On a sunbaked Creole isle, Edna Pontellier, twenty-eight-year-old wife and mother, experiences the first pangs of passion and desire--an awakening so intense that Edna promises herself it is only the beginning. Far too bold and candid for its time, THE AWAKENING (1899) sparked a vicious national scandal that plagued Kate Chopin for the rest of her life. Richly evocative and sensuous, Chopin's portrayal of a woman who resisted authority in her quest for freedom is now regarded as a landmark in American fiction.
--back cover
I went into this having heard that it was an early feminist work, but I got more of a sense while reading that it was a story of a privileged, co-dependent woman who got bored and traded in one guy for another who paid more attention to her. I definitely saw the main character's rebellion against what was expected of her as a woman/wife/mother, but it also felt SO very class-specific. Which I suppose feminism often is to this day, so there you go. All of the characters were perfectly insufferable, so maybe my disconnect from the text was an issue of not being able to identify with them.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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20 June, 2012:
Finished reading
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20 June, 2012:
Reviewed