Awakening Hamlet

When we read Hamlet in class a while ago, we focused a lot on the idea of seeming vs. being. This idea is also very apparent in The Awakening. The morning after Mr. Pontellier reprimands Mrs. Pontellier for being careless and neglectful he gave her half of the money he had won the night before before he left. As he was leaving, it was apparent that "Mr. Pontellier was a great favorite, and ladies, men, children, even nurses, were always on hand to say good-bye to him" (23). Mrs. Pontellier "stood smiling and waving" as he left, baring no trace of the tears that she had cried in the middle of the night before (23).
A few days after he left, Mr. Pontellier sent a box of sweets back to his family. Mrs. Pontellier always generously gave away the contents of boxes like these because" she was quite used to receiving them when away from home," as if Mr. Pontellier sent them as apologies to make up for his absences or outbursts (23). The ladies who took the sweets that Mrs. Pontellier gave out from the box "all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world" while "Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew of none better" (24). And that is the last sentence of chapter three.
This passage seems really sad to me, the fact that Mrs. Pontellier's husband, who verbally abuses her to the point where she's sitting on her porch crying uncontrollably at midnight, is considered "the best husband in the world." What's worse is that Mrs. Pontellier knows that none of the other ladies' husbands are any better, they are all in the same situations. If Mrs. Pontellier is crying her eyes out in the middle of the night because of her husband's words and she has the best husband of the bunch, who can imagine some of the things that the other ladies go through.
However, all of theses ladies and their families appear to be fine, and here is where Hamlet comes in. Mr. Pontellier is cruel to his wife, yet he sends her packages of sweets and kisses her goodbye, so it appears to the rest of the world that they have a perfectly happy marriage. As for the other ladies, some of them may be in worse marriages than Mrs. Pontellier's, yet they all act as if everything is normal around other people so that no one suspects how grave it may be.