Suicide as the only alternative in The Awakening In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the main character, Edna decides to kill herself rather than live a lie. It seemed to Kate that the moment of her death was the only thing left under her control as society had already decided the rest of her life for her. Edna was a woman of the wrong times; she wanted her independence and wanted to be with her lover, Robert. This type of behavior would never have been accepted by the society of his time. Edna's relationship with Robert and her rejection of the role imposed on her by society led her to perceive suicide as the only solution to her problems. Critics of Kate Chopin's The Awakening tend to read the novel as a dramatization of a woman's struggle to survive. achieve individuality: a struggle doomed to failure both because the patriarchal conventions of her society limit freedom, and because the ideal of individuality that she pursues is a defined masculine ideal that allows none of the physical and undeniable demands that motherhood imposes on women. Ultimately. in both points of view, Edna Pontellier ends her life because she cannot have it both ways: given her time, place, and notion of self, she cannot be a mother and have a self. (Simons)Edna Pontellier couldn't have what she wanted. There are many arguments that Edna is selfish for ending her life and leaving her children behind. “Edna is indeed afraid of 'being reduced to her biological function,' but this is what Creole culture does to women, as Priscilla Leder suggests” (Simons). He couldn't provide the love that children deserve from a parent. I don't think she was selfish, she didn't love her children like a mother would. A woman-mother is someone who puts her children before anything else in her life. Edna is not one of those "mother-women" who "considered it a holy privilege to efface oneself as individuals and grow wings like ministering angels"; rather, she is a twenty-eight-year-old woman who hears "the voice of the sea", which seduces "the soul to wander for a time in the abyss of solitude; lose yourself in internal contemplation.'" (Toth)Edna needed to have control of her life. As long as she was married and a mother she would never have total control.