Despite the fact that marriage deals with love and emotional bonding, a family's economic well-being is also a large part of a successful marriage. Money can't buy emotions such as love, but it can ensure that both you and your spouse are taken care of if anything should go wrong and in this world, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. However the most important factor in a marriage is happiness. .
Happiness is the foundation marriage is built on while material and emotional needs help to support the bonds between husband and wife. In Modern World History, we learned that throughout time, men, women, and children all had basic needs ranging from food to clothing to love and to friendship and a successful marriage can supply all of those needs. However, if those needs are not meant, a person can break down, lose faith, feel hopeless and result to suicide to free them of such a high responsibility. Marriage can quickly drop a load of problems onto a person's narrow shoulders and cause them to collapse right into their own self-dug grave filled deep with agony and remorse.
Marriage in itself is but one of the factors that is commonly linked to suicide. However, it is one of the main reasons why Edna Pontellier commits suicide. Edna did not have the many financial burdens that an unhappy marriage would contain. She did not have financial worries such as housing or food. However she did not have happiness in her marriage. She felt her marriage had become a prison where her creativity was caged and hindered. "From the viewpoint of our dreams and talent, we create the foundation for a more satisfactory life." (Suicide and Depression p. 14) Since Edna was unable to realize her dreams and her creativity, she felt trapped and could not be happy. She did not feel the emotions such as love that is necessary for the survival of a marriage. Her husband did not participate in activities that she found enjoyable nor did he treat her as the woman that she is.