Chapter 8 — Adèle warns Robert to leave Edna alone

On the walk home from the beach, Adèle leans on Robert's arm under the umbrella. "Just one favor, Robert," she says. "Leave Mrs. Pontellier alone." He laughs the obvious joke first — "Madame Ratignolle is jealous!" Adèle is serious. "She is not one of us; she is not like us. She might make the unfortunate mistake of taking you seriously." Robert flushes with annoyance, beats his hat against his leg as he walks. "Why shouldn't she take me seriously? Am I a comedian, a clown, a fool? You Creoles! I have no patience with you!"

Adèle is patient and firm. The Creole code permits Robert's summer attachments because everyone understands they are a performance; Edna does not understand them as a performance, and Robert is presenting himself in a way that breaks the code's safeguards. "If your attentions to any married woman here were ever intended to be convincing, you would not be the gentleman we all know you to be, and you would be unfit to associate with the wives and daughters of people who trust you." Robert shrugs and changes the subject, telling stories about Alcée Arobin (a New Orleans rake who will reappear later) and the consul's wife at Biloxi, and about a tenor at the French Opera, until the topic is forgotten.

Adèle goes in for her hour's rest. Robert, ashamed of his impatience, fetches her a cup of bouillon from the kitchen himself. He goes up to his mother's sewing room at the top of the house. Madame Lebrun is at the old, ponderous sewing machine, with a little black girl working the treadle by hand. Clatter, clatter, bang. They exchange scattered conversation about Mrs. Pontellier (down at the beach with the children), about the Goncourt that Madame Lebrun has promised to lend her, about Victor (the younger son, hot-headed, just driving off in the carriage), and about Montel — a middle-aged gentleman whose vain ambition for twenty years has been to fill the void left by the dead Monsieur Lebrun. Montel is in Vera Cruz next month. Robert has been planning to join him and has told no one yet.