ABSTRACT
Dr Mandelet, consulted on the troubling matter of a wife not ‘being’ herself, has two responses, one social and one medical-psychological. The social thing he wants to know is whether Edna has been ‘associating of late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women – super-spiritual superior beings’. That is, he wants to know if she’s in danger of being infected with ‘New-Woman’ ideology. The transgressive woman is a free adult – and the opposite of free. For that matter, the cheap Dover paperback edition on its back cover speaks of the book’s ‘honest treatment of female marital infidelity’ and Kate Chopin’s portrayal of a woman ‘who seeks and finds physical love outside the straitened confines of her domestic situation’.
