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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter
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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter Hardcover - 1992

by Kate Chopin; Introduction by Elaine Showalter

In the summer of her 28th year, Edna Pontellier and her children, along with the wives and families of other prospective businessmen, spend the summer in an idyllic coastal community away from their husbands and the sweltering heat of 1890s' New Orleans. Aware of deep yearnings that are unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood, Edna plunges into an illicit liaison that reawakens her long dormant desires, inflames her heart, and eventually blinds her to all else.


Summary

Discontented with her comfortable but stagnant marriage, a New Orleans woman on vacation with her family meets several remarkable women and two desirable men who set her off on a different and difficult path: to live according to her own needs rather than in accordance with the rigid standards of society. First published in 1899, this book was rediscovered in the 1960s and pronounced a feminist classic for its open treatment of a woman's search for self-understanding.

Details

  • Title The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter
  • Author Kate Chopin; Introduction by Elaine Showalter
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition 1st Everyman's
  • Pages 272
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Everyman's Library, New York
  • Date 1992-11-03
  • Features Bibliography
  • ISBN 9780679417217 / 0679417214
  • Weight 0.88 lbs (0.40 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.33 x 5.25 x 0.88 in (21.16 x 13.34 x 2.24 cm)
  • Reading level 960
  • Themes
    • Sex & Gender: Feminine
  • Library of Congress subjects Domestic fiction, New Orleans (La.)
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 92052897
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

About the author

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.

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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter (Everyman's Library Classics Series)
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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter (Everyman's Library Classics Series)

by Chopin, Kate

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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter (Everyman's Library Classics Series)
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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter (Everyman's Library Classics Series)

by Chopin, Kate

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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter
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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter

by Chopin, Kate

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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter
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The Awakening: Introduction by Elaine Showalter

by Chopin, Kate

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Awakening

The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

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The Awakening

The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Awakening

The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Awakening

The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Awakening

The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

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  • Hardcover
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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Awakening : Introduction by Elaine Showalter
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

The Awakening : Introduction by Elaine Showalter

by Chopin, Kate

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