In Kate Chopin's Awakening, the novel's heroine, Edna Pontellier, experiences what George M. Spangler calls a "passional awakening"-an awakening to her sexuality, her bodily passions. Moreover Edna is awakened not only to sexual independence, but also spiritual independence as well. In some respects, then, Edna's "solution" at the end of the novel forms a tacit commentary on Edna's burgeoning sense of sexual and spiritual independence and her "awakening" to herself as a fully realized woman.
How do The Awakening and Chopin's other short stories comment on Spangler's concept of a "passional awakening?" More to the point, after reading all of these works by Chopin, do you believe that Edna's suicide is incongruous with her passional awakening?