But some way I
can’t convince myself that I am. I must think about it.”
In
the Awakening, Edna finds herself becoming a person different from what is
expected of her. She explores an “awakening” within herself of who she wants to
be. She wants to be an individual. But she doesn’t only want to be this
however; she wants to be an individual woman. This in her society was something
practically unattainable. A woman could not declare herself an individual, lest
being seen as a going crazy. Edna’s friend Adele achieves some individuality
through her music, but it is disguised as entertainment and just an activity
that she loves to do. Edna could never have enough satisfaction with that,
however, so she found out. She wasn’t the person she had thought she was. She
discovered she didn’t want to be a woman living her whole life pleasing her
husband. She wanted her ideas to be seen as innovative and imaginative rather
than talk of a women going crazy. She wasn’t the “wicked specimen” that her
society accused her as being. She just wanted to be in control of herself and
discover who she was without others telling her who she “should be.”
In
the 19th century many women were not given the right to be an
individual. They were held back and belittled by men around them. They were
told that they would never amount to something as great as a man could. Often with this laid before them, women would
settle into the image they were “supposed” to and would refrain from doing
activities they actually wanted. Edna
challenged this by actually taking time to think about herself and who she
wanted to be. In the end Edna came to
the conclusion that in her society things couldn’t change. Even if she changed
herself, she would amount to nothing in the eyes of others because they would
only see her as defying and sick in the mind. She found her way out of the
realized horror by ending her own life. She sacrificed her individuality.
