A Novel by Kate Chopin, published in 1899, The Awakening is a feminist drama of a 19th-century woman named Edna Pontellier and her struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on feminity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South.
This book is widely criticized because of the so-called "flawed" protagonist's selfish behavior. However, the gravity that this book carries lies not in the heroine’s flawed actions but in her ability to be flawed. Written during the backward 19th-century society that not only asks but creeds that women should be the perfect embodiment of macho yearning: subservient, immaculate, modest, sensitive – and to be otherwise was to be unwomanly. Kate Chopin presented the then remote possibility that perhaps a woman defines herself rather than is defined by the conventions and social-edicts around her.
“Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought rather to have done.”
The writing is quite beautiful. From the very start, Chopin does a great job of creating the tone and the atmosphere with unique taste and flavor. The plot resembled a little to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, but only on the surface. Both women are married unhappily, both of them fall in love and decide to pursue a love affair outside of their marriage. Both of them defy society. Despite many similarities between Anna’s and Edna’s upper-class life, one can’t dispute that Chopin has created a unique and fascinating character in her own right. Modern women have been the beneficiaries of the bravery of such women as Chopin who braved convention and brought such subjects into the light.
