self-centered and superficial.
The preceding scene and analysis are important because they illustrate the fact that Edna's experience of "awakening" seems terribly dated today, although at the time of its writing in the previous century the novel may have been seen as some sort of ground-breaking feminist or pre-feminist work. At that time, the mere suggestion that a meek wife might suddenly defy her husband even in such a childish way was revolutionary. Today, however, Edna's character seems less like a woman beginning to find herself as a mature human being than a teenage daughter responding to her father's rules and regulations with bursts of stubborn refusal to obey.
Of course, the second part of Edna's "awakening" is her apparent suicide by drowning. This is no awakening at all, b
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