OMG Edna belongs in Gossip Girl!

Spotted: Edna Pontellier smitten over Robert Lebrun. Doesn’t she know, you can only have one?

As we finished up The Awakening this week, Ruben and I noticed some similarities between the novel and one of our favorite TV series, Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl, much like The Awakening, is infused with drama and suspenseful situations that leaves the audience wanting more.
Gossip Girl consists of what some would call “over-privileged” teenagers dealing with a secret source known as Gossip Girl who is exposing all of their darkest secrets via text messages and a weblog. Although this anonymous source brings grief and drama to the teens, airing their dirty laundry makes each character more human and more relatable; behind the couture handbags and thousand dollar wardrobe pick for the day.

The world of Gossip Girl is much like Edna’s background living in an Anglo culture. No one shows their feelings; if they are sad, it doesn’t show. People are well composed and rarely talk about their issues. Much like the people who visited Grand Isle for holiday, Gossip Girl characters are extremely wealthy as well. Edna reminds me of the main character, Serena Van Der Woodsen’s mother, Lily Van Der Woodsen in one particular sense. Lily has two children: Serena and Eric. While she loves her children, she seems to be too preoccupied in some seasons with her own love life to pay sufficient attention to them. Edna loves her children, but doesn’t pay much attention to them or show them much affection. Edna and Lily also have something else in common, straying from marriages. In the upper east side of New York, affairs were not uncommon. Lily seems to never be pleased in her marriages, and always looks elsewhere to fulfill the void.

I have noticed both in The Awakening and in Gossip Girl that social status is very important to people, especially those with wealthy backgrounds. Serena Van Der Woodsen, the “it” girl of the city who comes from a family who is fabulously wealthy. She falls in love with an outsider, “Lonely Boy,” also known as Dan Humphreys. Because Dan comes from Brooklyn, dubbed the “outside and poor” part of New York, Serena must decide what she is willing to lose by dating Dan. Much like Edna struggling to find her identity, and finding it, but knowing what she will lose if she chooses to be her full self, there are always consequences to going against what society’s expectations are.
I am wondering, did anyone find similarities in this novel with their favorite shows, or another favorite book of theirs? The storyline in The Awakening seems to be common and I am sure there are other medias out there that can relate to the plot.