Huh... I'm not sure how I feel about this one right now, but I'm a bit concerned with how much I related to Edna. Minus the loveless marriage, because I do love my husband and he loves me, and I'm not really worried I'll find my own "Robert," because I don't need one. I actually didn't really know what this was about before reading it, but I thought it was going to be about a bored, married woman in high society having a fling or something. It was not (exactly) that.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this book, but I'm not comfortable sharing them with the world. I'll just say that I enjoyed it more than I was expecting to while still reading, and it really packed a lot of things to mull over in such a small (my copy has 135 pages) package.

I think I've seen references to people reading this for classes that touch/focus on feminism, and I can see why. This book is from a time when women didn't really have many choices or freedoms, and I imagine it was quite scandalous and controversial at the time it was published. A woman with sexual urges?! A woman who would desire freedom?! A woman who would dare to leave her children, and not devote every bit of her being to them?! *gasps*

Even now I feel like a book with a protagonist like Edna would cause some waves. Gender roles are pretty cemented in people's minds, and Edna didn't really conform to what a mother/wife "should" be, even by today's standards. In the end, she commits suicide rather than go back to living an unfulfilling life where she has to fake happiness, lose herself, and such. So, she didn't just abandon her children by taking off with Robert or something, but let's pretend she did. In our society, if a man ran off for whatever reason and abandoned his spouse and child(ren), he wouldn't be looked upon kindly. But, if a woman were to do the exact same, the fallout would be significantly worse. I've witnessed this with people I know, and everyone is always far more critical of a mother leaving her child(ren) than of a father doing the same. In the case of suicide, it's the same,
but with a less extreme difference. I'm not saying I applaud her choices and condone them. I'm just saying that, in a way, I understand why she made her choices. But, I feel bad that things didn't work out better for her and that she finally turned to taking her own life to be free.

I said to my husband while I was reading this that I didn't think I would re-read it, but now I'm not so sure about that. I enjoyed it much more than I expected to, and now I'm curious about how I might feel about this later, when I'm older than Edna (I'll be 28 in a few weeks; Edna was, I believe, 28). I think this book is going to stick with me a very long time, and I'd love to talk more about it, but I think I'll wrap things up here.

I don't really know how to describe how I feel about this book, but I have some mixed feelings about it. I like the message it is trying to give but I don't like the way it is executed.

I don't really know how to describe how I feel about this book, but I have some mixed feelings about it. I like the message it is trying to give but I don't like the way it is executed.

I read this in the edition that's free from Kindle, which unfortunately omitted the scholarly introduction advertised on the cover, probably for copyright reasons. Though I would have read it afterwards, it would have been nice to have a single essay to situate the importance of "The Awakening" instead of my inevitable after the fact googling.

 

The fact that I was unaware of this novel suggests either that my degrees in literature were deficient in American and feminist works (possible) or, more likely, that Chopin's work has been "found" and celebrated as proto-feminist since I ceased my active studies. That said, I found it both well-written and enjoyable in a sad sort of way. I did feel the unhappy ending - I should hope I am not spoiling anyone by mentioning that a nineteenth century story about an adulterous woman doesn't have a happy ending - was in some way imposed upon the novel by an author who saw no hope of its critical survival with any other outcome. Adulterous women pretty much had to be doomed in the 19th century, just like their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters a few decades later. Even so, the samples of contemporary critical reaction I found are rife with phrases like "not a healthy book" and "sad and mad and bad." It's really the only false step in an otherwise very well-depicted psychological journey: from an adolescent crush on a performer to a loveless marriage, to an attraction that "awakens" her romantically/sensually during a Louisiana beach summer, to a sexual liaison (the contemporary critics, used to decoding 19th century language, found this unambiguous, and so did I) with a substitute love object, and finally to a feeling of despair in the face of indubitable responsibility to her children after her romantic lover returns and pushes her away. But this last, the despair, was the least convincing and least fleshed-out aspect of the progression.

 

The little group of short stories added in with the novel are fairly insubstantial but interesting in their depiction of race and gender issues in that place (Louisiana) and time (the Civil War and just after). There's one story that was clearly picked just because it depicts - not in nearly so much detail of course - a woman making the opposite choice to Edna's in The Awakening, namely deciding to preserve her marriage rather than give in to a romantic attraction to another man. Another one that sticks in the mind is a rather nasty tale of a marriage between an aristocrat and a woman of unknown origin; he throws her out when her baby's skin tone appears to demonstrate that she is part Black, which he cannot under any circumstances accept. The last sentence of the story (it's a revelation about him and his own parentage) is quite a telling twist.

 

Reading fiction about "the woman question" in other centuries never fails to put me in a grateful frame of mind for the freedom of action and thought I enjoy.

The Story of an Hour - Kate Chopin A short stroy that really packs a punch.

I had never heard of this short story by Kate chopin until a review by a goodreads friend and I knew I had to read it. I love when an author in so few pages can capture a reads imagination and create a story that is interesting, well written and with a good old fashioned twist thrown in for good measure.

Loved it, " Good Goods come in small parcels