nature-identified personality.
One day at Grand Isle, Edna goes to the beach with her friend Madame Ratignolle. As they sit gazing at the sea, Madame Ratignolle asks Edna for her thoughts. Edna replies that she was thinking of a day from her childhood in Kentucky, when she walked through a meadow "that seemed as big as the ocean to the very little girl walking through the grass, which was higher than her waist. She threw out her arms as if swimming when she walked, beating the tall grass as one strikes out in the water" (29-30). Edna's use of the third person when describing herself in this scene seems to demonstrate how alienated she has become from her inner, childhood self. She states that with her sunbonnet (another nature-oriented item) obstructing the view, "I could see only the stretch of green before me, and I felt as if I must walk on forever, without coming to the end of it. I don't remember whether I was frightened or pleased. I must have been entertained" (30). She muses to her friend that she was probably in the meadow in order to avoid "the Presbyterian service, read in a spirit of gloom by my father that chills me yet to think of" (30). I
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