Chapter 7 reveals much about Edna's history of rebellion: running away into the fields to escape her father's gloomy prayer services and marrying Léonce not out of personal passion for him but because of her family's "violent opposition" to her marrying a Catholic man. All her life she has maintained the duality of "that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions." Even her physique differs from other women's; her body "occasionally fell into splendid poses," displaying a rather severe physical grace that sets her apart from other women. Note, however, that Chopin uses the term "occasionally" rather than "consistently:" Edna's small life is not one destined for greatness.
Prior to her married life, Edna experienced several sexual, passionate obsessions with men that could not lead to actual relationships. While fixated on a dead writer, Edna felt that the "persistence of the infatuation lent it an aspect of genuineness. The hopelessness of it colored it with the lofty tones of a great passion." Such a perception of passion for a dead man, whom she never met, indicates the severity of Edna's weakness for the melodrama of unrequited or unfulfilled love. Further, she enjoyed the subterfuge of such a relationship: "Anyone may possess the portrait of a tragedian without exciting suspicion or comment. (This was a sinister reflection which she cherished.)" Her infatuations may seem grand in their intensity of feeling but are actually rather childish in scope. When she says about her running away from the prayer services that "I was a little unthinking child . . . just following a misleading impulse without question," she could be describing her entire life — the small-scale romantic obsessions, her marriage to Léonce, having her own children. Even her actions later in the novel arise partly from genuine rebellion and partly from whimsy.
