The Escape of a Modern Housewife“She could only realize that she herself – her present self – was somehow different from her other self” (Chopin 67 ) . Kate Chopin's Awakening is the gripping story of a woman who awakens from the miserable duties of housewife and mother to a woman who falls in love and finds herself. This story is not meant to judge a woman for having an affair with her husband, but to make the reader fall in love with this woman named Edna and accompany her on her journey to find herself. Edna is an amazing character in The Awakening and shows the reader the basics of independence while also giving them her own journey and reflection of her own life throughout the novel. By reading this, the reader becomes more independent and more willing to say what they want in their own life. Edna's actions make the reader question their own life and truly admire it. “She bent down and kissed him – a soft, fresh, delicate kiss, whose voluptuous sting penetrated his entire being – then turned away from him” (Chopin 177). Edna didn't need to kiss Robert, but she wanted to. The Awakening defines the word “desire” in verse. “A writer of remarkable sensitivity and talent,” said David Malcolm in The Times Literary Supplement (Malcolm). Kate Chopin was born in 1880 in St. Louis, Missouri. What pushed her to start writing was the death of her husband. He wrote At Fault, Bayou Folk and A Night at Acadie. These stories have appeared in Vogue, Youth's Companion, Atlantic Monthly, Century, Saturday Evening Post and other various publications. The publication of The Awakening occurred in 1899. The result of this novel made people very angry, and it was...... middle of paper... our journey. She meets many people while on Grand Isle and falls in love with Robert. He wakes her up and shows her who he really is, and after finding herself again, she is satisfied. At the beginning of the novel, Edna is afraid of drowning, just as she was afraid of being independent and different from others, but she has overcome her fears. There are many morals in The Awakening, such as "Do not fear and excel as much as you can." Edna was a courageous woman, and the only courageous woman, to make a difference between the sexes in the late 1980s. He showed woman how to become free, no matter how difficult it is. Work cited Chopin, Kate. The awakening. New York: Harper Collins, 1972. Print. Malcolm, David. “Literary criticism”. The Times Literary Supplement.com. 2011. Network. October 18, 2011. SparkNotes Editors. "SparkNote on Awakening." SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002.