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The Awakening
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The Awakening
Author: Kate Chopin

Book Information
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Book Type: Paperback
Rating:

ISBN-13: 9780553213300 - ISBN-10: 055321330X
Publication Date: 5/1/1985
Pages: 240


Other Versions of this Book: Paperback, Paperback, Hardcover, Hardcover, Audio CD (Unabridged), Audio Cassette (Abridged), Audio CD (Abridged), Audio Cassette (Abridged)

Book Description:
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 sensesThe  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.

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Top Member Book Reviews

Erin C. (brandinsp) reviewed 5/21/2007...
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2 member(s) found this review helpful.

Excellent writing - timeless. (This copy is well-used and does have underlining in it.)

Shanna U. (therubycanary) reviewed 11/26/2005...
+ read 43 more book reviews by this member

2 member(s) found this review helpful.

I'm not a huge fan of required reading, but this was one of my favorites. The original women's fiction it looks at one woman's life and how she feels trapped in her times, and the dark way that she deals with it.

Abby T. (abbykt) reviewed 10/16/2009...
+ read 36 more book reviews by this member

1 member(s) found this review helpful.

This was a fast read that I found rather depressing. I am glad that Edna had an awakening into her life but the results were tragedy and an early death. I would like to think that an awakening would make her life more fulfilling, not lead her to the conclusion that the only way to remain free would be to end her life. I do not consider myself a "mother woman" in that I have lost myself to my children and husband, but I do find them them fulfilling and satisfying.

Bonnie A. (Mizzou) reviewed 8/22/2008...
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1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Every person who seeks to understand the "Women's Lib" phenomenon is obliged to read this seminal work. It gives a look into the heart, mind and soul of a woman who burned to be more than a 'trophy' wife, a bed partner, a domestic factotum, and a bearer of progeny. How desperately she burned to live her own INDIVIDUAL life, secure education, develop skills, follow interests, and express her own thoughts, ideas and feelings will be made abundantly clear to any female reader, and will even give an insight to the male reader who approaches the book in an unprejudiced way.


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Tara C. (TaraC) reviewed 3/16/2006...
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A classic. Had to buy it from school for school.


Daughter read this for her Junior AP lit class. She definitely recommends it.


Very profound


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