In The Awakening, Edna always felt different from the people that surrounded, suggested through the flashbacks of Edna. The narrator in chapter 7 tells that "Even as a child, she had lived her own small life within herself" this suggests that Edna's action and feeling in the present are not new to her. As a role of mother and wife, she is simply not unhappy and felt the disconnection between the role that she is supposed to play and the expectation of the society. Further, Edna marries Leonce "On accident." As she is wandering out to sea in the novel, she is in reminding of her feelings from childhood by remembering about the night of swimming.
"She went on and on. she remembered the night she was far out and recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to reign the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end."
This provides with the realization that her interest of being free which manifest in her since childhood and realizes that she cannot have what she desires for. As a result, she realizes that she is not strong enough to maintain for this life and decided to end it all.
