Suicide (Like I Didn't Talk About It Enough in Class...)

This seems like all I've talked about the past few days but I still have more to say surprisingly enough. It seemed to be the general consensus in our class that Edna committing suicide was the "cowardly" thing to do or her just "taking the easy way out." This statement just really continues to bother me. In my opinion, there isn't anything easy about suicide. The thought process that a person must go through while considering taking their own life is one of the hardest things someone would probably ever have to. No matter what their reasons for doing it would be, they believe it's what they must do. Whatever that person is going through to believe that death is "easier" can't be easy at all. I don't want to say that someone who commits suicide is a hero by any stretch of the imagination but I don't think they should be considered a coward. As for Edna, I believe that she saw suicide as the only way that she could free herself from the pressures of society. A lot of people in class said that they would have liked the ending of the book more if Edna had at least made an effort to try and survive on her own. In my opinion, this just wasn't an option for her since she wanted to be free from society. If she had gone out into society and tried to make a life for herself, she would have ended up failing and most likely dying from poverty. This would have meant that her death was a result of society's pressures on her. Suicide was the only way she could truly escape society and its pressures and do something completely on her own. That was her statement and to me it made the ending of the book so much more powerful.