This final chapter ends Edna's story with references to the two main themes: Edna as a child and as a bird. Recall Mademoiselle Reisz's pronouncement in Chapter 27 that the "bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth." Although Edna had made great progress in learning to rise above the constraints of tradition, she was brought crashing to earth by the consideration of her flight's effect on her children — a traditional obligation she is emotionally unable to disregard. By fleeing to her death, she is escaping the children who "sought to drag her into the soul's slavery for the rest of her days. But she knew a way to elude them." She has decided that losing their mother to an early death is for them preferable to losing their mother to scandal — a concession to society's prejudices. In this concession, her hard-won indifference to society's demands is defeated, likening her to the bird she sees on the beach, "reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water." To ensure that her death is not perceived as a suicide but merely a swimming accident, she makes specific requests to Victor as to what she'd like for lunch, to emphasize her false intention to return from her swim. Thus she spares her family the scandal that would accompany a suicide, another concession to cultural prejudice.
Yet she is, in a sense, not utterly defeated. She had renewed her life by giving rein to her childlike desires to always have her way despite the wants and needs of others. Now she regresses even further, feeling "like some new-born creature, opening its eyes" while standing naked on the beach — naked as newborns arrive. Further, her final thoughts are those of her early childhood. Again, she remembers the seemingly never-ending meadows of which the sea reminds her, recalling her revelation to Madame Ratignolle in Chapter 7 that "sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided." That description also fits her behavior since she returned to New Orleans and began to rebel against her marriage and motherhood, growing into an understanding of her true self.
