Rating: ⭐⭐⭐✨⬜
Title: The Awakening
Author: Kate Chopin
Genre: Classic / Feminist Fiction
Author Info: She / Her
Setting: Grand Isle & New Orleans, Louisiana
Month Read: June 2021
Book Type: Paperback
Publication: 1899
Pages: 116
*Books and Brews Classic Book Club June Pick
TRIGGER WARNING-
Sexual Themes / Depression / Suicide / Postpartum Depression
"She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world."
No Spoiler Summary:
The Awakening is one of the first 'feminist' novels, written in 1899. A book about a wife and a mother abandoning responsibilities to live on her own, in her own terms, and figure out what she wanted from a life free from responsibility and societal standards.
Review:
I read this my Senior Year of High School in my American Female Authors class, and I remember being SO bored and just generally disinterested in this book. The subject matter didn't grab me, the prose was fine, I just sat in class wondering why I couldn't read more Anne Rice. (Everyone has to have a literary vampire phase, right?)
Reading this book as a 30 year old married woman with a child is a wholly different experience. I so related to Edna and her journey to find herself and her happiness in a society that judges women based on service to their husbands and children (and nothing else.)
The Awakening is a beautiful book, and a daring journey one woman takes for herself, knowing that the consequences she faces will be hard. I also love (and hate) the ending, and the fact that ultimately Edna knows there's no way she can find real happiness in this life.
Recommendation:
For women taking control of their own lives:
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
"I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me."
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