The Awakening: An Authoritative Text Biographical and Historical Contexts Criticism - Couverture souple

"The Awakening is not only one of the most important novels in the history of American women's writing, it is an acknowledged American masterpiece. Edna Pontellier is an American Emma Bovary, deeply dissatisfied by the restricted possibilities available to a middle-class white woman in the 1890s. Rejecting her society's sexual norms and seeking a more fulfilling life, she is eventually destroyed by the limitations she cannot overcome, but along the way Chopin offers a compelling portrait of female experience, one of the first of its kind. Recognized as being as important a literary protest against the treatment of women as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' The Awakening is taught at universities and schools across the US, and is overdue for equal recognition outside of its native shores. It is great news that Canongate is bringing The Awakening to the British reading public at last" (SARAH CHURCHWELL)

"Incisive, brilliant and haunting" (MAGGIE O'FARRELL)

"Chopin's deceptively slight novel is the kind of book revolutions are made of . . . Reissued with a forward by Barbara Kingsolver, this angry, eye-opening novel is well worth adding to your reading list" (Harper's Bazaar)

"Even more powerful than I remembered" (MARGARET DRABBLE)

"A Creole Bovary is this little novel of Miss Chopin's" (WILLA CATHER)

"Chopin's slight, brittle and fierce novel became a classic and a cult, shocking readers with its candid and unsentimental portrait of marital infidelity . . . it remains delicately bitter and acidly angry" (Observer)

"Sometimes bold, fearless writing really does have to wait for 'someone in some future time' for readers yet to come. Sleeping Beauties, once awakened, will always serve a contemporary agenda. But Chopin's The Awakening is now justly regarded as an American classic and read with passion and delight" (Literary Review) --Kate Chopin

'Lyrical, restrained, enduring... a writer ahead of her time' Scotsman

The Pontellier family are spending a hot, lazy holiday on the Gulf of Mexico. No-one expects that Edna Pontellier should be preoccupied with anything more than her husband and children. When an illicit summer romance awakens new ideas and longings in Edna, she can barely understand herself, and cannot hope for aid or acceptance in the stifling attitudes of Louisiana society.

Kate Chopin's compelling, candid portrait of a woman attempting to break free caused an outcry when first published in 1899.

See also: The Age of Innocence