Being a mother didn't come naturally to Edna. Though she cared both for an about her children, she was not a particularly loving mother--and she knew it. Our narrator describes her this way:
In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.
The obvious conclusion to draw is that Edna was none of those things, and we discover she rarely regretted it.
The foil (opposite, antithesis) of Edna's rather distant mothering was Adèle Ratignolle. They became friends, and Adèle assumed that more mothering role with Edna's children.
Even when they weren't vacationing, Edna was not a particularly good mother.
She made no ineffectual efforts to conduct her household en bonne ménagère, going and coming as it suited her fancy, and, so far as she was able, lending herself to any passing caprice.
When the house was being redone, she did not keep her kids with her. In short, perhaps Edna was a good mother at one time; at the time we meet her, though, she was a mother who became more self-absorbed and selfish as the novel progressed. The Awakening is Edna's story, and her children seem to be nothing but hindrances which get in her way.
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