In Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is forced to fit in with everyone and everything in her surroundings. Edna is used to the Southern society because she was raised in Kentucky with her family, but when she marries Leonce Pontellier, a Creole, and moves to Louisiana, her surroundings greatly change. This makes her feel extremely uncomfortable and confused; she feels as though she has lost her identity, along with a great deal of her freedom. Edna tries her hardest to conform to the Creole society in order to try to regain her happiness from lack of freedom. Though...
Edna was longing.

Kate Chopin does a sufficient job of portraying Edna's pain and frustration throughout the novel. She also accurately depicts the evolution of Edna's character and her final downfall--death. This novel also shows the damage that the immense strains and pressures of society can have on a person, in this case Edna. The freedom he had in her Kentucky childhood was a distant memory to her Creole present, and her dynamic death concluded her heroic struggle. The combination of these elements and Kate Chopin's unique writing style is what makes this novel so distinguished in American Literature.