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even from her friends. Specifically, Edna's close friend, Madame Ratignolle, was her complete opposite. Adele Ratignolle was the ideal of a Creole wife. She was completely devoted to her husband and she preformed all of her wifely duties flawlessly. She gave birth to a child about every two years and was constantly meditating on what they needed. She was an exemplary housewife, always immersed in her daily chores. She took the burden of the household entirely upon her shoulders. She was what Creole women strived to become. Nonetheless, Edna did not envy Adele Ratignolle. She did not covet the Ratignolle's domestic harmony. She had grown to believe that the domestic harmony of families like Adele Ratignolle's was a mere illusion. It was not true harmony, and Edna wanted nothing to do with a false reality.

Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them [the Ratignolle family]. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it an appalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle,-a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium (511-512).

Since she had awakened into the blinding light of truth and reality, she walked through life as an outsider, observing the traditions of an alien race. Even among friends, Edna felt depressed and alone.

Edna stood alone because she knew the hideous truthwomen had no roles in Creole society other than that of wife and mother. Edna awoke from her illusion to the terrible realization that women were the mere possessions of men and held no lives of their own apart from men. Despite the despondency and solitude her awakening brought her, Edna could not stand to go back to living in an illusion. "The years that are gone seem like dreamsif one might go on sleeping and dreamingbut to wake up and findoh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life" (555). Edna may wish to go back to her dream of the happy housewife, but she can never again obtain the utter ignorance in which she existed. She was wise enough to recognize that her suffering within the cage of social rules was still better than living as a traitor to herself

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