Impromptu and Edna's awakening
The impromptu which Mademoiselle Reiz plays greatly resembles Edna’s awakening. Impromptu is usually created via musical inspiration of a musician, which comes from nowhere with no notification but is so compelling and strong that it fundamentally changes the whole music.
Edna’s awakening was the same. She did not acknowledge when or why exactly she started to become awakened. She also didn’t know where it came from. Nevertheless, we can see that Edna is subconsciously approaching to the progress of awakening in the first part of the novella. Edna often cried in the beginning of the book when Leonce has been rude about the dinner she cooked and woke her up when she was sleeping, telling that their child was sick and she should take care or him. In these kind of moments, although Edna didn’t know exactly what was wrong, she did knew that some was wrong about her life. She started to think that her life shouldn’t be the way it used to be and she started to follow her heart and this was the start of her process of awakening.
Another important thing that is worthy of notice in the sentence is that the impromptu ended. The impromptu was finite and so was the awakening of Edna. The reason an impromptu cannot be everlasting is that it is created through abrupt inspiration, that the source of it is vague and consequently unsustainable. Like the impromptu, Edna also didn’t know the source of her awakening, being confused all along the process of awakening. This, in the end, led Edna to choose death when she figured out that her awakening was finite and unsustainable like the impromptu. From this, it is clear that Chopin hinted that Edna’s awakening would end as the impromptu did. Furthermore, Chopin illustrates that Edna was sobbing as she listened to the impromptu also implying that the ending of Edna’s awakening would be sad just like the minor chord of the impromptu. To sum up, impromptu itself was the symbolism of the whole process of Edna’s awakening.
