Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is quite a moving book. It is a rebellion towards how women were treated and seen during this time period. It teaches that women are more than property to own. Women are human beings, with a heart and soul, not just a body to control. The main character Edna shows every last bit of this to the end. She grows as not only a person, but more specifically a woman. She searches for her identity of who she truly is to break free from the constraints placed on her as a woman. She starts to learn herself as a human being, outside of being simply a mother and wife. It is beautifully written and physically pulls you into everything she is feeling, all of her distress and pain. In the beginning of Chapter One, you learn how Léonce disregards Edna as a trophy wife when she is sun burnt, stating, “‘You are burnt beyond recognition,’ he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage.” Léonce seems to not bother with his own wife, and in turn she recoils from him and starts to grow as her own person instead of his, and she begins to exist outside of his shadow. In the end, it did not matter how hard she tried to be her own person. She sadly decides to kill herself since she cannot escape the life chosen for her. She goes to the beach to drown herself, and on this beach, she sees a bird with a broken wing fall down into the water — presumably to its death. I believe this bird was supposed to represent Edna. She was broken and beat down; things were too much and she could not keep on fighting, so she went to the beach to drown — just as the broken bird fell into the water to its death.