Character Analysis
Edwige is another female character Kundera appears to like and have sympathy for. She's a feminist who doesn't have time for Jan's stupid theory that male arousal is forever tied to rape fantasies. She's not interested in his desire to chat during sex nor does she feel any particular need to shield him from any of her bodily functions (as if they were shameful to begin with). All around, Edwige is a pretty no-nonsense character, the perfect counterpoint to Jan's fuzzy-headed, midlife confusion.
But Kundera also has this to say about her: "Even though she was younger, she had already uttered at least three times as many words and dispensed ten times as much instruction and advice. She was like a wise and tender mother taking him by the hand and guiding him through life" (VII.1.3).
So Edwige, for all her practicality and solid counterbalancing to Jan's character, is really, deep down, a stereotypical woman: she talks a lot (a lot), is kind of bossy, and thinks she knows best.
Now, to be fair, the main problem that Jan has with her as a partner is that she's on a completely different wavelength. He's completely mystified by her ethos: "She was in fact much more natural naked than dressed, as if in rejecting her clothes she was also rejecting the difficult condition of womanhood in order to become simply a human being, without sexual characteristics. As if sex resided in clothes and nakedness were a state of sexual neutrality" (VII.14.8).
And Edwige always misinterprets what Jan says. It's the opposite of the completely in tune couple that finishes each other's sentences. Case in point: Jan's invocation of Daphnis. He wants to return to a time before boredom with sexual fulfillment set in. (Daphnis represents this for him.) Edwige fully supports Jan's shout-out to Daphnis, but for all the wrong reasons: "'That's good,' said Edwige. 'We need to go back to him. To go back to the time before Christianity crippled mankind. Is that what you mean?'" (VII.14.18)
To Jan's credit, his interpretation of Daphnis is far more creative; Edwige is falling back on goddess tropes for her spiel. But that's kind of the point: women don't know how to play the game in this novel. They are, like Edwige, too wrapped up in their own points of view to see what's really going on in the misunderstood brains of the men around them.