The Awakening Author: Kate Chopin | Language: English | ISBN:
B00884W39Q | Format: EPUB
The Awakening Description
This Seedbox Classics edition of The Awakening includes an illustration gallery.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a novel set in New Orleans and the Louisiana coast at the end of the nineteenth century. The story centers around Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the South.
- File Size: 345 KB
- Print Length: 154 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1936136163
- Publisher: Seedbox Press, LLC (May 31, 2012)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00884W39Q
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,490 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Note: I do not believe that The Awakening is the sort of novel that relies on plot twists and surprises. It's *how* the story unfolds rather than *what happens* that is important. However, several folks have claimed that they needed a spoiler warning, so here it is: You have been warned.
Kate Chopin wrote this story of female self-actualization back in the late 19th century, but it's as applicable today as it was then. I think we all feel trapped by decisions we've made capriciously or because we've been told they are correct, and we all consider, even briefly, escape. The main character in this novel not only realizes that she has trapped herself, but she actively seeks to free herself. Her action, rather than just emotion and despair (a la Goethe), is what separates her from the herd.
Here's the low-down: Edna is a woman, probably in her 30s or so, married to a successful financier and mother to two charming children. She summers on an island, probably to escape summer diseases in the city, New Orleans. One summer she acquires a friend, Robert. Although married women in this society frequently have male friends, Edna is an outsider, and she takes Robert's attentions far too seriously. Apparently, he is similarly infatuated. Basking in Robert's attention, Edna understands at last that she has discarded her youthful dreams and hopes and that her current life is unfulfilling. She takes small steps toward freeing herself, and Robert seems a willing accomplice for a while.
During the course of the novel, Edna relearns who she is, reclaims the dreams of her youth, and abandons her husband and children. The author is careful with this last, making it seem tragic and irresponsible, yet ultimately unavoidable. By the last 20 pages, Edna is free.
Though at one time I, too, would have rated "The Awakening" one of the worst reads of a lifetime--for its predictability in the context of a woman oppressed by Victorian society, and the most undeveloped, unsympathetic heroine for whom I was unable to muster the slightest emotional investment--a nagging, relentless undercurrent of something I couldn't quite identify festered long inside me regarding this novel until the story, and author, were at last redeemed upon my third reading, in a literature course that finally ended this internal struggle.
Having much faith in Kate Chopin as a writer, I never felt 'the awakening' was about sex. This was too easy, even for a book set in Victorian Society. Further, it occurred to me that although women were limited beyond the domestic sphere in this era, suicide was not particular to the phenomenology of Victorian women (as it was, say, to Wall Street brokers at the onset of the Great Depression).
"The Awakening," in title and content, is irony. Edna Pontellier's awakening is about who she perceives herself to be, and who she actually is. She dreams of passion and romance and embarks on a summer affair, yet she married Leonce simply to spite her parents, who don't like him. She moves out of the family home to live on her own--with the permission, and resources, of Leonce--hardly independent. She claims to crave intimacy, yet she fails horribly at every intimate relationship in her life: she is detached with her children, indifferent to her husband, leery of her artist friend, and can hardly stand another minute at the bedside of her warm, maternal friend, Mrs. Ratignolle, to assist her in childbirth. (Ratignolle was my favorite character of all, read after read, simply because she was so content with herself.
The Awakening Preview
Link
Please Wait...