Random House Group
Search
Expand Mobile Menu
The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin

The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin

Mass Market Paperback

About the Book

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”
 
Kate Chopin was enjoying wide popularity as a writer, mainly of short stories, when her second novel, The Awakening, was published to widespread criticism of its immorality. A wake-up call to women all over the country, this landmark novel of early American feminism tells of a Louisiana wife who discovers the strength of her own sexuality and tries to wrench it from the hands of a patriarchal society. And just as Edna Pontellier is ostracized for trying to master her own sexual fate, so did Chopin’s reputation suffer after she wrote this book. Today The Awakening is considered a masterpiece and, along with Chopin’s short stories, has set a standard for younger generations of women who have learned to value their independence and authenticity.

Edited and with an Introduction by Barbara H. Solomon
Read more
Close

Praise for The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin

“Flexible, iridescent style.”—Willa Cather

“As pertinent as any fiction this year or last. It is uncanny, nothing else.”—The New York Times
Read more
Close

About the Author

Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin (1851-1904) did not begin to write until she was thirty-six years old. Up to that time, her life gave no hint of either literary talent or literary ambition. Yet after the publication of her first stories in 1889, she enjoyed ten years of a productive, serious, and fairly successful career. Her first novel, At Fault (1890), had difficulty finding a publisher, so she brought it out at her own expense and sent review copies to important journals. Her short stories—close to a hundred of them—were published for the most part in prestigious national magazines. They gave her a solid reputation as a gifted 'local color' writer—that is, an author specializing in the depiction of a particular region of the country and its inhabitants. From these many stories, she culled two well-reviewed collections: Bayou Folk in 1894 and A Night in Acadie in 1897. The Awakening, now her best-known work, appeared in 1899.

Critics of Chopin's own day disapproved of the sexual frankness of The Awakening and were especially disturbed by the narrator's neutrality toward the unconventional behavior of Edna Pontellier, the heroine. All reviews of the novel were unfavorable. Soon after this setback, a planned third collection of short stories was rejected by a publisher, and Kate Chopin essentially ceased to write. In poor health, she died some five years after The Awakening appeared. She was only fifty-three. More by Kate Chopin
Decorative Carat

About the Author

Barbara H. Solomon
Barbara H. Solomon is a professor of English and women’s studies at Iona College. Her academic interests include twentieth-century and contemporary American and nonwestern fiction. Among the anthologies she's edited are The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin, Other Voices, Other Vistas, Herland and Selected Stories of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Haves and Have-Nots, and Passages.   More by Barbara H. Solomon
Decorative Carat