The Awakening by, Kate Chopin Edna Pontillier Wants to Swim Edna Pontillier is a woman playing the role of the wealthy New Orleans housewife. She has a generous husband, children, financial stability, and a great deal of friends. What she also has, unfortunately, is a kind of generic happiness that is the result of such a conventional society. Edna begins to change, and like a small chip of ice breaking away from a huge iceberg, she heads out into the ocean alone. It seems that it’s almost not possible for her to follow society's rules any longer, and she just stops doing it, wit