What happens in Chapter 20 of The Awakening?
In Chapter 20, Edna Pontellier goes to Mademoiselle Reisz’s modest apartment in New Orleans, feeling a restless urge to be around the pianist and, more importantly, to hear news about Robert Lebrun. Mademoiselle Reisz, known for her sharp tongue and lack of sentimentality, greets Edna with her usual directness and hands over a letter from Robert, who is in Mexico. Edna reads the letter eagerly, her desire barely hidden. It includes her name, a detail that neither of them can ignore. Mademoiselle Reisz observes Edna closely during the visit, pressing her fingers against Edna's shoulder blades as if to gauge whether she has the strength to face what lies ahead. Edna leaves the apartment feeling flushed and unsettled, with Robert's words echoing in her mind as she steps back into the city streets.
Analysis
Chopin crafts this chapter as a study in exposure, revealing Edna without the social armor she usually wears. Mademoiselle Reisz serves as both a confidante and a diagnostician, her small, high apartment acting as a transitional space away from the decorum of Creole drawing rooms. The letter from Robert acts as a displacement device: unable to express her desires directly, Edna lets the letter voice them for her, and Chopin allows the reader to sense the intensity of Edna's reaction through physical details rather than explicit confessions.
The gesture involving Edna's shoulder blades is the chapter's most impactful moment. Mademoiselle Reisz's challenge — questioning whether Edna has "the courageous soul" and "strong wings" — recontextualizes the entire arc of the novel, introducing the imagery of flight that will lead to the final chapter’s tragic swim. Chopin is particular about the physical body here: sensation comes before expression, reflecting the knowledge Edna is acquiring.
In terms of tone, the chapter shifts between wryness and tenderness. Mademoiselle Reisz's sharp wit keeps sentimentality in check, while the music that drifts through the scene (she plays for Edna again) emphasizes the enduring presence of emotion beneath the irony. The small apartment, in contrast to the propriety of the Pontellier mansion, highlights Chopin's recurring theme: true freedom is discovered in constrained, marginal spaces, rather than in the grand rooms society allocates to women.
Key quotes from Chapter 20
“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”
Chopin's narratorial voice surfaces briefly to gloss Edna's interior transformation as she moves through the city after leaving Mademoiselle Reisz's apartment.
“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”
Mademoiselle Reisz delivers this warning while pressing her hands to Edna's shoulder blades, making the metaphor disturbingly physical.
“He was coming back to New Orleans, and his letter was addressed to Mademoiselle Reisz — not to her.”
Edna registers, with quiet devastation, the social constraint that forces Robert's longing into an oblique, deniable channel.