Synopsis
Kate Chopin's novel is a probing psychological study of a woman who, oppressed by family life and her romantic difficulties, drowns herself in the ocean. It is also an examination of a particular culture at the end of the 19th century: the aristocratic society of southern Louisiana. Condemned at the time it was written, THE AWAKENING has been valued in later years for its unflinching honesty and sexual frankness.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1992-08-01 | | Edition Description: | Reissue |
| Size | | Height: | 7.0 in | | Width: | 4.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 4.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
/Kate Chopin Here is the story of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother. Edna experiences the first pangs of passion and desire--an awakening so intense that Edna compromises herself--changing her life forever. Chopin's portrayal of a woman's quest for free
First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening has been hailed as an early vision of womans emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a womans abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her awakening to desires and passions that threated to consumer her. Originally entitled "A Solitary Soul," this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction, rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in search of self-discovery turns away from convention and society, and toward the primal, from convention and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly attracted to nature and the sensesThe Awakening, Kate Chopin's last novel, has been praised by Edmund Wilson as "beautifully written." And Willa Cather described its style as "exquisite," "sensitive," and "iridescent." This edition of The Awakening also includes a selection of short stories by Kate Chopin. "This seems to me a higher order of feminism than repeating the story of woman as victim... Kate Chopin gives her female protagonist the central role, normally reserved for Man, in a meditation on identity and culture, consciousness and art." -- From the introduction by Marilynne Robinson.
Industry Reviews
"It is uncanny, nothing else...a masterpiece."
New York Times - Linda Wolfe
"A Creole 'Bovary' is this little novel...and I shall not attempt to say why Miss Chopin has devoted so exquisite and sensitive, well-governed a style to so trite and sordid a theme."
Leader - Willa Cather (07/08/1899)
"'The Awakening' seems to me to be the finest novel of its sort written by an American, and to rank among the world's masterpieces of short fiction."
Georgia Review - Robert Cantwell
"Denounced at the time of its original publication in 1899, and out of print for decades, 'The Awakening' is an American masterpiece: the brilliantly conceived story of a woman's 'awakening' to erotic love, and to her predicament in a patriarchal society."
Joyce Carol Oates
"A Creole Bovery is this little novel of Miss Chopin's."
Willa Cather
"It was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the over-worked world of sex-fiction...This is not a pleasant story."
Garrett
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