Learning to Fly: Chopin's use of imagery to illustrate Edna's failures in "The Awakening"

"The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water. Edna had …showed first 75 words of 1535 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1535 total…force her to believe that she does not have the strength to live an independent life. Her other option, to abandon herself and return to her old way of life, seems equally impossible. In the end, Edna's only option is to commit suicide. Oddly enough, suicide is the only decision that she has made for herself her entire life. Chopin uses this irony to articulate the abysmal lives of women in the late 19th century.