How is masculinity treated in Chopin's 'The Awakening'?

Masculinity is treated as something that is somewhat fragile, especially in the face of an empowered woman.  In Grand Isle, when Edna does not leap from her sleep to listen to Leonce's tales of the club and that night's game, he seems to feel that his position is threatened by her failure to play her role.  He lies and says that one of their sons is sick, and he reproaches her for her inattention as...

Masculinity is treated as something that is somewhat fragile, especially in the face of an empowered woman.  In Grand Isle, when Edna does not leap from her sleep to listen to Leonce's tales of the club and that night's game, he seems to feel that his position is threatened by her failure to play her role.  He lies and says that one of their sons is sick, and he reproaches her for her inattention as a mother (when what he is really irritated with is her inattention as a wife).  On another, later evening, Edna will not come inside and prefers to remain in the hammock alone rather than come in and give in to her husband's sexual advances, as she becomes aware that, in the past, she would simply have done as he'd asked.  With his masculinity threatened by her refusal, Leonce comes outside and refuses to go in as well, as if to make it seem like it is he who is refusing Edna and not the reverse.  

Likewise, Robert Lebrun's masculinity cannot handle the unconventional relationship that Edna proposes near the novel's end.  He hopes that Leonce will divorce her and that he and Edna can get married and be accepted by society; however, Edna sees that this can never happen and also expresses her desire that it not happen, even if it could.  Who would Robert be if he could not perform his masculinity in the way that his society tells him it should be performed: as a husband to a conventional wife and not simply the lover of a disgraced woman?  He does not know, and he cannot imagine it, and so he leaves her, this woman he obviously loves.

This seems to be why Edna's failure to be feminine in the proper way is so threatening: it prevents the men in her life from being masculine in what society has dictated to them to be the proper way.  Thus, we see that their masculinity is fairly fragile, because it cannot withstand one woman's deviation from her socially-prescribed role.  Femininity and masculinity seem to be rooted together, and if the former shifts, the latter will crumble.