The Awakening

Edna hosts a dinner to celebrate moving into a smaller house. She invites Mademoiselle Reisz, Victor Lebrun, Alcée, and a few other friends. Adèle, who cannot come because she is not feeling well, sends her husband instead. The entire room is beautifully decorated with flowers and candles. Edna tells her guests that it’s also her birthday; she is now 29. She urges everyone to drink to her health and to try a cocktail that her father created for Janet’s wedding. Alcée responds that they should drink to her father’s health and to celebrate “the most charming of women—the daughter he invented” (228). In her attitude and appearance that night, Edna looks like a woman who “rules, who looks on, who stands alone” (232). As excitement fills the party guests, Edna is suddenly overtaken with hopelessness and longing.

Mademoiselle Reisz and Monsieur Ratignolle are the first to leave, and Victor, whom Mrs. Highcamp has decorated with a wreath of roses, becomes the center of attention. Someone asks him to sing and he begins his singing, looking at Edna. Edna immediately commands him to stop singing and slams her glass down so heavily that she smashes it.