| Title | : | The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1593080018 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781593080013 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 297 |
| Publication | : | Published January 1, 2003 |
Set in and around New Orleans, The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother who, determined to control her own life, flouts convention by moving out of her husband’s house, having an adulterous affair, and becoming an artist.
Beautifully written, with sensuous imagery and vivid local descriptions, The Awakening has lost none of its power to provoke and inspire. Additionally, this edition includes thirteen of Kate Chopin’s magnificent short stories.
--back cover
Stories Included in the Volume:
The Awakening
Emancipation: A Life Fable
A Shameful Affair
At the ‘Cadian Ball
Désirée’s Baby
A Gentleman of Bayou Têche
A Respectable Woman
The Story of an Hour
Athénaïse
A Pair of Silk Stockings
Elizabeth Stock’s One Story
The Storm
The Godmother
A Little Country Girl
The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction Reviews
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Okay, technically, I haven't finished reading the book because I still need to read the short stories that follow The Awakening. However, I must write what I think about Chopin's prized story before it escapes me. I absolutely disliked Edna Pontellier. I came into this novel with many expectations, primarily that this would be an amazing feminist novel. Nope! It was not, which I am okay with. I am not okay with how unhappy Edna is with her life. Yeah, her husband isn't super romantic, but her life seems to be pleasant. When he sees that she is acting peculiar, he gives her space and trust. She is wealthy, has marvelous social dinners, and two adorable sons. Her life seems pretty darn great. Yeah, I understand that she sought her personal freedom, but compared to the mulatto women she has employed as nannies and maids, she seems pretty darn free to me. I have nicknamed this book "Rich white girl problems". I may have liked her more if she was not so immature. She refuses to attend her sister's wedding for no apparent reason even though it would mean a lot to her sister and father, and she smashes vases and stomps on her wedding ring like a juvenile. Um, girl, aren't you like 28? Her love for Robert does not seem like love but more like an obsession. It promises her adventure and change, which she is justified for wanting, but she could have gone about it more maturely. First, she was never for sure that Robert reciprocated it, so it seemed like she lived mostly on fantasy. Once, Robert came back and she pulled out the truth in him, she was ready to do anything for him--not very independent. Also before Robert returns, she has that affair with Alcee just because she felt like it. Alright,cool, she should be free to do so, but it just shows how capricious she is. I suppose she is groundbreaking by breaking social norms of the time, like moving out of her home and leaving her children, but at the end her suicide just proves she is weak. She is not an example for anyone. She lacks maturity and strength. I don't see her as an example for either women or men, or anyone really. I see that she felt oppressed and suffocated,but she was too extreme in her way of escaping. I will say that I enjoy the description of the Creole life in New Orleans. I love that history that Chopin relates. I hope her short stories don't disappoint.
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Review of The Awakening
here.
The short stories are also great, especially At the 'Cadian Ball, A Gentleman of Bayou Têche and Elizabeth Stock’s One Story, showing a diverse and vital talent for storytelling.
The introduction, however, is dismal. First of all, it promptly spoils the novel and almost all of the stories, without any warning whatsoever. Secondly, it's rambling and lacks focus or any discernible point, wandering from trying to excuse or erase Chopin's racist beliefs to pointlessly asking questions about her personal life that lead nowhere. And thirdly and most offensively of all, it contains completely ridiculous accounts of the short stories that feel as though they were written by an internet troll to get a rise out of Chopin lovers by purposefully misunderstanding every single one of them.
So, in conclusion, it's 4 stars for the novel and stories and 1 for the Introduction. -
“The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”
melancholic and insightful. i was assigned this novel in high school and honestly skimmed it, but i'm glad i had to read it again for my american women writers class because i quite liked it. chopin's prose is imagistic and thoughtful, and her characters are captivating and nuanced. lots of reviewers here castigate edna for her choices and her personality, but i found her sympathetic and an engaging protagonist. chopin really shows how trapped women are by domesticity in this novel, and i admire the ambiguity this story takes on and chopin's refusal to condemn her protagonist. quite liked this one -
This is an interesting novella to look at through different lenses. In The Awakening, Chopin introduces Edna Pontellier, a wealthy young wife and mother, who begins to question the roles and expectations that she has slid into without much thought or deliberation. She got married because it was the next thing to do, she had kids for the same reason. The novella explores the status quo and she ultimately lets her children stay with their grandmother, moves into a home of her own, and pursues her own interests. What's noteworthy about this story is that it was published in 1899, and at that time, these were completely radical ideas. It's interesting to me to compare this to contemporary novels where women have questioned their role as mother and left their children in others' care so that they can pursue their own interests and goals. Chopin keeps the children very distant in the novella, you see virtually no emotional connection between mother and child, and the impact of her distance from them is never explored, and I am sure that this creates a situation where the reader may be less critical of the decision. In other novels, the impact of this separation was portrayed as traumatic for the children and that (at least for me) created a stronger reaction as a reader. The other lens that is interesting to me when looking at this work is the lens of privilege - both racial and economic. Edna is wealthy and white - she is able to make these decisions and pursue what she wants because she has the resources and social standing to do so. She has servants who help to care for the house and the children and essentially everywhere she goes, people enable her to do what she wants. At one point, she is not feeling well and they find a house where she is able to lay down and rest for the whole day -- meanwhile, the novella talks about the children's nurse being up much of the night with the children. As much as there is in this novella to explore on the role of women in society, there is an equal amount to examine on the concepts of privilege and how that facilitates the idea of seeking one's own identity.
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"She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself."
Read "The Awakening" in a single day, essentially in a single sitting. I found the prose completely magical, and I desperately wanted to know what was going to happen next at every turn. I'm blown away by how progressive this novella would have been at the time. In many ways, I'm sad to discover that I found myself nodding along to the problems of a woman 120 years ago, which I guess means that not everything has changed yet. There were obvious racial issues involving negative treatment of persons of African decent and connotations of the Confederacy, which don't hold up in the modern era and I don't agree with. However, it's surprising to see some sentiments that definitely still exist today- what did Betty Friedan call it, the problem that has no name? Feeling trapped in your life, feeling restricted by society and by your relationships - these problems are still true today, to a different degree and for different reasons, but the sentiments and the accompanying emotions are very much the same. Overall, I greatly enjoyed reading this novella and highly recommend it.
"Yes," she said. "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." -
The Awakening has been a novella that I have been meaning to read for a very long time. It has been hailed as a feminist classic which, in a way, it is. Edna Pontellier, our main character, is feeling unhappy and frustrated with her life with a quiet husband and children. Falling in love with other man awakes her passion and yearn for a different life and she decides to take her life in her own hands. In many ways, the novella reminded me of Anna Karenina in its' themes and unlikable characters. All of her short fiction in the collection as well deal with a problem which women faced in Chopin's society; when they are unhappy in their lives, they can't choose them without being shamed or hated by the people around them. However, my problem is that when all the stories deal with the same theme, they start to feel pretty much the same. In almost all of them, the wife is struggling and the husband is unfeeling or unable to present his feelings in the way that comes across to their wives. The Awakening is definitely the best part of the collection even though I must admit that the suffocation of the society didn't allow her to be as selfish as she was during the story (I am not talking about the ending, though). So yes, I do think that it is a fine example of classic feminist writing but it didn't blew me away the way I wished it to do.
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Dusted off the old high school bookshelf to add a little Chopin to my Hot Intellectual Summer. Needless to say, it was *far* more interesting than I remembered from my first read five (?) years ago. The dinner party scene? Hysterical. Edna's budding feminist angst? An absolute vibe. I still have a lot to unpack with this one, so I'm going to leave it with a solid 8/10.
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The Awakening certainly would have been scandalous in its time with its heroine openly flaunting every social convention attributed to women of that day. The author takes the reader along on a journey of rebirth and self discovery, of finding and developing an identity that is truly one's own and not merely a function of someone else's life. But the question becomes, can this passionate awakening fulfill every need in her life and truly make her happy at last? No spoilers, but I felt the ending to be anticlimactic.
The short fiction included in this volume often follows a similar theme. One that stood out for me, however, was Desiree's Baby, which addresses the equally difficult social conventions of race in that time. Overall, this book was a good read and I enjoyed it. -
This book has an underlying theme to each of its stories. Some would call it empowering for women. I would call it selfish. The women in these stories expect their lives to be perfect without any effort from themselves. I didn't like any of the stories and I will never read anything from this author again.
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Possibly one of the best books I have ever read about a depressed, hedonistic person who is likable.
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Boring, I didn't finish reading it.
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Disclaimer: I'm only discussing The Awakening portion of this book and not the short stories.
I've seen a few 1 star reviews for this novel and their justification for it is their hatred for Edna Pontellier. I think I saw one comment say "privilege white girl problems." LOL
Which is a fair remark considering how Chopin is trying to express how oppressed Edna feels, but it can be a little hard to be empathetic when she has "servants" doing all of her duties.
But the book isn't terrible. I thought it was beautifully written. It can drag and get kinda boring at times because of its realism style. As a writer, you'll enjoy it for Chopin's poetic descriptive prose, but as a casual reader you'll know if it's your cup of tea or not within the first few pages. The chapters are pretty short and the novel itself was only 100 or so pages, so it never feels mundane, and that alone might push you to finish it; but don't force yourself.
Other readers have compared this novel to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and have stated the latter being the better of the two, so it will most likely be the next book I read in this genre. -
ngl the second time reading since i knew what was going to happen i did not give a single fuck ab anything leading up to the end. sometimes robert was a little sweet but i hate the ending so much that it literally ruined the whole book for me like wtf
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"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...-perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman."
-The Awakening
I'll be honest, as forward-thinking, liberal, feminist, and scandalous as the The Awakening and the other short stories in this book may be, I found it a little tedious to get through. I had hoped to finish this book sooner, but somehow it took a month to get through.
If you consider the time period this book is set in, the plot of The Awakening could be considered quite scandalous. However, I think having a little background of Chopin, as is offered through the timeline and introduction provided in this book, helps you understand her sentiments. Chopin was one to make her views known, about the value of women's independence, self-love, as well as about race and diversity. While the end of The Awakening still suggests a romantic notion of love and women's stereotypical idea about it, the lead-up was still one that meant to make clear that a woman should be master of her own life. This was also very abjectly (and quite tragically) made clear in the short story The Story of an Hour."There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. here would be no powerful will bending hers in that persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature." - The Story of an Hour
My favourite story in this book, though, was Desiree's baby. So heart-wrenching. I think, especially considering the circumstances we are living in now, this story is so appropriate and profound. It brings to the forefront the discussion of race, and how we esteem one's color above their character. It is a bittersweet read, with a start full of promise, and a sort of cliff-hanger ending of a revelation. I don't want to spoil it but let's just say I'd hate to be in his shoes.
The other short stories were not as memorable. I didn't like the thread of promoting adultery that ran through the stories, that even when married or committed that it is permissible to cheat in order to have a taste of freedom. That suggestion left a sour taste in my mouth. I think adultery is unforgivable, especially that which is done in complete secret and hidden behind the pretense that you would never, ever do such a thing. That just seems very unfair to your partner, who has to live with your lie, believing you could do no such thing. Neither a man nor a woman should be forgiven for deceiving the other so. That was one aspect of the 'women's independence and self-before-others' theme of these stories that I gave a thumbs down to.
The writing is not necessarily the kind that pulls you in. It's a very basic narrative, a telling of a story. There is plot, character development, and story development, but that escalation is not one you want to run up in order to reach the climax, but one you dawdle up to. You need some rough terrain in order to make the story an enjoyable, bumpy ride. But hey, it's a classic. It makes good points, it's eye-opening, it's brash, it's open-minded. There is a lot to take away from these stories. So if you would rather read for plot, look elsewhere. But if you want to read for a life lesson, it's worth picking up."The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings."
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Imagine you were married to a man (or woman) who treated you like a piece of property, like you were a house that had to be maintained-not even like a dog that could be adored. Edna Pontellier doesn't have to imagine. At age 28, she is married to Leonce Pontellier and has two children. She is on autopilot, never coloring outside of his clearly marked lines.
Let me give you an example of how insufferable Leonce is: So, Edna wants some time alone and is relaxing in a hammock outside, when her husband walks up and says are you coming in to bed. And she's all no thanks I'm gonna chill here. And he's like ok and sits by her drinking and smoking a cigar. He gets another drink, lights another cigar. After a few hours she's like I guess I'll go to bed because this joker won't leave me alone. She goes in the house and asks for formality's sake are you coming to bed. And he's all when I finish this cigar.
He always has to win. A.l.w.a.y.s. It's infuriating, and not in a charming-Rhett-Butler-way.
Anyway, the family spends the summer on the Grand Isle off the gulf coast of Louisiana, where Edna befriends Adele and where she meets Robert, both contribute to the snow-ball effect of her "awakening."
Adele is a chaste married woman who is very much in love with her husband and devoted to her children. She is what Leonce Pontellier considers to be "the ideal woman." Despite her purity, Adele is a Creole woman and very outspoken. She says things that Edna's more reserved manner deems unrefined, yet Edna soon learns to appreciate Adele's idiosyncrasies and adopts some of her outspokenness.
Robert and Edna spend ample time together on the Isle, bathing, talking, just laying about in the sun. Their adoration for each other grows quickly; however, it takes Edna a while to figure out what she's feeling (of course!). And the awakening begins! But her husband's presence really dulls the whole romance. When Robert realizes that he is in love with a married woman, he packs up and abruptly moves to Mexico.
After he is gone, Edna's awakening is still developing. She learns that she doesn't ever want to sacrifice herself for anyone, including her husband and children. Edna would give her life for her children, but herself is a sacred thing that she seeks to protect. She begins to shed her old nature and embodies the New Woman. Edna moves out of her husband's house, has an purely physical affair (while Robert is in Mexico), and takes up painting, which she used to do before she got married.
This novel was revolutionary for its time. Chopin overturned Victorian era novels by really focusing on a woman's inner life, her sexuality, her rationale, and her yearning for independence. A woman sleeps with a man she doesn't love! *Gasp* A woman wants five minutes to herself! Well, I never.
A lot of folks think Edna is selfish and I would agree to some extent; but, who isn't selfish? For Edna, the only way out, the only way to fight is to make herself the top priority. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence would try to escape a loveless marriage and an unproductive life like Edna's. Plus, I refuse to buy into the idea that when a woman has children her life must be forfeited. And I'm stepping off the soap box...
As much as I liked this book and recommend it to everyone, all I could think at the end was, thank God that was over 110 years ago. -
I stumbled upon a deeply discounted cache of these B&N classics in January, and so far they're pretty enjoyable. This one is no exception. Included are timelines, essays, The Awakening and many other stories by Kate Chopin. Rachel Adams does a decent job of putting this non-English-major in the right frame, and she annotates nicely so I wasn't constantly having to search the dictionary or web to figure out what various Creole or local language actually meant.
The Awakening is the big deal here, but I enjoyed reading the other stories for the first time. Kate Chopin is constantly pushing the boundaries and reworking the themes she explored in The Awakening. Her subjects seem very modern, given the era in which she wrote. (Though the language can, at times, still be rather jarring and dissonant.) It was very helpful to have Adams' discussion of Chopin's complete work to explain that while some stories may seem racially insensitive (at best) in other ways, she's clearly progressive. Reading the extras made the actual work a bit less distressing or confusing.
When rereading the Awakening, though, all I could think was that if Edna Pontellier lived in 2018, someone would have given her antidepressants (her doctor comes close to doing that anyway) and we wouldn't have this book. She'd be alive, caring for her children and who knows what would be happening internally. As a person who takes antidepressants, I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it was my overarching feeling as I read this again: nobody would let this woman just be in 2018, and it wouldn't be just the patriarchy or society that quieted her down, it would be the medical community and our most helpful selves telling her that she can get through it, and here's a little pill to help with that, now you go, girl - be everything you can be.
I'm glad it was written in 1899 rather than 2018, because it's a wonderful story of a woman driven to distraction and suicide, doing all the things she's not "supposed" to do or feel, and it's pretty realistic. It may be extreme, but despite the funny words and buggy rides, this is a very modern woman's story. Most of her stories are downbeat, minor key works, but they all hone in closely on women's interior lives and the ways we navigate those interiors with the external world. She doesn't give easy answers, but she always makes me think. -
meh… de estos libros que pasan por tu vida sin más. la historia principal aunque gloomy y demasiado cheesy (incluso para mi) se salva por la manera tan cercana y violenta en la que está escrita la narrativa amorosa de los personajes. el resto de relatos cortos??? por ahí sí que no, sorry:(
una lectura para no recomendar -
I did not care for this book at all. "The Awakening" at the very least merited a reading, but the other pieces are simply not good at all.
The interesting thing about "The Awakening" is that it might be termed an "existential" work, long before that term came into popular use. I found the central concern of the story to be an engagement of Albert Camus' declaration that the only legitimate philosophical question is whether or not to commit suicide. Kate Chopin does deserve credit for attempting to address this question in her book, but in the end, I do not feel she provided an adequate answer for her heroine's actions. That aside, I was not engaged by the writing and found myself in a hurry to finish the story, simply to be done with it. The summary on the back of the book describes the story as "inspiring". I found myself at a loss as to the nature of the inspiration. Lacking that, I finished reading without having been moved in any way emotionally or intellectually.
The other pieces in the book I found simply awful. The writing was poor, the attempts at working in dialect embarassing, the stories themselves tending towards triteness. -
This book honestly had a big impact on me when I was in highschool. I read it in the summer before my junior year of high school, when I had just turned 16. I was immediately captivated by Chopin's beautiful, lyrical way of writing, as if she were painting a portrait of this forgotten, enchanted world of Lousiana and the Créole culture. The book both shocked me and marked me, and it encouraged me to read a very well-written biography on Kate Chopin in the months to follow. Nice to see such an independent, foreward thinking woman (Kate Chopin) who, though her life was marked by several early deaths, nevertheless had a relatively happy life with her husband, who encouraged her in her writing until his untimely death.
Most recently, I reread this book for a Feminist literature class here in France entitled "The Three Faces of Eve." It's been a joy to reread this work of literature after six years of intensive study of the French language. It certainly makes the task of interpretating the "local color" passages much easier! This book is a gem, and the short stories are all worth a read. -
Kate Chopin is officially one of the best authors I've read works of. Breathtakingly beautiful; I'm afraid any review I write will not be able to do justice to the beauty The Awakening is. It really did take up and wonderfully portrayed, like the title suggests, the awakening of a woman. More like, human beings in general. You don't have to necessarily be a woman or have a feminist approach to life to understand or appreciate this work of Chopin. I believe there are these empty places in our soul that only a few exceedingly beautiful things in life can fill up. And for me, this book, The Awakening and the other short fiction did that magic. I read all of Chopin's short stories with as much enthusiasm as I read The Awakening. My favorite of all the thirteen short stories present in this edition was Desiree's Baby. It was crazy good. Feminism and racial inequality exquisitely blended together to form a delightful read.
Also, there were a lot of sentences in all the stories in French, which this lovely edition, Barnes & Noble Classics had translated for better understanding of the works. So if you can get your hands on this edition, that'd be pretty good. -
“’ The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong winds. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.’”
I first "read" this book in my AP Literature class. The only thing I could remember is the last chapter. Now reading this for women and literature class, I've found a new appreciation for Kate and Edna. I fully enjoy how Kate uses symbolism and imagery to further Edna’s story and her awakening. I found myself feeling empathy for a fictional woman from the nineteenth century. I put myself in Edna’s shoes and understand her pain. I understood Edna’s feelings and behavior. I couldn’t imagine living in a time when I wasn’t socially allowed to be myself, independent, or free. It was only when Edna saw she had a choice to not have a choice when she, in the spur of the moment, decided her fate. I don’t think Edna was a coward when she commits suicide. It was brave of her either. She finally had a choice that wouldn’t hurt her standing in society. -
This book is alleged to have caused great scandal in it's day and been called the first women's lib book and all that...I saw it differently, I saw it as a very erudite story of selfishness. It's one thing I guess to not want to be "owned" by your husband and pursue a life where all you look after is yourself - but i think if you're married you should go fucking around with two losers while your husband is away on business, while you've packed off your kids to live elsewhere and then swim to your suicide when things don't go your way. I don't argue that the way women were treated in those days was not equal to men and that they were expected to be a certain way - but this would not be the way a sane person would combat that. She was just a selfish, self-centered (insert expletive here). Or maybe I'm too stupid to see the point.
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"'You are burnt beyond recognition,' he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property…"
I just read The Awakening out of this. It was a re-read for me. I love the story bout Edna Pontellier becoming herself instead of society's idea of what she should be. I love watching her transition from a domesticated woman to an independent woman. It is one of the classic feminist books. My biggest problem with it was that, as much as I love the story, and it was an enjoyable read, I don't really care about half of the characters. They frankly annoy me. And sometimes Chopin's writing was kind of…cheesy? And also a bit obvious. Sometimes I'd read a part and be like "Thank you Kate, I got that. Didn't need the paragraph long explanation, but alright." But still, enjoyable story. -
Okay, so I'm not going to critique this book like most people, where they complain about the feminism, the poor moral values, etc. etc. I'm certainly no feminist and definitely no adulterer, but I loved this book because of its mood. Maybe it had to do with my state of mind, but I found this book to be a beautiful literary escape. I was captivated by the world Chopin spun and I got lost in the "romanticism" of the book. I just plain enjoyed reading it, and maybe that has to do with the fact that I was just reading. Sure, it was a school assignment, but I remember not treating it as such (thanks Kasper, for allowing us this freedom in our reading) and just letting myself literally sit back and enjoy it for what it is: beautiful prose.
