The Awakening

What has changed for Edna over the course of these chapters? Select key passages that explain

Chapters 11-15

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Throughout thesw chapters, Edna continues to experience her body and her surroundings in ways that are new and strange to her. While in church, she is overwhelmed by extreme fatigue and has to leave; she is at the mercy of her body and its sensations. In addition, she notices the beauty of her arms for the first time, and her senses are stimulated by the newness of the places and people around her. She sleeps in a stranger's bed and sleeps a heavy sleep in which dreams and reality become intertwined. When she awakes, she awakes into a new world‹one that is quieter, cooler and tinged with the memory of her recent dreams. Edna comments that the island seems a completely different place, and it is, but only because she is seeing it again with new eyes. Her long sleep represents a transition between the old, conventional Edna and the new, freer woman who decides to temporarily forget about her husband and children and stay on the island with Robert.