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The Awakening

Kate Chopin

Chicago, 1899

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Literary Classic

Novel
Realism

What It’s About

A Proto-Modernist Heroine

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is widely considered one of the most important and beautifully crafted novels of the turn of the 20th century. At the time of its publication in 1899, however, many saw Chopin’s exploration of a married woman’s quest for fulfillment and autonomy as morally deviant. Critics condemned it as much for its portrayal of female sensuality as its unorthodox perspectives on marriage and motherhood. Surprisingly modern in style and psychology, Chopin’s unique blend of matter-of-fact narration with lyrical interludes continues to draw readers and raise incisive questions about the nature of desire and the complications of freedom. As the heroine Edna Pontellier sheds the influences and obligations laid upon her from without, Chopin offers both a pointed critique of the limited social roles permitted to women in America and a sympathetic exploration of the challenges inherent in an individual’s search for existential truth and autonomy.

Summary

On Grand Isle

Middle-aged businessman Léonce Pontellier sits on the front porch of the main guesthouse at Grand Isle, a summer retreat near New Orleans that wealthy Creoles frequent. Léonce watches as his wife Edna Pontellier and the proprietress Madame Lebrun’s oldest son Robert walk back to the house from the beach. Léonce hands Edna her wedding rings, which she had given to him before going down to the ocean, and invites Robert to come with him to play billiards. Robert admits that he would rather stay with Edna. Léonce leaves, stating that he isn’t sure what time he will be back.

Léonce returns late. He is in high spirits and chats boisterously to Edna, waking her from sleep. Disappointed that she isn’t more responsive, he goes to check on their sons. He returns, announcing that Raoul has a fever. When Edna protests, Léonce calls her neglectful. After checking on Raoul, Edna returns to bed. She refuses to respond to anything else her husband says, and Léonce soon falls asleep. Now, however, Edna can’t sleep. She goes outside to the porch and begins...

About the Author

Catherine O’Flaherty (Kate Chopin) was born February 8, 1850 in St. Louis, Missouri. The third-born child of successful Irish-born businessman Thomas O’Flaherty and his second wife, Eliza Faris – a respected member of St. Louis’s French community – Chopin grew up speaking both French and English. The family remained in St. Louis following Chopin’s father’s death in 1855 and stayed there throughout the Civil War. After graduating from the intellectually rigorous St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart in 1868, Chopin married Oscar Chopin in 1870 and moved to his hometown of New Orleans. There, Kate – who had grown up in a slave-owning household – was exposed to the economic and racial turmoil of Reconstruction. She gave birth to six children between 1871 and 1879. In 1897, after Oscar’s New Orleans cotton business failed, the family moved to Cloutierville, a small French Creole village in northwestern Louisiana, where Oscar opened a general store. When he died of malaria in 1882, Oscar left his 32-year-old widow with large debts. Chopin’s mother encouraged her to return to St. Louis, which Chopin did in 1885. After Chopin’s mother’s death later that same year, Chopin became depressed. Her doctor and family friend Dr. Frederick Kolbenheyer encouraged her to write as a form of therapy. Chopin’s first novel, At Fault, was published privately in 1890. During the next decade, she wrote about 100 short stories, many of which were published in prestigious magazines such as Vogue and The Atlantic Monthly. Twenty-six of her stories were for children. Two collections of Chopin’s stories, Bayou Folk, published in 1894, and A Night in Acadie, published in 1897, received critical and popular acclaim. Chopin’s second novel, The Awakening, met condemnation, however. Reviewers objected to the book’s passionate themes and Chopin’s heroine’s flaunting of social conventions. She returned to publishing short stories in the aftermath of The Awakening’s failure. In April 1904, the St. Louis World’s Fair opened. Chopin bought a season ticket and attended regularly. On August 20, 1904, a particularly hot day, Chopin returned home from the fair feeling unwell. That evening, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. She died two days later on August 22 and was buried at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.