Edna's sexual awakening is doubtless a reflection of the sexuality glorified in Walt Whitman's landmark poetry of self-celebration, Leaves of Grass, the imagery or influence of which is frequently found in The Awakening. One of Whitman's most famous lines reads "If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it." That sentiment is manifest in Edna's new appreciation for her body that occurs during her day at Madame Antoine's. Leaves of Grass outraged the public's puritanical sensibilities in 1855 with its male author's celebration of sensuality; how much worse for a woman to celebrate her self and sexuality, even 44 years later.
Another troubling factor for Chopin's contemporaries was her refusal to condemn Edna. She describes Edna's actions and reactions without passing judgment, a literary device that precedes the modernist literature of the 1920s by two decades. After kissing Arobin for the first time, Edna felt "neither shame nor remorse" and Chopin doesn't suggest that she should. Instead, using a narrative voice distant and ambiguous in tone, she presents Edna's development and decisions without the moralizing that was expected from novelists. Book and magazine editors of the time routinely asked writers to maintain a certain moral tone in their work, or at least provide endings for their heroines that were in keeping with the accepted avenues: Women were to be married off or, if left solitary, remain virginal. Many reviewers described Chopin's novel with terms such as "unhealthy" and "morbid." One review declared that "The Awakening is too strong drink for moral babes, and should be labeled 'poison.'"
