The Awakening is a story of one woman's struggle for self-identity. People have often remarked that Chopin defined for her time what it meant to be a woman. Edna, the main protagonist in the Awakening, gives us a glimpse of the inner struggle of women of that time, and how they struggled for independence in a time that fought against such a right. At a vacation resort near the Gulf, Edna begins her awakening and we begin to see that while Edna may blame men for her place in life, it seems that she may be the one creating her own madness, and the one that struggles with love the most.
