While spending the summer in a resort on Grand Isle with her husband and children, Edna Pontellier begins a process of self-discovery, which only intensifies after she meets the charming Robert Lebrun. Yet, when Robert departs for Mexico and the summer holiday ends, Edna's newfound sense of independence leads her to isolate herself from New Orleans society and to reject her former lifestyle. Moving into a home of her own and devoting more time to artistic pursuits, Edna discovers throug her friend, the unconventional pianist Madmoiselle Reisz, that Robert is in love with her. Centering upon the conflict between Edna's increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood and the prevailing fin-de-siecle social attitudes of the American South, The Awakening is widely regarded as a landmark of early feminism and a precursor of American modernism.