The Awakening

I think the most interesting part of The Awakening is how Mr. Pontellier reacts to his wife's actions. He is clearly concerned about his wife, as he goes to see the doctor, but he seems content to just let her do her own thing. It seems to me that in this time where the husband was supposed to have complete control over the wife that Mr. Pontellier would do more to keep his wife close. It seems possible that maybe he was just ignoring her actions, hoping that she would just snap out of it and that nothing bad would happen.

One question I had was about the relationship between Edna and Madame Ratignolle. As professor Messner discussed in class, it was not uncommon for women at the time to have very close relationships. At what point in history did this sort of relationship gain the stigma that it has today?