The depiction of Edna at her party as "the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone" grants her simultaneously command and loneliness, just as one frequently accompanies the other in life. Contrast this queenly image with Chapter 5's description of Madame Ratignolle as having "the grace and majesty which queens . . . possess." Her power is based on nurturing others; Edna's power comes from dedication to pleasing herself. As a woman who is taking charge of her life's direction and steering it in an unpopular direction, she is isolating herself from mainstream society — and from those individuals who cannot admit they would like to make the same move.
Yet for all her strength, all the progress she has made in discovering her true self, she is nonetheless unhappy without Robert at her side. Chopin uses significant word choices in describing Edna's longing, however: "she felt the old ennui . . . the hopelessness which . . . came upon her like an obsession." Is her obsession with Robert himself or with the high drama and emotional intrigue that accompanies her inappropriate love for him?
One of her guest, Gouvernail, makes a reference to desire as "a graven image," as a thing in itself to be worshipped, when he quotes the first two lines from Swinburne's "The Cameo" in response to Victor's splendid appearance at the dinner table. With their combined histories of courting the unattainable, Edna and Robert have spent years desiring for the sake of desiring, erecting emotional facades. Their current obsession with each other, more substantial than any other previously experienced, is more dangerous for the physical passion Edna brings to it. The ominous Swinburne line "Painted with red blood on a ground of gold" casts the entire venture of love as bound for failure and catastrophe, although it may be a grand, golden disaster.
