The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Victorian woman was the “old maid, fallen woman, and the angel in the house” (Claire Kahane, 5), all rolled into one. This same Victorian woman “captured the complicated effects of the era’s attempt to control the representation of women’s nature” (5). In the 1880’s, this “angel in the house” (5), this “ideal woman”, was challenged by what was called the “Novissima”, “The New Woman” who rejected marriage and motherhood and contested the boundaries of those …

…buried guilt that would never fully disappear. Her Awakening begins when she realizes hat she is no longer fearful of the water. So very possibly, her ending her physical life by wading and drowning in the water is simply the last and final step of the awakening process. She was naked. Are we not naked when we are born? Edna was reborn in her final defiant step in her long journey to her final awakening.