The Awakening and Other Stories

by Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin was one of the most individual and adventurous of nineteenth-century American writers, whose fiction explored new and often startling territory. When her most famous story, The Awakening, was first published in 1899, it stunned readers with its frank portrayal of the inner word of Edna Pontellier, and its daring criticisms of the limits of marriage and motherhood. The subtle beauty of her writing was contrasted with her unwomanly and sordid subject-matter: Edna's rejection of her domestic role, and her passionate quest for spiritual, sexual, and artistic freedom. From her first stories, Chopin was interested in independent characters who challenged convention. This selection, freshly edited from the first printing of each text, enables readers to follow her unfolding career as she experimented with a broad range of writing, from tales for children to decadent fin-de siecle sketches. The Awakening is set alongside thirty-two short stories, illustrating the spectrum of the fiction from her first published stories to her 1898 secret masterpiece, "The Storm."

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, American

Unknown Binding

About the author

Kate Chopin was an American author whose fiction grew out of the complex cultures and contradictions of Louisiana life, and she gradually became one of the most distinctive voices in nineteenth century literature. Raised in a household shaped by strong women of French and Irish heritage, she developed an early love for books and storytelling, and that immersion in language later shaped the quiet precision of her prose. After marrying and moving to New Orleans, then later to the small community of Cloutierville, she absorbed the rhythms, customs, and tensions of Creole and Cajun society, finding in its people the material that would feed both her sympathy and her sharp observational eye. When personal loss left her searching for direction, she began writing with the encouragement of a family friend, discovering not only a therapeutic outlet but a genuine vocation. Within a few years, her stories appeared in major magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, and The Century, where readers encountered her local-color sketches, her portrayals of women navigating desire and constraint, and her nuanced depictions of life in the American South. She published two story collections, Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, introducing characters whose emotional lives were depicted with unusual honesty. Her short fiction often explored subjects others avoided, including interracial relationships, female autonomy, and the quiet but powerful inner conflicts of everyday people. That same unflinching quality shaped The Awakening, the novel that would later become her most celebrated work. At the time of its publication, however, its frank treatment of a married woman’s emotional and sensual awakening unsettled many critics, who judged it harshly, yet Chopin continued to write stories that revealed her commitment to portraying women as fully human, with desires and ambitions that stretched beyond the confines of convention. She admired the psychological clarity of Guy de Maupassant, but she pushed beyond his influence to craft a voice that was unmistakably her own, direct yet lyrical, and deeply attuned to the inner lives of her characters. Though some of her contemporaries viewed her themes as daring or even improper, others recognized her narrative skill, and within a decade of her passing she was already being described as a writer of remarkable talent. Her rediscovery in the twentieth century led readers to appreciate how modern her concerns truly were: the struggle for selfhood, the tension between social expectations and private longing, and the resilience of women seeking lives that felt authentically theirs. Today, her stories and novels are widely read, admired for their clarity, emotional intelligence, and the boldness with which they illuminate the complexities of human experience.

Reviews

[Milda Jensen]

Suprantu, kad knyga, išleista 1899 metais, turėjo šokiruoti to meto visuomenę neištikimybės vaizdavimu. Bet dėve dėve kaip buvo nuobodu skaityti. Romano neįveikiau, mečiau ties kažkur puse, perskaičiau porą paskutinių skyrių vien tam, kad patikrinčiau, ar yra ten kas nors gero. Nėra.
Su apsakymais buvo lengviau, vien dėl to, kad jie trumpi. Bet irgi nuobodūs arba išvis neaišku, apie ką ten. Duočiau vieną žvaigždutę, bet vienas apsakymas patiko - Desiree's Baby. Tai už jį antroji žvaigždutė.

[Elizabeth Ann]

Interesting. What a thought process for a woman in the early 1900’s.

[Patrícia Raquel Pereira]

Between the many wanderings of Mrs. Pontellier's soul, there is a desire for change and novelty.

She wanted something to happen — something, anything....She did not know what.

Edna seeks a clear vision of her own life while longing for love (outside her current marriage) — the seemingly unattainable love of Robert.

"...Why have you been fighting against it? Why? Because you were not free, you were Léonce Pontellier's wife.

' I love you, she whispered, 'only you; no one but you.

This longing enfolds the whole romance and leads her on a quest to reveal who she is. Isn't that what true love is all about? A search to add purpose to our own lives? Yearning for meaning?

"I love you. Goodbye — because I love you."

"She had done all the thinking necessary after Robert went away when she lay awake upon the sofa 'till morning."

Discouraged by her fate, she is alone and lost, wanting relief from her thoughts while eternally looking to appease her aimless soul.

Between the pages of the story, the sea serves as a motif of inward contemplation, with its characteristic instability declaring an analogy with life's currents and waves of change and impermanence.

[Becky]

This story of a woman's struggle with social oppressions is a very poignant one. The feminist notion of a woman awakening to how she should not have married just to adhere to society, but to marry for true love.
Her search to fulfill her own needs and desires, thus neglecting her husband, her relationship, and even her children would have been met with various criticisms by readers of this fin-de-siecle novel as it would have been seen as breaking social boundaries put upon women. Overall, this novel shows an 'awakening' to how not all women were comfortable with the notion of marrying for reputation and money, and therefore were beginning to fulfill their own needs, however, the death of the protagonist in this makes her search for individuality ambiguous as to whether it was successful, and therefore possibly undermines the feminist aspect to this novel.

[Jeni]

Mostly I picked up this collection after finding out that The Awakening had been banned when published. Kate Chopin is an American author, and is considered by many to be the first feminist. She was born in 1850 Katherine O'Flaherty and died in 1904). The Awakening is a novella and the rest of this collection is 8 short stories that include a rather forthright treatment of sex and suicide for the time period which was at the end of the 19th century with Louisiana Creole settings. The 8 short stories are Beyond the Bayou, Ma'ame Pelagie, Desiree's Baby, A Respectable Woman, The Kiss, A Pair of Silk Stockings, The Locket, and A Reflection. I found the collection to be dull and bland – very tame by today’s standards, and nothing particularly memorable. It was very disappointing.

[Cathy]

37% into the book, I am giving it up. It was interesting in the beginning, but now it just bores me.

[Ece]

3.3

[Clare K. R.]

Three stars for The Awakening, five stars for each and every one of those amazing short stories.

[Chris]

Super bougie, but I can see how it would be influential feminist literature.

[Adeline Lydia]

J

[Kerryn]

The Awakening 5 stars. Short stories range between 3-5.