SOURCE: Stange, Margit. “Personal Property: Exchange Value and the Female Self in The Awakening.” Genders, no. 5 (July 1989): 106-19.

In the following essay, Stange discusses representations of the female self in The Awakening.

In the beginning of The Awakening, New Orleans stockbroker Leonce Pontellier, staying with his wife, Edna, at an exclusive Creole family resort, surveys Edna as she walks up from the beach in the company of her summer flirtation, Robert Lebrun. “‘You are burnt beyond recognition’ [Leonce says], looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage.”¹ Leonce's comment is the reader's introduction to Edna, whose search for self is the novel's subject.² To take Leonce's hyperbole—“you are burnt beyond recognition”—as literally as Leonce takes his role as Edna's “owner” is to be introduced to an Edna who exists as a recognizable individual in reference...