It's interesting to read an end-of-the-century novel from the opposite side of the intervening twentieth century, for though there is in Chopin's novel no preoccupation with the remorseless cycle of measured time, the intervening hundred years--and all their evolutions, both cultural and literary--are going to be part of the modern reader's context. Be aware: this is somewhat spoilery.As the novel unfolds, it is very difficult to like Edna Pontellier. In these days of two paychecks being required just to survive, on top of the endless drudgery of housework, car maintenance, and children's needs, Edna's dissatisfaction with a life of social engagements, fine dinners that she did not have to prepare or clean up after, and congenial hours of just sitting about on porches chatting idly, make it very hard for a modern reader to sympathize with her. While she is obsessed with her perceived bonds of slavery, she spares not one thought to the nameless women of color who labor unceasingly in the background doing the drudge work that is an inescapable part of daily existence. The woman who appears to be the primary caretaker of Edna's two boys is not even vouchsafed a name; she is dismissed as "the quadroon," a racial epithet that relegates her to an importance somewhere beneath parlor furnishings, which are at least noticed by callers. Chopin's evocative depiction of life in Louisiana a hundred years ago is fascinating both for the differences and for the moments that resonate with our own experience. Adele Ratignole's childbirth scene, with its pain and emotional intensity. The ability of children then, as now, to invent games on the dusty ground. Sitting through an amateur theatrical. The sensory details, and the emotional dynamics resultant all transmit that spark of verisimilitude--the scents of flowers. The stickiness of clothing in hot weather. How musical artistry stabs through our primal emotions like a hiltless knife. The moment of realization when the warmth of friendship kindles into lust. The novel's overarcing theme appears to be self-discovery, but it reads to me more like self-involvement. Restless, emotionally stifled Edna is "awakened" first by Madamoiselle Reisz's music, and then by a midnight swim when she dares, for the first time, not to wade, but to strike out into the dark waters and test that elusive nexus between heightened physical endeavor and death. Her desire to free herself from all her perceived shackles of wifedom and motherhood veer when she discovers, belatedly, her lust for Robert Lebrun, and again when she forsakes the serene, generous, but ambitionless friendship of Adele Ratignolle. She tells Robert that she loves him; he responds in kind; in a desperate act of martyred honor Robert leaves, and Edna shrugs off the world and takes another swim, this one toward the eternal darkness. It is interesting that Edna's very last images are not of any of her putative loved ones, but of vivid and unconnected sensory details--The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. Throughout the novel the presence of solitary lives wink in and out like fireflies: the parrot, the quadroon, Madamoiselle Reisz; even the lovers, who are never named, nor do they interact with anyone else in their total mutual absorption. Edna connects with four different people, two men and two women, however ephemerally. Each of the four is connected to the rest of their community through a different thread of the lacework of life: Adele and Robert as mother and gentleman, respectively, of society; Madamoiselle Reisz as the artist, and Arabin as the sensualist. All four live the lives they want to live, the latter two as singles, Robert as a son and brother, and Adele as wife and mother. It is Robert and Adele who, as members of the community, each make sacrificial acts: Robert in leaving to save his and Edna's reputations (he leaves twice) and Adele through childbirth. Each act is painful, each is a necessity to sustain the implied greater good of the community. Madame Reisz leads an independent existence, having everything she wants except (it is implied) sex. It is she who encourages Edna to "take flight" and though she speaks in terms of art, one wonders if in fact the spinster is encouraging Edna to give her the vicarious thrill of passion that she, old and ugly, desires. She certainly knows what it is that Edna wants--as does Adele, who tries to save Edna from cutting herself off from all the other presumed connections of her life in order to satisfy this illicit desire. And of course Arabin represents the life of illicit desire, never responsible, mostly shunned, with no permanent connections outside of the endless quest for gratification. It appears that the illicit aspect of Edna's desires is the driving force behind her quest. She tries one thing after another, from wandering about the streets as long as she likes to gluttonous eating and adultery, and then abandons them all. She can't be bothered with anything that requires self discipline--not in watching over her children, or communicating with her husband, or even painting. From the perspective of one who was young during the sixties and seventies, it is not surprising that this novel experienced a rebirth of interest during that period. It seems, looking back, that alienation and self-absorbed behavior were idealized during that time; novels and movies featured young singles who rejected everything but the pursuit of pleasure, and found that meaningless as well.Existentialist angst seemed the raison-d'etre of all art, because life was meaningless, and females felt the shackles of fifties expectations: we were supposed to be Doris Day, conforming to a cheerful dedication of our lives to a male, who would in turn provide house, car, and children. Nowadays we would call her behavior dysfunctional, and Edna certainly is a vivid portrayal of a dysfunctional woman. Despite Chopin's mendaciously casual dismissal of her heroine in her response to the novel's critical rejection as "working out her own damnation" one suspects that Chopin really did admire her heroine. All those reminders of how attractive she was in others' eyes; the firm auctorial intrusion not permitting the reader any sympathy with Mr. Pontellier and his "worship of his household gods"--though it is he who spends the most energy in trying to understand his wife, to communicate with her, and to make her happy. It is he who has the strongest bond with the children, though the culture by that time had already disengaged fathers from active parenting--except in punishment and economic control. The culminating moment of the book is Edna's dinner party, where she is perceived as Aphrodite, the goddess of love--an ironic observation about a woman who doesn't seem to have been capable of real love. This is not to say that the novel doesn't work. In fact, it is so well written that it functions on numerous levels, as a slice-of-regional life historical piece, and as an exercise is stylistic brilliance. As a cautionary tale during the early part of this century, when the nascent women's movement was beginning to build up enough speed to cause cultural resistance. As a tale of alienation and self-absorption for the young adult reader, who is often alienated and self-absorbed, as it was for a period in our own recent history when such tales enjoyed their literary eclat. As a tale of dysfunction for contemporary readers, who are engaged in examing the literature of the past so as to find a way to redefine our own roles--gender roles, family roles, community roles--for the future.

#2106-usa-geography-challenge: LOUISIANASad to say, marital unhappiness, infidelity and divorce are no longer shocking. There are as many reasons as there are troubled marriages. Women who married young may find themselves stifled in a loveless marriage, one that both parties have outgrown. Perhaps they stay together merely for the sake of the children. A choice might have been made to become a wife and mother and leave behind the dream of an exciting life that might have been. But a backward glance reveals that road less traveled is still beckoning. Or perhaps it is the promise of true love, a soulmate this time around. But in the late 1800s, it was very unusual for a young wife and mother to want to leave her successful husband and adoring children to find something more personally fulfilling--to toss aside the accepted social norms in the pursuit of love and passion, independence and freedom. Young Madame Pontellier experiences a feeling of sensuousness for the first time in her life while she and her family are summering on the Grand Isle. Robert, the resort owner's son and the object of her affection, has been known to have summer dalliances and is warned away from pursuing Madame Pontellier so he leaves the island abruptly to pursue business opportunities in Mexico. Upon the Pontellier family's return to New Orleans, she realizes "her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse." He, on his part, is at a loss to understand the changes in her, especially when she begins to cut all her normal social ties. He is advised by his father-in-law to "put your foot down good and hard, the only way to manage a wife."Does she have a courageous soul that dares to defy convention? "The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings."For me, the best part of this classic short feminist novel, is the expression of her inner thoughts and emotions and her struggles to build a new life for herself. "She had resolved never again to belong to another than herself." But I would have wished for a better ending, something more uplifting and triumphant.

I'd like to give this book ZERO stars, but it's not an option. This is hands down the worst book that I've ever read. I will never say that again in a review, because this one wins that prize.BIG SPOILER AHEAD - Be warned.I had to read this thing twice in college, and it is a horrible story. We are supposed to feel sympathy for a selfish woman with no redeemable qualities. Just because her marriage is bad it does not give her the right to be a lousy, despicable person. Get a divorce? Yes. Find new love? Yes. Abandon your children, be completely self-absorbed, commit adultery, and drown yourself? No, no, no, and no. This is my problem with the book. Drowning oneself and leaving one's children without the guidance of their mother is a tragedy. The book would have you believe it is a triumph. This is the irredeemable flaw in the book.It is also physically impossible to die the way she did. You cannot float to the bottom of the ocean. Your body will force you to swim and fight. It is a scientific fact that you cannot drown yourself without a struggle. She would have struggled in the end. Yes you can swim out so far that you can't make it back in and would drown in the process. But no, you can't just sink to the bottom. It would be a horrible, gagging, gasping, throwing up salt water, kicking your arms and legs fight.The writing itself is nothing special. It's not bad. Chopin is not a bad writer on a technical level, but she is no expert either.I hate to be the one raining on the parade, but this is the most overrated book I have ever come across.

Published in 1899, "The Awakening" is a story revolving around personal and sexual freedom for women. The book was set in New Orleans and nearby coastal areas where women--and any property they accumulated after marriage--were considered the property of their husbands. Divorce was almost non-existent in that Catholic area.Edna and Leonce Pontellier are vacationing at a coastal resort with their two little sons. Leonce is a generous husband in material ways, but does not connect well emotionally with his wife. Edna falls in love with Robert Lebrun, a young man at the resort. Robert leaves for Mexico since he realizes that the relationship would not have a good outcome.Edna befriends two women with contrasting lifestyles. Madame Ratignolle is a perfect wife and mother, but Mademoiselle Reisz, a pianist, has a very independent life. Edna is unhappy in her life as a wife and mother, even though she has servants to do most of the work in the home. She has the opportunity to rebel when her husband goes on a long business trip and their children are sent to their grandmother's house for an extended stay. She begins a dalliance with Alcee Arobin, a man with a reputation of chasing married women. She asserts her independence by moving out of her large house into a smaller abode, dabbling in art, and is awakened as a sexual woman. When Robert returns later, she says, "I am no longer one of Mr Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose."The book was very controversial because Edna left her husband and children for her own freedom, a move that would be socially shocking at the turn of the century. Even today, society looks down severely on women who abandon their children. Early in the book, it was stated, "Mrs Pontellier was not a mother-woman." Near the end of the book, it said, "Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night and never lifted....The children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul's slavery for the rest of her days. But she knew a way to elude them."The book has wonderful imagery of hunger and food, the draw of the sea, birds in flight, sleeping and awakening. Edna was a fascinating character. She seemed to be a woman who was unable to count her blessings, could only see the problems which were certainly genuine, and probably suffered from depression. She moved so much into a fantasy world that a solution seemed hopeless. Finally she hears the call of the sea, "The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water."

WOW probably the most beautifully written book i've ever read, plus so much feminism it makes me weak. I adore this book and I am going to be buying my own copy soon so that i can reread and reread and reread it until I die.