The Awakening — who's who

Twenty-eight years old, born in Kentucky to a Presbyterian family, married six years to a Creole broker in New Orleans, mother to two boys named Raoul and Etienne. Competent watercolorist, graceful hostess, a woman who has never quite belonged in the Creole society her marriage placed her in. The novel is almost entirely her interior life: her growing awareness of herself as a person rather than as a role, the tentative experiments she makes once she has it, and the consequences of refusing to put it back.

A New Orleans cotton broker in his early forties, neat and bespectacled. Smokes good cigars, plays billiards at Klein's hotel and at the Carondelet club, considers his wife a piece of personal property. Not cruel and almost never raises his voice. Conventional, possessive, and honestly bewildered when Edna stops performing the role of his wife. Consults Doctor Mandelet about her in a tone of concerned ownership; later writes her disapproving letters from New York and stages a fake renovation in the papers to save face.

Edna and Léonce's older son, four or five at the start of the novel. Spoken of more than seen — playing with Etienne under the water oaks, sleeping in the next room when Léonce wakes Edna with the false report of a fever, sent to his grandmother in Iberville for the autumn. One of the two boys Edna loves "in an uneven, impulsive way."

The younger Pontellier son. Refuses to go to bed in Chapter 14 and is soothed by Adèle, then by Edna. Visited in Iberville with his brother during Edna's autumn week away. Like Raoul, present mostly as the moral pressure the novel keeps applying — the children Edna will not "give herself" for.

A charming, financially marginal young Creole in his mid-twenties. Mother runs the resort cottages on Grand Isle; works as a clerk in New Orleans; speaks French, English, and Spanish; perpetually planning to go to Mexico and never going. Has a Creole-society habit of attaching himself each summer to a different married woman in a way everyone treats as harmless. Attaches himself to Edna. Something shifts; he flees to Mexico in Chapter 15. Returns months later and discovers he cannot match what Edna has become. Leaves a note in Chapter 38 — "I love you. Good-by — because I love you" — and is gone.

A bright, bustling widow in white who runs the cottage resort on Grand Isle that gives the novel its first half its setting. The Lebrun house is built up and out from a former private summer retreat. She is pleasant, conventional, devoted to her sons; her firm conviction is that the universe would have been better managed had her husband not died early. She corresponds with Robert in Mexico but, by Chapter 16, sends him no news from Edna.

Madame Lebrun's younger son — hot-tempered, willful, slightly insolent. Drives off in the carriage when his mother calls him. Reappears in New Orleans at Edna's farewell dinner in Chapter 30, where Mrs. Highcamp drapes him with roses and a scarf and he sings Robert's song — Edna shatters her glass. In the final chapter he is patching the gallery on Grand Isle with Mariequita when Edna arrives alone, the day she walks into the sea.

Adèle Ratignolle, Edna's closest friend on Grand Isle and the model of Creole womanhood the novel keeps holding up against her. Beautiful — spun-gold hair, sapphire eyes, lips like crimson fruit — fertile, devoted, married seven years, three children, a fourth on the way. Chopin's term for women like her is "mother-women." Her warmth is genuine. Her worldview is a cage. The childbirth scene in Chapter 37, where Edna sits up with her through a long agonizing labor and Adèle whispers "think of the children, Edna," is the book's moral break-point.

A small, wizened, bony, disagreeable spinster — "eyes that burned" — who plays Chopin and Wagner brilliantly and is disliked by almost everyone. Lives alone in a top-floor apartment in New Orleans. Plays for Edna at the Saturday gathering on Grand Isle in Chapter 9 and breaks her open. In the city she becomes Edna's only confidante; keeps Robert's letters and reads them aloud while playing. Tells Edna the artist must have "the courageous soul that dares and defies." Presses her hand to Edna's shoulder blades to feel for wings.

An old gentleman, grandfather of the Farival twins who play piano duets at the Grand Isle gatherings. Insists the parrot be removed when it interrupts the twins' playing. Comes along on the Chêniere boat in Chapter 12 and considers himself the better sailor. Reappears at Madame Antoine's cottage and at the resort throughout — the type of presence the resort is built around.

A fat, generous Acadian widow who lives at the far end of the village on the Chêniere Caminada. Welcomes Edna and Robert to her cottage when Edna leaves the church faint in Chapter 13; gives Edna her snow-white four-posted bed; cooks mullets in the huge fireplace and serves them with bread, wine, and orange-tree shade. Tells Baratarian sea-legends to Edna and Robert into the night.

A man-about-town of charming, slightly menacing self-confidence, well-known in the city's racing and drinking circles. Attaches himself to Edna in Robert's absence — calls at the house, escorts her to the races, kisses her hand and then her mouth, becomes her lover in Chapter 27. She does not love him. The novel is precise about that: the encounter is sensual and unillusioned and changes nothing she has not already decided. He is the test case for whether a different man can fill what Edna is reaching for, and the answer is no.

An old New Orleans family doctor, semi-retired, friend of the Pontelliers. Léonce consults him about Edna's strange behavior in Chapter 22; he counsels patience and suspects a romantic entanglement. Walks Edna home from Adèle's childbirth in Chapter 38 and gives the novel's most explicit philosophical line about motherhood as nature's "decoy to secure mothers for the race." Offers her his confidence. She does not accept it. The only character who reads her correctly.

Edna's widowed father, a former Confederate colonel from Kentucky, Presbyterian, austere. Visits Edna in New Orleans in Chapter 23 and is livelier company than her husband; she goes to the races with him and Arobin and his friends. They quarrel over her refusal to attend her younger sister Janet's wedding. He invents a cocktail in Janet's honor that Edna serves at her farewell dinner. Edna feels only relief when he leaves.

A young barefooted Spanish girl with a basket of shrimps who rides the boat to the Chêniere with Edna and Robert in Chapter 12. Pretty black eyes, broad coarse feet, sand and slime between the brown toes. Reappears in the final chapter at Grand Isle, helping Victor patch the gallery, watching Edna arrive alone on the morning she walks into the sea.

Couples in Edna's New Orleans circle who appear at the races, at calls, and at Edna's farewell dinner in Chapter 30. Mrs. Highcamp is the older woman who garlands Victor with roses and drapes him with her scarf. The Merrimans are conventional and good-humored; Mr. Merriman's stories never quite land. The dinner-party guest list is the only sustained look the novel gives at the larger New Orleans society Edna is leaving.