The importance of setting in the Awakening Setting is a key element in Chopin's novel, The Awakening For the novel's protagonist, Edna Pontellier, home is not house. Edna was no longer herself when she was locked within the walls of the Pontellier palace. Instead, he was another person entirely, someone he wanted to forget. Likewise, Edna takes on a different identity during her vacations on Grand Isle, in her detached house in New Orleans, and in almost every other environment in which she lives. Indeed, Edna seems to move from one setting to another in the novel, never truly finding her true self – until the end of the novel. Chopin seems very interested in this question throughout his narrative. On a larger scale, the author seems to probe even deeper into the essence of the female experience: do women in general have a place in the world, and is a woman's life the unwieldy quest to find that very place? The Awakening wrestles with this question, taking it to multiple levels of complexity. Edna finds liberation and happiness at various points in the novel, but this is almost immediately contrasted with unhappiness and misery. Even at the end, the reader is still left with the question of whether Edna has truly found an environment where she can finally be herself. Many readers say Edna finds this niche at her beach vacation home in Grand Isle. For Edna, the sea is a vast expanse of opportunity and liberation from the oppressive, mundane world of New Orleans' French Quarter. Chopin's sumptuous descriptions of the sea give us an idea of ​​its powerful effect on Edna: The voice of the sea is seductive; without ever ceasing, whis...... middle of paper ......and Awakening." 1899. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Ed. By Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969. 881-1000 Delbanco, Andrew. "The Half-Life of Edna Pontellier." New Essays on the Awakening Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988. Gilmore, Michael T. "Revolt against Nature: Problematic Modernism. The Awakening." Martin 59-84.Giorcelli, Cristina. "The Wisdom of Edna: A Transient and Numinous Fusion." Martin 109-39.Martin, Wendy, ed. New Essays on the Awakening. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988. Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990.Seyersted, For Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography: Louisiana State UP, 1969.Showalter, Elaine female talent: awakening like a lonely book". 33-55.