While spending the summer in the resort of Grand Isle with her husband and children, Edna Pontellier begins a process of self-discovery that is accelerated after she meets the charming Robert Lebrun. Yet, when Robert departs for Mexico and the summer vacation ends, Edna-s new-found sense of independence and personal freedom mean that she isolates herself from New Orleans society and rejects her former lifestyle. Moving into a home of her own and choosing a lover, Edna soon becomes a prot-e of the unconventional pianist Mademoiselle Reisz, through whom she learns that Robert still longs for her.Centring upon the conflict between Edna-s increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood and the prevailing social attitudes of the fin de si-e American South, The Awakening is widely seen as a landmark of early feminism and a precursor of American modernism.
