Edna Pontillier Wants to Swim Edna Pontillier is a woman playing the role of the wealthy New Orleans housewife. She has a generous husband, children, financial stability, and a great deal of friends. What she also has, unfortunately, is a kind of generic happiness that is the result of such a conventional society. Edna begins to change, and like a small chip of ice breaking away from a huge iceberg, she heads out into the ocean alone. It seems that it’s almost not possible for her to follow society's rules any longer, and she just stops ....