Edna as a mother

Edna is a very interesting character in The Awakening. She is a woman who knows that she is supposed to be a "good mother" and wife to her husband, but she so yearns to be free and do as she desires with no regard to anyone else. In chapter XVI, Edna claimed that she would give anything for her children but she would not give herself. By saying this, Edna knows that she would do every thing in her power to help her children, but there is a certain part of her own being that she won't give, her inner freedom and curiosity. She has a love for her children that most mothers have, but there is still more that she wishes to discover. In the end of the novel, Edna walks into the ocean, something the audience saw coming, to escape a world where she realizes she will never be free. Edna doesn't want to have to obey social norms, and be the woman who is at home ready to receive visitors, like the good wife, but instead she wants to move as the waves do, she wants to be comforted by the water, she wants to be free forever. So in the end she freed herself, and allowed the water to embrace and clam her, unlike any human being could ever do.