The Awakening

First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, -The Awakening- has been hailed as an early vision of woman's emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman's abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her awakening to desires and passions that threated to consumer her. Originally entitled -A Solitary Soul, - this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction, rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in search of self-discovery turns away from convention and society, and toward the primal, from convention and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly attracted to nature and the senses -The Awakening,- Kate Chopin's last novel, has been praised by Edmund Wilson as -beautifully written.- And Willa Cather described its style as -exquisite, - -sensitive, - and -iridescent.- This edition of -The Awakening- also includes a selection of short stories by Kate Chopin. -This seems to me a higher order of feminism than repeating the story of woman as victim... Kate Chopin gives her female protagonist the central role, normally reserved for Man, in a meditation on identity and culture, consciousness and art.- -- From the introduction by Marilynne Robinson