A particular character that stuck out to me in this section of Chopin‘s The Awakening was Robert and his return home in XXXIII and XXXIV. A quote that includes Robert is when Edna sees him again upon his return from Mexico.
“A hundred times Edna had pictured Robert’s return, and imagined their first meeting. It was usually at her home, whither he had sought her out at once. She always fancied him expressing or betraying in some way his love for her. And here, the reality was that they sat ten feet apart, she at the window, crushing geranium leaves in her hand and smelling them” (256-257)
Edna consistently thinks of Robert after he leaves throughout the text. He becomes a sort of fantasy to her and a man who is everything her husband is not. Edna views Robert as a young man that she elevates as a person of desire. Such desire she feels for Robert is primarily because he has given her attention that she feels she does not get from her husband. While Mr. Pontellier treats Edna like a woman who is failing at being a wife and mother and who does not understand how to keep face, Robert provokes a yearning in Edna. She believes that he sees her for her, that he cares about who she is in the person. However, when Robert returns and she realizes that he has not immediately come to visit her, Edna begins to understand that possibly he does not feel the same way about her, or that he was leading her on.
Because she has held him up to such a fantasy of a perfect man who desires her, it is hard for Edna to realize that Robert may not actually want her as much as she wants him. She spends so long thinking that he loves her but soon sees that this may not be the case. Robert’s actions upon returning display just how much Edna is suffering and confused because of her husband’s treatment of her. She wants a man to treat her with love in a way that Mr. Pontellier does not.
By the end of chapter XXXIV, Edna comes to accept that Robert “had seemed nearer to her off there in Mexico”, meaning that Robert seemed closer to her when he fulfilled a fantasy of longing and love for her that she was missing in her life (268). Now, however, Robert has shown that Edna was not as major or influential in his life as he was to her. Rather, she was a friend who he simply enjoyed spending time with. This time with Robert after he returns displays just how much Edna longs and craves for attention and love from men that she is missing from her husband. This desire for desire is not only shown with her experiences with Robert, but also with Arobin, whom she spends time with to feel that she has a man’s attention since she does not have the full attention of her husband.
It is not until Chapter XXVI that we learn Robert actually does love Edna, stating that he left and did not contact her immediately upon his return because he was fighting his feelings for her ” ‘because [she was] not free” and was ” ‘Pontellier’s wife” so he ” ‘couldn’t help loving [her] if [she was] ten times is wife; but so long as [he] went away from [her] and kept away [he] could help telling [her] so’ ” (280). The immediate sadness and thought that Robert did not love her when he returned and the depressed feelings that came after that exposes how much Edna wants love and affection from a man that she is missing from her husband. Learning that Robert does love her makes Edna incredibly happy, hoping that they can be together. But in this hope, she fails to acknowledge that she is still married to a man that does not give her the attention she deserves and being married makes it almost impossible for her and Robert to be together.
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