| Title | : | The Awakening and Selected Short Stories |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 055321330X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780553213300 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 210 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1899 |
Introduction by Marilynne Robinson
The Awakening
Beyond the Bayou
Ma'ame Pélagie
Désirée's Baby
A Respectable Woman
The Kiss
A Pair of Silk Stockings
The Locket
A Reflection
Bibliography
The Awakening and Selected Short Stories Reviews
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3.5*
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I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for tragic love and a gloomy ending. For social and moral constraints pushing down until one suffocates. I’ve lived it. I caught my breath and clutched this book and had a completely personal reaction to the beauty and the agony.
Some of the one star reviews puzzle me, not because people disliked the book, which would be perfectly reasonable, but because some people suggest Edna could’ve just gotten a divorce and solved her problem that way. That she was a selfish “trollop” to have an affair and leave her kids. This simplistic and unrealistic response to a book written in 1899 floors me. To rate a book low because a female abandoned her children is laughable…especially when you consider that had the protagonist been male and abandoned his kids in the same way this outrage would not exist.
I guess this is what Chopin was getting at.
113 years ago. -
I loved this story for the beautiful writing and the intricate way of exploring the life of a tragic woman. I saw this as a tragic story, not as the example that feminists having been using it as for decades.
The feminist themes are there, no doubt, but I don't think that Chopin intended it to be used as an example of what a woman in a similar situation should do.
The Awakening is a story of a woman who feels bound and oppressed by her marriage and by motherhood. This stuff was never for her and she tries to escape them. I don't agree with her ways of escaping them, especially what she did to her children! Is that what feminists want to use as an example? I don't want to give too much away for someone who hasn't read this, but her actions in this book are too extreme.
Seeing this simply as a tragic story of a selfish, oppressed woman, it is wonderful. At times I felt for this character and at times I was frustrated with her. The writing was, as I said, beautiful. Chopin really had a knack for conveying emotions without much dialogue. -
With several hours to kill before an appointment, I decided to pop inside a bookstore to pick up something "short but old." In pursuit of this end, I solicited the aid of the shop lady—one of those former English majors who've evidently forgotten everything they might have once learned in university. Following several false starts ("Sorry, ma'am, but I've already read both Animal Farm and The Metamorphosis"), she pulled a slender book from the shelf, saying as she did so: "I can't remember if I read this in school, but I think people view it as important for feminism or something." Trying my best to ignore the garish cover design, which suggested some sort of third-rate historical romance novel, I consented to buy it.
Before this incident, I had not heard of either The Awakening or Kate Chopin; and as I read through some of the short stories and vignettes that pad out this volume, I began to fear that her recent revaluation by critics had been more the result of patriarchal-related guilt than literary merit. Granted, tales like "Beyond the Bayou" and "Désirée's Baby" display a subtle knack for characterization and an admirable economy of prose. But as exquisitely crafted as they might be, these pieces nonetheless struck me as mere sketches, as études rather than sonatas.
The Awakening, however, boasts all of the strengths of Chopin's shorter fiction, but without the flaws. First published in 1899 and originally (and more forcefully) titled A Solitary Soul, the novel follows the travails of a certain Edna Pontellier, a young New Orleans woman who grows disillusioned with her hollow yet perfect-on-paper existence. Married to a wealthy Louisiana businessman, Edna already feels alienated from the tight-knit, rambunctious and casually sensual Creole community in which she lives. Yet her feelings of isolation and discontent become amplified when she garners the attention of a young Creole man named Robert Lebrun, an attraction which, to Edna's simultaneous joy and despair, turns out to be mutual.
Critic Marilynne Robinson, in her largely astute introduction, explains how many readers have taken the book to be a wholesale endorsement of the liberation of femininity from its patriarchal prison. But such an interpretation obscures the full extent of Chopin's genius. For The Awakening doesn't simply pit one half of a dichotomy against the another; rather, the novel teases out tensions and contradictions inherent to the notions of femininity, family and love. What is a woman's obligation to her children? What is the relation between love and duty? Like any other great novelist, Chopin shows herself to be far more interested in asking questions than in generating any definite answers.
Sadly, The Awakening represents both Chopin's first and final excursion into the art of novel writing: in the face of a vicious critical backlash, the talented author opted to leave the business entirely. One hundred years later, the least we can do is give her magnum opus the attention it deserves. -
2016: I enjoyed reading this, but I wasn't enthusiastic about reading it. I think this will benefit from rereading. The characters and endings aren't the most developed, but the atmosphere of Louisiana is lush and realistic. I can see why this is an acclaimed work, but I wasn't blown away by it.
2020: I quite enjoyed a few of these short story this time: Ma’ame Pélagie, A Pair of Silk Stockings, and A Locket. I also was better able to analyze elements of The Awakening. I really loved how Chopin captured hot and tiresome summer days. I had also forgotten three-quarters of the plot, so that was a surprise! -
”’To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts- absolute gifts- which have not been acquired by one’s own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul. Courageous, ma foi! The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.’”
Some books from your younger years don’t stand the test of time and the passing of years.
I’m happy that Edna Pontellier does. -
I really liked this.
I think this novella made me a bit uncomfortable, though. I saw a lot of myself in Edna, and that's probably why I kept needing to put this book down and find something else to do for a little while.
"A southern woman in a bad marriage who finds herself in a new place one day where her eyes are opened to realize that things shouldn't be the way they are" hit me like an intensely personal ton of bricks, because I've been there.
Of course, it was easier for me to end a marriage than it would be for Edna, and divorce wouldn't place a terrible stigma on my child and ruin his life. The choices available to me in this day and age were not available to her, so she reacted differently than I would have. Yet I truly understand when Edna said that she would give her life for her children but would not give her self. Everyone, even women and mothers, are entitled to a self that is an actual person instead of being forced to identify only as someone's wife or someone's daughter or someone's mother.
I still don't feel like we have gotten there. Progress is being made, but we still have a long way to go. -
"There was a feeling with her of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and and apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to "feed upon opinion" when her own soul had invited her." - p.124
A rich, "sensuous and delicious" novel about a woman's deep and intimate relationship with Nature, her repressed sexuality, latent spirituality, and undiagnosed depression, as well as a stirring and absorbing "meditation on identity and culture, consciousness and art."
Combining the sumptuous intricacy and nuance of late 19th century high culture with the first glimmers of the existentialism and post-modernism, this is a novel of deliciously sophisticated prose and stunning insights, but not something that can be easily read in one setting.
The other tales included in this collection provide glimpses of life in 19th century French Louisiana, including perspectives from both the Black and White communities: Desirée's Baby is easily the standout story, and delivers more punch in just 10 pages than The Awakening does in 155. A Respectable Woman is also charming. The Kiss, A Pair of Silk Stockings, The Locket and A Reflection all deserve an honorable mention. -
The altar, 'tis of death! for there are laid
The sacrifice of all youth's sweetest hopes.
It is a dreadful thing for woman's lip
To swear the heart away; yet know that heart
Annuls the vow while speaking and shrinks back
From the dark future that it dares not face.
The service read above the open grave
Is far less terrible than that which seals
The vow that binds the victim, not the will:
For in the grave is rest.
The Marriage Vow, Letitia Elizabeth Landon -
It was amazing to watch the unraveling of Edna Pontellier's well-to-do, refined existence in Louisiana. Despite her privileged upbringing, youth, beauty, wealth, status and creativity, this 28-year old wife and mother is stifled by the social norms of the day (this was published in 1899) and begins uncharacteristically to act out. After taking out her initial frustrations on her busy husband, she refuses to attend her sister's wedding, and then things go bananas.
I took off a star for the short stories at the end, I liked Desiree's Baby and Ma'ame Pelagie but not so much the rest of them. I'd recommend getting them out of the way first, so you can savor The Awakening on its own. -
edna just like me fr 🙏
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I have finally read The Awakening, something that a bazillion people have told me I need to read. It took an English class assignment for me to do it but it is done. The writing is outstanding but I did not like Edna one single bit and saw nothing but selfishness and it made me so angry. If I had read this at another time in my life I may have felt differently but, given my circumstances, I had no patience for her choices. That being said, I ADORED the other short stories that make up the remainder of this book. Yep, Kate Chopin could write. I wish she had known that more clearly when the was alive. Below are passages that I appreciated even while I wanted to wring the main character's neck.
It would have been a difficult matter for Mr. Pontellier to define to his own satisfaction or anyone else’s wherein his wife failed in her duty toward their children. It was something he felt rather than perceived, and he never voiced the feeling without subsequent regret and ample atonement…In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. (10)
A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her, the light which, showing the way, forbids it. (17)
In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight – perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman. But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such a beginning! How many souls perish in the tumult! (17)
Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in this respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of Fate. He fell in love, as men are in the habit of doing, and pressed his suit with an earnestness and an ardor which left nothing to be desired. He pleased her; his absolute devotion flattered her. She fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken. Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic, and we need seek no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for her husband. (24)
But that night she was like a little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence. She could have shouted for joy. She did shout for joy, as with a sweeping stroke or two she lifted her body to the surface of the water. A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before. (37)
She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she now did. (42)
She let her mind wander back over her stay at Grand Isle; and she tried to discover wherein this summer had been different from any and every other summer of her life. She could only realize that she herself – her present self – was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that colored and changed her environment, she did not yet suspect. (54)
I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me. (64)
Edna looked straight before her with a self-absorbed expression upon her face. She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become antagonistic. (72)
She began to do as she liked and feel as she liked, (76)
It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier’s mind to wonder if his wife were not growing a little unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world. (77)
When Edna was at last alone, she breathed a big, genuine sigh of relief. (97)
Then Edna sat in the library after dinner and read Emerson until she grew sleepy. She realized that she had neglected her reading, and determined to start anew upon a course of improving studies, now that her time was completely her own to do with as she liked. (98)
She felt somewhat like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into an act of infidelity, and realizes the significance of the act without becoming wholly awakened from its glamour. The thought that was passing vaguely thought her mind, “What would he think?” She did not mean her husband; she was thinking of Robert Lebrun. Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse. (104)
“I am going to move away from my house on Esplanade Street. Just two steps away,” laughed Edna, “in a little four room house around the corner. It looks so cozy, so inviting and restful, whenever I pass by; and it’s for rent. I’m tired looking after that big house. It never seemed like mine, anyway – like home…I know I shall like it, like the feeling of freedom and independence.” (107)
Conditions would some way adjust themselves, she felt, but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself. (108)
“When I left Mademoiselle Reisz today, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said, ‘The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.’” (112)
The little house pleased her. It at once assumed the intimate character of a home, while she herself invested it with a charm which it reflected like a warm glow. There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to “feed upon opinion” when her own soul had invited her. (127)
Before leaving Madame Ratignolle said: “In some way you seem to me like a child, Edna. You seem to act without a certain amount of reflection which is necessary in this life. That is the reason I want to say you mustn’t mind if I advise you to be a little careful while you are living here alone.” (130)
She was still stunned and speechless with emotion when later she leaned over her friend to kiss her and softly say good-by. Adele, pressing her cheek, whispered in an exhausted voice: “Think of the children, Edna. Oh think of the children! Remember them!” (149)
“The years that are gone seem like dreams – if one might go on sleeping and dreaming – but to wake up and find – oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life…But I don’t want anything but my own way.” (151)
She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known. (156) -
This wasn't a book that caught my interest right away- I picked it up only to read a few pages and then put it down again several times.
However, as the protagonist came more to life so too did the book. I found Edna both more interesting and more sympathetic as the book progressed.
Chopin's style was interesting, too- sometimes lushly descriptive, sometimes spare- and generally quite Modernist in tone.
I can see why some people loathe this book: there isn't much in the way of external action, and if one is not interested in Edna's inner journey, there is little that would hold one's attention. But if one has the patience and the interest, the book is well worth it. -
I can’t remember how I discovered Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’. I have had the book for years. I must have got it during one of my weekend bookshop visits. I used to buy a lot of Bantam classics those days and I think I got it then. I normally remember the bookshop from which I had bought a book, but I can’t remember the bookshop from which I had got Kate Chopin’s book. By some deductive reasoning, I have narrowed down the suspects to two. And that is where it will stay, I think.
I don’t know why Chopin’s book was lying unread on my shelf for so long. It is not too long and the story is interesting. Well, fortunately for me, the stars got aligned this weekend and I picked the book to read. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop. I put down everything else I was doing – tasks, chores, TV – and read it till I finished it. Here is what I think.
‘The Awakening’ is about Edna Pontellier, who is in her late twenties, happily married by conventional standards, has a husband who is successful in his profession and takes care of her and two children who are delightful and undemanding. She has all the material comforts that a woman of her era would need. She also has a wonderful circle of friends, especially Adèle Ratignolle, who is her closest friend and Robert Lebrun who is always there with her during the summer. Once, while spending the summer holiday near the sea, with Robert for company during most days, something happens to Edna. Her heart opens up and she sees something new and it is the end of life as she knows it. She starts falling in love with Robert. She wants to do something new – like painting. She starts yearning for more independence. She wants to move away from her husband and her family, though she loves them, and get her own house and paint in that house. All these new thoughts and emotions explode in her heart at around the same time. As Chopin says while describing this event :
But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in this tumult!
Things become complicated for Edna after that. Is Edna able to leave her home and chart an independent life path successfully? What does her family feel about it? Can Edna part from her husband, whom she likes, and her children, whom she loves? What does her best friend Adèle have to say about it? Does Robert return her love? And if things don’t work out what would Edna do? The answers to all these questions form the rest of the story.
‘The Awakening’ has been frequently compared to ‘Madame Bovary’. I haven’t read ‘Madame Bovary’ and so I am not able to compare. On its own, I think it is a story of a woman who is trying to discover herself and her relationship to the world around her and in the process how her heart opens up to new vistas and she strives for freedom and an independent expression of her vision which contradicts with the social norms of her era and the complexities which arise from that and how it affects her and how she copes with them. It is a beautiful story, though with a tragic ending, and I loved it. It is definitely one of my favourite reads of the year. (The introduction said that the book was banned in America, when it was published, for its ‘indecency’. I couldn’t believe it when I read that. The book didn’t deserve to be banned. It deserved literary awards. I can imagine how heartbroken Kate Chopin must have been when the literary world spurned her masterpiece.)
The edition of the book I read had a beautiful introduction by Marilynne Robinson, she of ‘Housekeeping’ and ‘Gilead’ fame. It also had eight short stories. I liked most of the stories. My favourite was ‘Désirée’s Baby’. (If you are curious about it, here is the story – an orphan girl is adopted by a childless couple. When she grows up, a young man from a distinguished family meets her one day and falls in love with her at first sight. They get married and a year later she becomes a mother. Puzzlingly, though our heroine and her husband are white, the baby is not. The husband starts hating his wife after that. What happens after that? What is the truth? – you should read the story to find out. It read like a Heinrich von Kleist story to me.). I also loved ‘A Reflection’ and ‘A Pair of Silk Stockings’.
There is a small, interesting story behind ‘Désirée’s Baby’. I first discovered ‘Désirée’s Baby’ through a book that I read years back called ‘River Town’ by Peter Hessler. It is Hessler’s account of his time in China when he spent a couple of years teaching English in a small town in Sichuan province near the bend of the Yangtze river. Hessler said in the book that he frequently read and discussed ‘Désirée’s Baby’ with his students in English class. I am happy to have finally read it. Now I wonder what Hessler discussed with his students on the story. I should go back and read ‘River Town’ again.
I will leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book. Kate Chopin’s prose is beautiful and brilliant.
The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining.
The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned newly awakened being demanded.
Robert’s going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing.
There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.
There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why, - when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood.
“There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the impression of an oar upon the water.”
Have you read ‘The Awakening’? What do you think about it? Have you read ‘Désirée’s Baby’? -
This is a book of stories by Kate Chopin beginning with Awakening, a novella. Inside the book there are 9 stories as:
1. The Awakening
2. Beyond the Bayou
3. Ma'ame Pélagie
4. Desiree's Baby
5. A Respectable Woman
6. The Kiss
7. A Pair of Silk Stockings
8. The Locket
9. A Reflection
The awakening approaches the realization of the female sexuality. The story takes place during the late 1800s in Grand Isle, a summer resort for the wealthy in New Orleans. Edna Pontellier, who is a painter, is vacationing with her husband, Léonce, and their two sons at the cottages of Madame Lebrun. After her husband leaves, Edna falls in love with Robert Lebrun, the older, single son of Madame Lebrun. When Edna returns to the city, she is a changed woman who rents her own place and has a sexual relationship with another man.
Later when she meets Robert again and Robert rejects her since she is a married woman, although he is in love with her, Edna returns to her husband and children.
In Beyond the Bayou, La Folle suffers from her deeply ingrained fear of the unknown, but an incident with someone named Cheri who shot himself in the leg by accident, pulls her out of her familiar surroundings and liberates her from her fears.
In Ma'ame Pélagie, the main character is able to continue appearing youthful while her dreams of the old life still survive because she associates the most hopeful period of her life with antebellum Louisiana. At the end, she realizes she is old inside herself, although outwardly she appeared young.
Desiree's Baby evaluates the class-based and racially prejudiced attitudes of the Antebellum South. Desiree gives birth to a black baby, while her husband Armand believes in acts according to the social and class prejudices of the era. A letter written by Armand's mother, however, discloses Armand's African heritage.
In A Respectable Woman, the wealthy Mrs. Baroda faces temptation of an illicit affair by a guest named Governail, as she struggles with her own self-imposed rules. Finally she wins over her emotions and approaches her husband and tells him she has overcome everything.
In The Kiss, Nathalie is plotting to marry the good-natured but unattractive and rather foolish Brantain while maintaining an affair with Mr. Harvy. At the end, Harvy ends their relationship and Natalie stays with Brantain as he has much better material assets and social status.
In A Pair of Silk Stockings, Mrs. Sommers comes across some money. Even though her original spending plan is more conventional, her emotions get the better of her and she spends the whole thing on herself, showing her craving to return to a past, or rather her youth, when she was independent and didn't have to scrimp and save.
The Locket deals with love and war, during the Civil War era, between two lovers Edmond and Octavie. When a soldier's body is found with the locket Octavie had given to Edmond, Octavie goes into mourning. Edmond, however, returns home in one piece, revealing that the locket was stolen by another soldier. Edmond's return restores Octavie's happiness. This story shows the ravages of war on not only the land but on the people
who are in love.
A Reflection is a very short piece, resembling a prose-poem on the author's brief thoughts on life.
In these stories, important themes are: independence and autonomy, especially those of a woman's, gender and identity, the author's opposition to societal norms, class and race, love and desire and the difference between the two concepts, life and death, and Civil War.
Kate Chopin was a child of Irish and French Creole descent in the upper class of St. Louis in the decades surrounding the Civil War. She is known best as reflecting the colors of Lousiana as setting and as a farsighted writer exploring race, sexuality, freedom, and psychology of the individual as a person. -
Ok, so I read The Awakening for class, and I did not read the other short stories in the book, as they were not assigned. However, since the book is that main story, I consider it read. (And after reading the main story, how can I not read her other ones?)
It's actually a funny story: for my American Literature II class (ENG 226), at GVSU, we were assigned to read Kate Chopin's story from our Norton Anthology. But as I was perusing the free books at the school, I found this copy. I still ended up reading it out of the Anthology, but they are the same story. And now I get to keep the free book once I return my rented Anthology at the end of the semester, and I will read the other short stories (there are 8 others, and they are all much shorter than the title story).
But as usual, I digress. I just wanted to be accurate for the record.
Now that's out of the way, I can write a review. Damn, that was a powerful story.
It starts out slow: you have to grow accustomed to the way people wrote back in 1899....the book was mainly in passive voice, which I guess nowadays is a big no-no, and I still don't understand why. The main character, Mrs. Edna Pontellier, is married, has children, and is vacationing on an island near New Orleans. She does what is expected of her, though she knows she's not the most attentive mother and wife. She has a posh living situation and wants for nothing. A man who is the son of the owner of the retreat, Robert, makes advances knowing very well that she is married. She brushes him off, but after a night of swimming, after learning to swim and not drowning, she starts to feel differently. She starts to hang out with Robert and live her life on her own terms. As they get close, Robert goes to Mexico.
Edna moves back home at the end of the summer, but she fights periods of melancholy and starts painting and doing new things. She distances herself from her husband. She changes. She thinks of Robert all the time.
I'm not going to spoil it for you, but she and Robert do get together....but man, the ending is so powerful that the book was actually banned by libraries. Kate Chopin died in 1904, five years after writing this story, and did not write anything after this story because she was so upset about its reception. But there is nothing torrid by today's standards (I guess an unhappy and unfaithful wife), and the book shows the "awakening" of a woman who will live only for herself, and refuses to give herself to anyone.
She puts it like this: "I would give up the inessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me" (64).
It is such a moving story. I'm glad I had to read it for class: she was definitely ahead of her time.
If you haven't read it: read it. It is moving.
You have to get through some of the mundane parts to get to the heart of the story, and the climax and the end come at you so quickly...but it was worth every second. I'm very glad I read it.
I think you will be, too. -
As The Awakening opens during the languid days of summer we find Edna Pontellier, Kate Chopin's main character, drifting aimlessly as if through a wide expanse of ocean or a great field of grain. Edna is on vacation at Grand Isle with her husband and two young sons. She often feels the weight of her responsibilities and the casual cruelty of her husband and becomes disconsolate, but she has attracted the attention of Robert Lebron who becomes her constant companion. Edna has a tendency towards infatuation and becomes quite smitten with Robert. She makes friends with others vacationing on the island while her husband returns to New Orleans during the week and begins her metamorphosis.
She tells her friend Adele that while she would give her life for her children, she would never give up her own self.
As Edna returns to New Orleans she begins to spread her wings and to cast of responsibilities like the shell or casing of her chrysalis and flit about on her own selfish quest.
Critics of Kate Chopin's time were aghast at the book and called it "sordid" and "unhealthy," but modern day critics see the beginnings of feminist thought in the book and laud it as an early feminist novel. This modern reader wonders if it is more of a parable of sorts.
Kate Chopin is a thoughtful novelist who slowly develops her characters and stories and is gifted at developing the scene as the following illustrates:
"The walk to the beach was no inconsiderable one, consisting as it did of a long, sandy path, upon which a sporadic and tangled growth that bordered it on either side made frequent and unexpected inroads. There were acres of yellow camomile reaching out on either hand. Further away still, vegetable gardens abounded, with frequent small plantations of orange or lemon trees intervening. the dark green clusters glistened from afar in the sun."
In many ways The Awakening is truly a lovely read, but its main strength is its ability to provoke thought and discussion and that is why I would recommend it. -
4.5★
While I acquired this Kindle book because The Awakening is on the Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read list, it was the short stories that really captured me, especially Beyond the Bayou, The Kiss and The Silk Stockings. The lovely descriptions gave me the feeling of the French Creole presence in Louisiana in the period during and just after the American Civil War and Chopin's women, while quite different from me & my friends, still felt real to me. The prose reminded me a bit of Willa Cather's writing.
The novella The Awakening I found melancholy in the same way that Anna Karenina and Mrs. Dalloway were. The story has a lot in common with Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary & some other classics of this time; I can see that when it was first published in 1899 it might have been thought shocking or daring. However, just as with Anna, I found the main character Edna more annoying than sympathetic (although Edna was nowhere near as annoying as Anna!). I was much more sympathetic to Robert! I guess this is one instance to which my modern sensibilities just can't really relate. -
An explanation regarding the rating: I enjoyed the end of The Awakening, the other 75% of it I found to be indulgent and repetitive, and I liked Desiree's Baby quite a lot as well. As for the remaining short stories, I had issues with remaining present and found the subject matter not all that gripping. With all of that being said however, I am completely aware of the feminist themes contained within The Awakening such as oppression, domestication of women, and patriarchal households (just to name a few).
Desiree's Baby on the other hand was much for inventive. If I was rating the stories contained in this collection separately, Desiree's Baby would have achieved five stars. I found the underlying message, which is that men fault women for essentially anything (even if they are not 100% positive), to be enthralling and entertaining and shockingly accurate. -
I think this is a book now read in college courses, as it well should be. That women were once considered not to own their own lives, especially not their own minds, might be a revelation for those younger than about 30. This small book is beautifully written and not encumbered with the wordiness of the Victorians. I have not studied this time period - perhaps by 1899 literature was coming out from under those paragraph long sentences. This is just a delight, in spite of the ending which I could have wished different.
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A combination of Anna Karenina, The Great Gatsby and Madame Bovary. No, I do not intend that as a compliment. Yet another novel about a rich person so bored that she van think of nothing else but the unattainable man, illicit affairs and a predictable, melodramatic end. All I heard was the incessant whining of a woman who clearly needs an occupation to give her meaning in life, as clearly her children are not enough. At least it's a short book.
2.5/5 -
While this book did not give me quite the ending I was looking for, at least Edna isn't killed by a train for daring to love a man other than her husband.
Page 151 is filled with the true meaning of Edna's "awakening." Edna's comments are both full of insight and fraught with what's to come. The old doctor's words are some of the truest I have ever read. -
DNF @ 20%
This book was boring as hell. -
4.25 stars.
Originally, I found "The Awakening" through the instagram meme account manicpixiememequeen when I was in the thick of my depression and anxiety, so I approached it less as a feminism novel and more as a mental illness novel. I was really pleasantly surprised, though. However, the short stories.
The Novel: 4.90 stars.
I really loved this book. Kate Chopin is a master of creating really gorgeous, painting-like images- her descriptions were so atmospheric and engaging. I really did feel like I was observing the Pontellier family in the muggy summer heat of Louisiana, Edna in her pigeon house, and especially that final dinner party. As well, the characters were compelling, Edna being the complex and exceptional star that the story revolved around. She was flawed but extremely sympathetic, complex but not contrived, layered and human. Edna is such a gorgeous character study, and I adored her so much. I loved the direction the story took, and the themes that it covered; it was a tender, nuanced, and sympathetic exploration of really important themes. My main issue was the way that race was treated; it was not mishandled, it was just a very weird and almost uncanny-valley description of race in the south. It feels very sanitized, almost like it is dancing around and trying to ignore the topic altogether. The language is very of-that-time, and it isn't super racist by today's standards (from what I can tell), but it's rose-coloured-glasses approach just makes me feel very unnerved.
The Short Stories: 3.60 stars.
Overall, they felt very tacked on, and my perception of them was definitely affected by how much I enjoyed the novel. A lot of these stories just paled in comparison. Some of them were very good, but some of them were very average. It was an incredibly mixed bag.
Beyond the Bayou-2.00 stars.
I did not enjoy this one. I am all for writing outside of your comfort zone, but in this case, I really wish that Kate had just stuck to what she knows. The depiction of a black freedwoman (I think) felt very caricatured and stereotypical- La Folle really does feel like almost a minstrel-show character, kind of a gross exaggeration of a traumatized black woman. As well, the thematic exploration was not as in-depth as it could have been, and it just did not have the nuance that I know that Kate can deliver.
Ma'ame Pélagie-4.35 stars.
Again, really gorgeous atmospheric descriptions; her imagery craft is so strong and effective. Everything that was happening, I was able to picture so clearly. As well, the main exploration of the relationship between Pélagie and Paula is really well-done and layered. The themes of memory and attachment were aslo really beautifully explored; however, La Petite almost tacked on, and I wish she had either been expanded on or removed entirely. There was also a recurrence of the rose-coloured, yearning view of the antebellum south, and though I understand it, it still rubbed me the wrong way and felt weird.
Désirée's Baby- 3.85 stars.
A strong effort. I wish it had been shorter, and cut to the chase sooner. The imagery and description was effective, but it could have been clearer and a little more specific. The characters were strong, but I wish there was a touch more showing and a little less telling. I also appreciate that Kate Chopin at least tried, in her own strange reconstruction way, to approach racism and hypocrisy- it was not completely successful, but she gave it her best shot. My main issue with the approach was that it didn't deal with racism direct, but with misplaced racism against a white woman; the problem isn't that the racism is misplaced, but that the racism is present at all. However, it must be noted that it is a product of it's time and it's writer, and overall it is a decent effort in the spirit of good.
A Respectable Woman- 3.00 stars.
This felt aggressively average. It did not really have the characteristic strong imagery of her other work- it was just very middling. The craft was decent, the characters were meh, the plot was meh, the themes were meh, and it was too long. It wasn't bad, but it didn't shine, and especially not in comparison to the novel.
The Kiss- 3.80 stars.
I had fun with this story. It was kind of strange but weirdly endearing and delightful, with some really interesting images. I wish we had spent a little more time with Natalie and less Brantain and Harvy, but that really is just a matter of personal preference. I also would have like if it was shorter; more of a vignette-prose poem of just the kiss(es).
A Pair of Silk Stockings- 4.95 stars.
This story was an absolute banger time. I loved spending an indulgent afternoon with Mrs. Sommer(s?). It was really descriptive , with Chopin's masterful control of imagery but with more levity than the novel; they are almost two sides of the same coin. I also loved the theme of women and self-care and indulgence without punishment- it was a joyful treat for both me and the main character.
The Locket- 3.35 stars.
Another very middling story. It wasn't bad, and was a sweet finish, but it did not have the emotional weight that it could have had that would have made it very effective. Not enough time was spent with two main characters, nor was enough time spent showing the depth of their relationship. It was quite surface-level, and I wish more time was spent delving into and building their relationship and the trials and tribulations of maintaining their relationship during the war so that when the twist happened, it trule felt like it meant something. However, I do appreciate the light commentary on the way widows and female grief is treated. -
I don’t know how to rate this book. I wanted a break from
nonfiction and had heard references to this text in the past. I don’t read a lot of classic literature since college so I don’t have a lot to compare to. I’m sure this was a scandalous story back in the day. I believe this is considered a classical feminist text. For my own personal enjoyment (not being into this sort of literature) I would call it “fine” and “mildly interesting”. I did find it to be predictable and had guessed the ending about halfway through the first story. -
Kate Chopin has been quite the discovery. While The Awakening certainly appealed to me, it was her short stories that truly grabbed my attention. She was a formidable writer, who wrote both well and with earnestness, and that is more than what most writers need in my eyes.
Most will see here little more than an early venture into feminist writing, but for me it was love at first sight. -
Good for a book I had to read for class, but shouldn’t have read the other short stories because they get a bit racist
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I’m pissed. >:(
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I actually kind of preferred Chopin's short stories! They felt more punchy and surprising to me.
