The Awakening Quotes

Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from The Awakening.

Identity Quotes

Looking at them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband before leaving for the beach. She silently reached out to him, and he, understanding, took the rings from his vest pock...

Women and Femininity Quotes

"Has she," asked the Doctor, with a smile, "has she been associating of late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women--super-spiritual superior beings? My wife has been telling me about them." "...

Marriage Quotes

"Coming back to dinner?" his wife called after him. He halted a moment and shrugged his shoulders. He felt in his vest pocket; there was a ten-dollar bill there. He did not know; perhaps he would r...

Love Quotes

"If I were young and in love with a man," said Mademoiselle, turning on the stool and pressing her wiry hands between her knees as she looked down at Edna, who sat on the floor holding the letter,...

Society and Class Quotes

Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inward l...

Repression Quotes

Mrs. Pontellier, though she had married a Creole, was not thoroughly at home in the society of Creoles; never before had she been thrown so intimately among them. There were only Creoles that summe...

Art and Culture Quotes

Mrs. Pontellier had brought her sketching materials, which she sometimes dabbled with in an un-professional way. She liked the dabbling. She felt in it a satisfaction of a kind which no other emplo...

Family Quotes

It would have been a difficult matter for Mr. Pontellier to define to his own satisfaction or any one else's wherein his wife failed in her duty toward their children. It was something which he fel...

Respect and Reputation Quotes

Mrs. Pontellier's mind was quite at rest concerning the present material needs of her children, and she could not see the use of anticipating and making winter night garments the subject of her sum...

Life, Consciousness, and Existence Quotes

Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two co...