Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Awakening, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Convention and Individuality
Women’s Rights, Femininity, and Motherhood
Realism and Romanticism
Action and Reflection
Freedom and Emptiness
Summary
Analysis
On one of her dark days, Edna decides to go see Mademoiselle Reisz; to find out her address, she visits Madame Lebrun. Victor greets her enthusiastically and begins to tell her a very personal story about an encounter with a pretty girl, but Madame Lebrun’s entrance happily interrupts the story. Victor recites the two letters they’d received from Robert: they are factual and spare. Edna despairs to hear that he didn’t include any message for her. Address in hand, she leaves to find Mademoiselle Reisz.
Victor, the wild younger brother, has free and unconventional ideas about romantic relationships; if he is the freer of the two brothers, Robert must be the more conservative. Edna is hurt by Robert's apparent indifference. By another book’s standards, he might be considered the more delicate and gallant of the two brothers; here, his formality seems thick-headed and harmful.
Themes
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