Review: The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Jess G. Reads

Jul 6, 20212 min read

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."