er unwed pregnancy by her best friend's fiancT, but this bit of irony for her friend Mrs. Slade reaches social meaning before the final revelation, when Mrs. Slade comments that Mrs. Ansley married Horace barely two months after leaving Rome (Wharton 918).
Chopin's picture of marriage is that it functions as catalyst for a descent so far into despair that deliberately setting about the project of suicide is something like a happy ending. The setting is unlikely--a good marriage to good family and surrounded, basically, with good people. Though at the center of the material advantages associated with her social environment and her marriage, Edna is nevertheless alien, in permanent conflict. It can be seen in the small domestic moment after the concert when she reclines in the hammock and does not ag
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