Get The Awakening straight once, then move.

The novel begins on Grand Isle, a Louisiana Gulf Coast resort where the Pontellier family is spending the summer with other Creole families. Léonce Pontellier is a New Orleans businessman who treats his wife Edna more like a possession than a partner. He criticizes her parenting, ignores her emotional needs, and measures her value by how well she performs the role of society wife. Edna, who grew up in Kentucky and has never fully belonged to Creole culture, begins to feel the weight of that performance.

On the island, Edna grows close to Robert Lebrun, the son of the resort owner. Robert has a habit of attaching himself to married women in a way everyone treats as harmless flirtation. With Edna, something different happens. They spend long days together, and Robert teaches her to swim. Learning to swim matters in the novel because it's the first time Edna experiences her own body as capable and her own. When she finally swims out far alone, she feels a kind of power she hasn't felt before.

Edna also spends time with Adèle Ratignolle, a beautiful Creole woman who is everything society wants a wife and mother to be. Adèle is warm, content, and completely devoted to her family. She represents the path Edna is supposed to want. Their friendship is genuine, but it also clarifies for Edna how different she is. She cannot make herself into Adèle, no matter how hard she tries.

Robert, sensing that his feelings for Edna have gone beyond the usual summer game, abruptly leaves for Mexico. His departure hits Edna harder than she expected. She returns to New Orleans with Léonce and the boys, but she's no longer willing to go through the motions. She stops receiving guests on her designated social day. She neglects the household duties Léonce expects. She takes her painting more seriously, visiting the studio of a musician named Mademoiselle Reisz, who lives alone outside social convention and becomes a kind of model for Edna of what an independent woman's life might look like.

Léonce, embarrassed by Edna's behavior, consults a doctor and then takes a business trip to New York. He sends the boys to their grandmother's. Edna, suddenly alone in the house, feels something open up. She moves into a small rented house nearby, which she calls the pigeon house, and begins living more on her own terms. She also begins an affair with Alcée Arobin, a known seducer. The affair is physical and deliberate. Edna doesn't love Arobin, but she chooses him anyway, which is itself a kind of statement.

Robert returns from Mexico. He and Edna finally admit their feelings for each other, and for a moment it seems like the novel might turn toward something hopeful. But Robert talks about Edna as someone he wants to marry, as if the solution to their situation is just a different set of social arrangements. He doesn't understand that Edna isn't trying to trade one cage for another. When Edna is called away to be with Adèle, who is giving birth, she returns to find Robert gone. He has left a note saying he loves her too much to ruin her. The note destroys her. He has chosen the rules over her.