The Search for Language in the Awakening Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, tells the story of a late 19th-century woman who seeks to break away from male-dominated society to find an identity of hers. Edna Pontellier tries to find herself when she only has two characters available: the "real woman", the classic wife and mother, or the "new woman", the radical women who demand equality with men. Patricia S. Yaeger, in her essay “'A Language Which Everyone Understood': Emancipatory Strategies in The Awakening,” argues that what Edna is really looking for is a feminine language of her own. Edna is prevented from finding her own language and ideal and thus remains trapped until she discovers that suicide is her only way out. The ending of the novel has been considered Edna's final step in her search for freedom from the restrictive society in which she lives. Elaine Showalter, in her essay "Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book", and others say that it is Edna's last step towards female liberation, but is it really so? Suicide hardly seems liberating. Edna lives in a phallocentric world where women have no identities aside from their relationships with men. Leslies W. Rabine, in her essay “No Lost Paradise: Social Gender and Symbolic Gender in the Writings of Maxine Hong Kingston,” states that “traditional male narratives” are based “on a linear and circular quest to return to a lost paradise ”. (Rabine 90), however, women's narratives do not have this paradise lost. The world Edna lives in traps her so that the paradise she seeks cannot exist. The paradise that Edna is looking for is nothing more than a situation in which she can be truly happy. The fundamentally phallocentric... the center of the card... The awakening. 1993: Bedford Books, New York. Griggers, Cody. “Next Stop – Paradise: An Analysis of the Setting in The Awakening.” Domestic goddess. Editor, Kim Wells. August 23, 1999. Online. Internet. 5-10-00. http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/griggers.htmRabine, Leslie W. “No Paradise Lost: Social and Symbolic Gender in the Writings of Maxine Hong Kingston.” As featured in: Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia. Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: A Casebook. 1999: Oxford University Press, New York. Showalter, Elaine. “Tradition and female talent: the awakening as a solitary book”. As it appears in: Chopin, Kate. The awakening. 1993: Bedford Books, New York. Yaeger, Patricia S. “'A Language No One Understood': Emancipatory Language in Awakening. As it appears in: Chopin, Kate. The awakening. 1993: Bedford Books, New York.