A Woman Ahead of Her Time in The AwakeningWhen she published The Awakening in 1899, Kate Chopin stunned her audience with a candid portrait of a woman's social, sexual and spiritual awakening woman. Because she told her particular truth without judgment or censorship, the public disapproved of her. The idea of ​​true autonomy for women or, even more astonishing, a single sexual standard for men and women – was too much to imagine. Kate Chopin's presentation of the awakening of her heroine, Edna Pontellier, her unwavering recognition that respectable women actually had sexual feelings proved too strong for many who read her novel. Love and passion, marriage and independence, freedom and moderation - these are themes realized in this story. When Edna Pontellier, the heroine of The Awakening, announces “I would give up what is not essential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself” is addressing the crucial issue of self-conquest and its maintenance. But when Edna Pontellier, raised in Presbyterian propriety and a mother of two, responds to another Alcée, Chopin, in the public's opinion, had gone too far. “I am no longer Mr. Pontellier's property to be disposed of or not,” she says to the young man she loves: “I give myself wherever I want. ” Twenty-eight, comfortable in a marriage to an older man involved in her work life in New Orleans, Edna has never fit the selfless maternal mold of other women who summer on Grand Isle to escape illness and heat of the city. She begins a journey of self-discovery that leads her to several awakenings: to her separation as a "solitary soul", to the pleasures of "swimming away" in the seductive and sensual sea, to the passions revealed in music, to her own desire to create art, attachment romantic to a young man, life alone, sexual desire. Robert, the beloved, honorably walks away to escape involvement; Alcée, a recognized womanizer and libertine, elicits the sexual response. Chopin creates a circle of symbolic characters about his heroine: a devoted wife, an embittered spinster musician, a strict and disapproving father, a sympathetic doctor, empty-headed pleasure seekers. Edna oscillates between realistic evaluation of her place in the world and romantic desire for Robert, between enjoying sensual pleasures with Alcée and practically escaping her husband's control..