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The Awakening

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The Awakening

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Overview

Edna Pontellier is a young woman living comfortably in the beautiful city of New Orleans. She is fond of her husband and proud of her sons but finds it impossible to accept that "for women it is a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals." She fights back in the only way she knows, and her solution is extreme. Infamous in its time, The Awakening is now recognized as a radical work of fiction—sensuous, arresting, and clear-eyed in its commitment to freedom and independence. Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850; The Awakening was her third novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935554127
Publisher:	Melville House Publishing
Publication date:	08/31/2010
Series:	Art of the Novella Series
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kate Chopin lived in Louisiana during her marriage and began to write after her husband's death. In addition to The Awakening, she wrote a novel, At Fault, and more than 100 short stories.

Read an Excerpt

THE AWAKENING
(Continues…)

Excerpted from "The Awakening"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Kate Chopin.
Excerpted by permission of Melville House.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

About the Series
About this Volume

PART I. THE AWAKENING: THE COMPLETE TEXT

Introduction: Biographical and Historical Contexts

The Complete Text [The 1969 Seyersted Edition]

New Cultural Documents
New Two Contemporary Reviews of The Awakening:
From "Recent Novels" (The Nation 69, 3 August 1899, 96)
From "Books of the Week" (Providence Sunday Journal, 4 June 1899, 15)
New Two Principles in Recent American Fiction, James Lane Allen (The Altantic Monthly, October 1897)
New Home Study for Young Ladies: Visiting Cards (from Collier's Cyclopedia of Commercial and Social Information and Treasury of Entertaining Knowledge, 1887)
New The Dressing-Table New Advertisements from Women's Magazines
Lablanche Face Powder (Ladies Home Journal, August 1899)
Braided Wire Bristles and Forms (Ladies Home Journal, May 1899)
Ferris's Good Sense Corset Waists: When Beauty Reigns (Harper's Magazine, January 1899)
The Whitely Exerciser (Ladies Home Journal, December 1896)
New Fashion Plates from Women's Magazines
Plate No. 7 (Godey's Magazine, January 1897)
Plate No. 6 (Godey's Magazine, March 1897)
Plate No. 7 (Godey's Magazine, August 1897)
New A People Who Live Amid Romance, Ruth McEnery Stuart, (Ladies Home Journal, December 1896)
New The Artist and Marriage (The Atlantic Monthly, January 1899)
New What It Means to Be a Wife, Helen Watterson Moody, (Ladies Home Journal, March 1899)
New The True Meaning of Motherhood,Helen Watterson Moody, (Ladies Home Journal, May 1899)
New What Women Find to Do all Day (Ladies Home Journal, April 1899)
New The Evolution of Woman in the South, Walter Gregory, (Godey's Magazine, October 1897)

PART II. THE AWAKENING: A CASE STUDY IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM

A Critical History of The Awakening

Feminist Criticism and The Awakening
What Is Feminist Criticism?
Feminist Criticism: A Selected Bibliography A Feminist Perspective:
Elaine Showalter, Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book

Gender Criticism and The Awakening
What Is Gender Criticism?
Gender Criticism: A Selected Bibliography A Gender Perspective:
New Elizabeth LeBlanc, The Metaphorical Lesbian: Edna Pontellier in The Awakening

New Historicism and The Awakening
What Is New Historicism?
New Historicism: A Selected Bibliography A New Historicist Perspective:
Margit Stange, Personal Property: Exchange Value and the Female Self in The Awakening

Deconstruction and The Awakening
What Is Deconstruction?
Deconstruction: A Selected Bibliography A Deconstructionist Perspective:
Patricia S. Yaeger, "A Language Which Nobody Understood": Emancipatory Strategies in The Awakening

Reader-Response and The Awakening
What Is Reader-Response Criticism?
Reader-Response Criticism: A Selected Bibliography A Reader-Response Perspective:
Paula A. Treichler, The Construction of Ambiguity in The Awakening: A Linguistic Analysis

New Combining Critical Perspectives:
Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Un-utterable Longing: The Discourse of Feminine Sexuality in Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
About the Contributors

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Shelly Frasier's reading is thick with languor and sensuality as she creates an Edna who feels all but physically present."—-AudioFile

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From the Publisher

Kate Chopin is a pioneer in the treatment of sexuality in American literature… She does not speak only to women,but she speaks most powerfully about them.

Times

Chopin's (1850-1904) The Awakening, whose heroine rejects her husband and children as she indulges in solitude and in an adulterous infatuation, was embraced by the women's movement 70 years after its publication. Although they pale in comparison to the novel, these stories, which comprise Chopin's third and last short-fiction collection, serve to flesh out the Chopin oeuvre and deserve a place on women's studies syllabi. As in The Awakening , the author's social critiques here demythologize women, marriage, religion and family. A women escapes ``the incessant chatter'' of other females at a party and retires to the male domain of the smoking room, where she puffs on hashish and dreams of a love affair torn asunder. The perverse Mrs. Mallard revels in her newfound freedom when informed that her husband is a casualty of a train accident and dies of a heart attack when he shows up alive. Her fiance is wasted by illness and reeks death, and a repulsed Dorothea bolts; elsewhere, a monk is lured by the voice of a woman, a former intimate. And in a twist on the plot of The Awakening , a husband, plagued by suspicions of his late wife's infidelity, casts himself in the river.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This landmark feminist novel, first published in 1899, remains startlingly relevant

Elle - JUDY BLUME

A Creole Bovary is this little novel of Miss Chopin's

WILLA CATHER

Chopin's slight, brittle and fierce novel became a classic and a cult, shocking readers with its candid and unsentimental portrait of marital infidelity . . . it remains delicately bitter and acidly angry

Observer

Even more powerful than I remembered

MARGARET DRABBLE

Sometimes bold, fearless writing really does have to wait for 'someone in some future time' for readers yet to come. Sleeping Beauties, once awakened, will always serve a contemporary agenda. But Chopin's The Awakening is now justly regarded as an American classic and read with passion and delight

Literary Review

Chopin's deceptively slight novel is the kind of book revolutions are made of . . . Reissued with a forward by Barbara Kingsolver, this angry, eye-opening novel is well worth adding to your reading list

Harper's Bazaar

I still marvel at Chopin's realism, her impatience with conventional trappings, her arresting honesty

BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Incisive, brilliant and haunting

MAGGIE O'FARRELL

The Awakening is not only one of the most important novels in the history of American women's writing, it is an acknowledged American masterpiece . . . Chopin offers a compelling portrait of female experience, one of the first of its kind

SARAH CHURCHWELL

A quietly explosive study of female impotence, it is quite superb

Independent on Sunday

Plucky and masterly

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The Awakening

The Awakening

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Overview

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About the Author

Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

What People are Saying About This

Customer Reviews

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

What People are Saying About This

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Customer Reviews