Edna's ('The Awakening') quest for selfhood is, in the opinion of the majority of researchers, initially 'doomed to failure'.
I disagree with the opinion of Edna's finding herself in death, for it is certainly the greatest tragedy of all possible, if we do not speak of Eastern philosophy where death is a catharsis and a way to reincarnation and better life. The end of the novel is, really, a failure and a crush of all hopes, and it is not a coincidence that the title can be treated both as 'waking from sleep' and 'disillusioning, realizing that something is not true or is unpleasant'. The way Edna accepts death is also a bit selfish: she thinks of her family who 'were a part of her life' but dared to think 'that they could possess her, body and soul' and still wants to leave them judging in a bit of a childish way. Her peaceful death is not the victory but pure docility and submission to the circumstances. Edna looses will to live, together with ability and desire to struggle and achieve something, the only thing that can make a person's life happy. Kate Chopin's attitude towards social conventions is, in my view, strictly negative. She pictures them as repressive and dull, and appropriate to no vivid and agile person who wants to live normal life, not an artificial one. Edna accepts such conventions, meals her husband would not touch, going out without 'proper excuse', communicating only with 'necessary' people with seeming negligence and indifference, but I am sure it is them that made her look for better life.
Describing such conventions, Chopin is obviously ironic: 'Why, my dear, I should think you'd understand by this time that people don't do such things; we've got to observe les convenances if we ever expect to get on and keep up with the procession.
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