Who is the antagonist in "The Awakening"?

Kate Chopin's characterization of the potential male
antagonists -- Leonce Pontellier and Robert Lebrun -- seems to indicate that the
antagonist is not a person but is, instead, the larger society in which Edna lives, its
expectations, and its norms. Chopin seems to critique not individuals but institutions
like marriage that limit women's freedom. If there is one individual that we might say
could serve as an antagonist, the closest would likely be Edna herself, as much of what
is dramatized in the novella is Edna's internal
conflict. 

While Edna does have verbal altercations and
what we would term "conflicts" with both her husband, Leonce, and her potential lover,
Robert, Chopin makes it clear that neither Leonce nor Robert is a villain, but both are
merely products of their time and place. They are both upper class Southern gentlemen.
They expect their wives to behave in particular ways. They perform what society has
deemed as their duties toward their families. Leonce is considered a model husband by
the other women in the Pontellier's social circle; however, we see very little
interaction between Leonce and Edna. Early in the novel, when the family is vacationing
on Grand Isle, Leonce goes to the club for dinner only to return much later to chastize
Edna for not attending to one of their "sick" children. He has not spend the evening
with the family and accepts no responsibility for the children's care. He wakes Edna to
scold her and to insist that she do something. This could be considered antagonistic
behavior, but Edna herself thinks that it is unusual for her to cry or have any
emotional reaction at all, as scenes such as these "were not uncommon in her married
life." She recognizes that "They seemed never before to have weighed much against the
abundance of her husband's kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit
and self-understood." While over the course of the novel, Edna and Leonce do argue as
Leonce attempts to tighten his hold over his wife, who begins to act out and behave
erratically (such as when she leaves the house in New Orleans when she is supposed to be
waiting on callers), it is clear that Chopin does not want to paint Leonce as a
particularly villainous individual or even as a bad husband; he's simply the typical
husband of the time. The problem is with the institution of marriage and the social
mores that govern women's behavior, not with this one man who seeks to uphold the gender
norms of the society in which he was reared. While Robert is younger and seemingly more
carefree, when it comes time for Edna and Robert to confess their feelings for one
another, Edna is shocked to hear that he wants to make her his wife. Over the course of
her awakening, Edna has come to realize that she feels oppressed  by marriage -- as an
institution --(note how she reacts to her sister's wedding) -- and even though she loves
Robert, she does not want to "belong" to any other
person.

That said, if there is an antagonist in the form of
a person, it may be Edna herself. She struggles throughout the novel to understand and
to articulate the feelings she has toward her position "in the universe," as the
narrator notes early on. She is torn between the side of her that has been brought up to
believe in strict gender roles and propriety and the newly-awakened side of her that
wants to simply act and be as she sees fit (this is Emersonian -- she does not feel the
need to be consistent and acts on whims and impulses and does not apologize for it).
Edna realizes that she has always understood that she, and by extension, other women,
live different lives on the surface than what is true to their selves under those
socially-appropriate surfaces. However, it is only during the course of the novella that
her rebellious side begins to act out and to defy the conventions of her time and her
society. Eventually, Edna's decision to drown herself could be seen as her inability to
resolve these two conflicting internal voices or forces.