title: The Awakening
author: Kate Chopin
published: 1899
genre: classics/fiction/novella
pages: 155
source: personal copy
first line: A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!"
rated: 5 out of 5 stars
Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul.
About:
Kate Chopin's The Awakening is one of my favorite pieces of literature and I thought it was finally time to re-read it.
The New Orleans coastal setting during the nineteenth century is at the heart of this novella. Chopin sets the mood just right and as I read, I felt like I was in Louisiana by the coast. I could almost smell and hear the ocean.
The story is about a woman named Edna Pontellier who is in her late twenties. Edna is a married mother of two small boys. Her husband Leonce gives her a seemingly satisfying lifestyle. Yet Edna is unhappy, often feeling restless and unfulfilled.
As the story unfolds, Edna falls in love with a man named Robert Lebrun while on summer vacation at the Grand Isle resort in the Gulf of Mexico.
She begins to awaken to feelings and thoughts within herself she never knew existed. In an attempt to resist temptation and heartache from an affair that can lead nowhere, Robert leaves abruptly for Mexico.
When the summer is over, Edna and her family return to New Orleans.
While Robert is gone, Edna misses him and finds herself beginning to feel even more dissatisfied. She begins to paint, considering herself an artist.
Edna's husband leaves on a business trip and while he is away, she ends up moving out of their home and renting an apartment by herself.
Edna meets a man named Alcée Arobin, who is known for his womanizing. She enjoys flirting with him and the two eventually have an affair.
When Robert returns to New Orleans, he and Edna both confess their feelings for one another. At this point, Edna knows she no longer loves her husband and wants to be 'free'.
My thoughts:
I like how Kate Chopin broke convention and wrote stories that challenged the norm. Her stories dealt with issues that weren't openly accepted or spoken about when she was alive.
In this story, a married woman decides she no longer wants to be tied down by her husband and even by her own children. She takes a lover and moves into her own apartment, all with no remorse. Although I didn't agree with Edna's behavior, I found myself almost mesmerized while reading Chopin's beautiful prose.
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.
I admire how Chopin pushed the envelope. The ending is harsh and poignant and not something I would think the reader is expecting.
The story that caused so much uproar in Chopin's day, is now considered a classic of feminist fiction. That counts for something.
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.
If you're looking to read a classic, with an unconventional protagonist and lyrical prose, you might enjoy The Awakening.
Read it free online
here.
Kate Chopin (1850–1904) was born in St. Louis and, upon marriage, settled in New Orleans. The mother of six, Chopin did not begin writing until her husband’s death left her in debt. The Awakening (1899), Chopin’s best known work, was so far ahead of its time in its portrayal of a dissatisfied wife, that it was overlooked. Today Chopin is considered the forerunner of twentieth-century feminist authors.
