Edna Pontellier Throughout The Awakening, a novel by Kate Chopin, the main character, Edna Pontellier showed signs of a growing depression. There are certain events that hasten this, events which eventually lead her to suicide. At the beginning of the novel when Edna's husband, Leonce Pontellier, returns from Klein's hotel, he checks in on the children and believing that one of them has a fever he tells his wife, Edna. She says that the child was fine when he went to bed, but Mr. Pontellier is certain that he isn't mistaken: "He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children." (7) Because of the reprimand, Edna goes into the next room to check on the children. "She