Early in the novel, while Edna attempts to escape from society's strong grasp, birds emphasize her entanglement by forecasting her actions and monitoring her development by reflecting her feelings. The novel opens with the image of a bird, trapped and unable to communicate, "a green and yellow parrot, which hung in the cage outside the door...could speak a little Spanish, and also a language that nobody understood" (1). Like the bird, Edna feels trapped and believes that society has imprisoned her. Her marriage to Mr. Pontellier suffocates her and keeps her from being free. At the same time, she rem

ains shut apart from society like the bird in the cage, and different ideas and feelings prevent her from communicating. She feels that she, herself, speaks an unknown language. The only person in society that begins to understand her, Robert, eventually decides that he must remain a member of society instead of staying with her. He says that "you [Edna] were not free; you were Leonce Pontellier's wife" and that "[Robert] was demented, dreaming of wild, impossible things...[such as] men who had set their wives free" (108). Robert does not want to do something wild and unacceptable to society. In a situation parallel to that of Edna's, the only bird that understands the parrot is the mockingbird (Reisz) that "[is] whistling its fluty notes upon the breeze with maddening persistence" (1). Because the parrot continues to shriek, people move it away from their society, "[Mr. Farvial] insisted upon having the bird removed and consigned to regions of darkness" (23). Society wants to hide the bird in darkness, as it wants to do to Edna, in order to keep the bird from causing disruption. The bird, like Edna, is the only one "who possessed sufficient candor" to tell the truth about society, though it still chose to shut her out (23). Throughout Edna's imprisonment, birds reflect her actions and feelings, but while Edna is continuing to stay grounded, the birds take flight.

Once Edna begins to escape, however, the birds become important signs of her success and continue to foreshadow her actions. Upon hear

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