Chapter 1 — the parrot, the Pontelliers, the rings

The novel opens with a green and yellow parrot in a cage outside the door, repeating "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!" Mr. Pontellier — forty, slender, bespectacled, neatly bearded — has given up reading his Sunday paper on the gallery of the main cottage and walked down to the porch of his own. Across the chamomile he can see a white sunshade advancing slowly from the beach. Beneath it are his wife and the young Creole Robert Lebrun. They sit on the upper step facing each other, with every appearance of having tired themselves out.

"What folly!" Pontellier exclaims at the bathing in such heat. "You're burnt beyond recognition" — and he looks at his wife, Chopin writes, "as one looks at a piece of valuable personal property which has suffered some damage." It is the line that defines the marriage. Edna holds out her hand silently for the rings she had given him to hold before going into the water. He drops them into her open palm. She slips them on, clasps her knees, looks at Robert, and laughs. The rings sparkle on her fingers. Robert smiles back.

Pontellier announces he has half a mind to walk over to Klein's hotel for a game of billiards. He invites Robert. Robert "quite frankly" says he prefers to stay and talk to Mrs. Pontellier. "Send him on his way when he bores you, Edna," her husband says, and goes. Edna calls after him to ask if he is coming back for dinner. He shrugs; he doesn't know; it depends on the company at Klein's. The two boys want to follow. He kisses them and promises bonbons and peanuts. The novel has been going for five pages and the marriage's central fact — the sunshade and the husband, the rings and the laugh — is already on the page.