From her vacation to the Gulf of Mexico to her return to New Orleans, Edna Pontellier, the wife of Leonce and mother of two boys, embarks on an emotionally fraught journey to discover love and self-fulfillment. Her relationships with her husband, with LeBrun and with Mademoiselle Reisz lead to a battle with isolation, conflicting emotions and her discovery of life as a sexual being. Set in nineteenth-century New Orlean's, Kate Chopin's novel was one of the earliest books to deal with gender issues and female sexuality, often cited as an early benchmark work of feminism.