How is Edna affected by her setting in The Awakening?

You are right to ask this question about the setting of
this story and the way that it impacts the protagnist. What is notable is the way in
which Edna stays in many different houses throughout this novel, and each serves as a
kind of indicator of her movement towards her awakening. At the start of the novel, on
Grand Isle, Edna is expected to follow the traditional role of mother. In New Orleans,
she is similarly expected to be the perfect social hostess. At these locations, Edna is
hemmed in by societal pressures to fulfill these roles and does not try to go beyond
them. Houses thus become symbols of the kind of pressures Edna feels that are oppressing
her. It is notable that in Chapter 13, when she and Robert go to Madame Antoine's house,
that she experiences such a sense of liberation. In this strange house there are no
roles for her to fulfill, and she feels tremendously released as a result. Note what
Edna says when she wakes up after sleeping:

readability="8">

"How many years have I slept?" she inquired. "The
whole island seems changed. A new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving only you
and me as past relics. How many ages ago did Madame Antoine and Tonie die? and when did
our people from Grand Isle disappear from the
earth?"

This is an important
moment in the novel because it marks the beginning of Edna's "awakening" and the change
that she has begun. Edna is able to forget the other characters and the roles that have
been forced upon her and experience a world in which she can be her own
person.

You might like to now go and trace the other
different houses that Edna spends time in and relate them to the theme of her awakening
and her growing independence. Unfortunately and tragically, Edna realises that at the
end of the novel, she can be ultimately be free from societal pressures only in
death.