The Awakening (Ch. 5-9)

Every summer since he was 15, Robert devoted himself to a different woman. One time, it was with Madame Ratignolle, but he acted differently with Edna than the others. "He never assumed his serio-coming tone when alone with Mrs.Pontellier." Edna sketches a picture of Adéle, which didn't look much like her. Adéle has a fainting spell, which Edna suspects is fake. After, she goes home and greets her children with "a thousand endearments". Robert asks Edna if she wants to go swimming, but she declines because she says she's tired. She goes with him to the beach anyway. She was "beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her." Chopin also makes references to the ocean by writing, "The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward comtemplation." and "The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfloding the body in its soft, close embrace."
Edna never really talked about anything with other people. She "had apprehended the instinctively dual life - the outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions." The summer at Grand Isle changed her a little, partly because of Adéle's influence. The two walk down to the beach together. Edna is looking out at the sea, and Adéle asks what Edna is thinking. She says she's thinking about a summer in Kentucky when she was young. Adéle puts her hand on Edna's, which Edna finds confusing at first because she's not used to Creole's expression of affection. She then starts to think about her children and how she sometimes would "gather them passionately to her heart" and other times forget them. Adéle asks Robert to leave Edna alone because she might take him seriously. He's offended. A few weeks after their conversaton, Adéle has some weekend guests who she entertains. Mademoiselle Reisz plays for Edna and she feels the music unlike the mental pictures she had when Adéle played. Mademoiselle Reisz tells her she's the only one worth playing for.