The Awakening
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Awakening
| Author | Kate Chopin |
|---|---|
| Published | 1899 |
| Pages | 286 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel of Edna Pontellier, a wife and mother summering at Grand Isle who stops accepting the terms of her life in Creole New Orleans and finds the society around her has made no provision for what she wants instead. Spare prose, an ending unresolved on purpose. |
The Awakening
Where I heard about it
- Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans, a 468-title curriculum published on Substack in December 2025, in the Ages 13-99+ band under Fiction.
About this edition
Its reception is part of the story: the novel was reviewed harshly in 1899, Chopin’s reputation suffered for it, and it stayed largely out of print until critics recovered it in the 1950s and after; it is now standard in American literature courses. Chopin (1850-1904) was best known in her lifetime for her Louisiana short stories, collected in Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). The edition the curator linked is Penguin’s The Awakening and Selected Stories.
Connections
- Kate Chopin — the author.
- Feminism — the critical tradition that brought the book back into print.
- Marriage
- Literature
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.