Edna's Suicide in The Awakening The novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin is set in the late nineteenth century, in Louisiana. This is a place and time for women to submit themselves to the wants and needs of husbands and families. The protagonist, Edna Pontellier, isn’t content with being a mother-woman, one of the ordinary, traditional women who, "...idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it to a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels"( Chopin 51). Edna wanted more, and as there were very few women at this time leading the way to break these sorts of glass ceilings, Edna looked for women wi