The Awakening 5

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sphere it [is] surely this union.” Madame Ratignolle has surrendered to her husband’s world as proper wives at the time were expected to do. She obeys her husband and assumes the responsibility of keeping him satisfied. “She would not consent to remain with Edna [when] Monsieur Ratignolle was alone, [because] he detested above all things being alone.”
While Madame Ratignolle is the ideal Victorian woman, Mademoiselle Reisz is “a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who [quarrels] with almost everyone, owing to a temper which [is] self-assertive and a disposition to trample on the rights of others.” When Edna asks the proprietor of the neighborhood grocery store if he knew where Mademoiselle Reisz had moved, the man answers that “he [thanks] heaven that she had left the neighborhood, and was equally thankful that he did not know where she had gone.” Mademoiselle Reisz is in no way the beautiful Aphrodite that Madame ...

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