What do you think about the ending? Would you want to change it?

In the end of Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening
we find the main character, Edna Pontellier, swimming toward the deepest side
of the ocean, nude, and allowing herself to drown. This is symbolic of a baptism, or a
ceremony of submission in which Edna gives herself back to the ocean, to nature, and to
life. Her suicide is not vicious nor was she in a state of desperation. It is actually a
very passive transition that, Edna feels, needs to
occur.

When you think about it, Edna had just realized how
her life is certainly not the life that she would want to continue living. She has
discovered a form of love that she will never experience again. She has reached her
zenith: What else does someone with the amount of passion, and the need for love, that
Edna has can do?

If Edna is alive at the end of the story
then she would have to go back to a life that she does not recognize anymore: A wife? a
mother? A submissive person? She is none of those things in her heart or mind anymore.
She finally finds herself, and realizes that she lives in a world that would never be at
her pace. She will never be the same again. Hence, why not ceremoniously go back to the
womb of the ocean, the world's source of
life?

Conclusively, I would not change the ending at all. I
think Edna's martyrdom is a lesson in life and love altogether.