The Awakening

Recently, I read the book The Awakening for class. I enjoyed the book very much, but there was one part that a lot of people in my class had strong feelings about. This was at the very end of the book when Edna committed suicide. Most of my classmates described Edna's suicide was selfish.  For me, I see it has a positive and negative action. Edna felt like she had no control in her life. She was constantly being controlled by her husband and society. By taking small actions, such as going out on Tuesday's instead of staying home and having women come and visit her, she bought the "pigeon-house", and went on her own little adventures. But the ultimate piece of control was when she took her life because she didn't want to be controlled by men and society anymore. However, the part where everyone sees the negative part of her suicide is that Edna left her children and her husband. By killing herself, her children will lost their mother and her husband lost his wife. From my standpoint, Edna had to kill herself. She was in love with another man and three men were trying to win her love and affection in order to have control over her. That's what Edna didn't like. She was only a thing that the men wanted to have so that they could control what she does. That's what I like about Edna. Even though she kills herself in the end and leaves her husband and children, she did one thing that she could control. By taking that swim in the freezing ocean naked, she was able to control how far she swam until she didn't want to go any farther, then she just let go. In that little bit, Edna was able to control how she died and that is all she wanted, control