The Awakening, and Selected Short Sto..., Kate Chopin
The Awakening, and Selected Short Sto..., Kate Chopin
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The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories

Author: Kate Chopin

Narrator: Harriet Seed

Unabridged: 6 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/27/2020


Synopsis

Edna Pontellier has everything that a woman and mother should want – two wonderful sons, a husband, and good financial fortune. But still, she feels like something may be missing. While vacationing with her family, she meets a young man who shows affection and opens her mind to adventure and freedom.

Edna’s desire for freedom and independence begins to fester in her heart, and she finds that she is increasingly disenchanted with the responsibilities of motherhood. She begins to shirk responsibilities and live as she wants, rather than how society expects. Her journey towards independence is difficult and met with much opposition from all sides in her life, and she is torn between two conflicting worlds.

This collection also includes many of Kate Chopin’s short stories, which further expand on the themes of womanhood in the southern United States, Creole culture, religious skepticism, and female independence and intellectualism. The short stories included in this collection 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.” These short stories demonstrate Kate Chopin’s lyrical and emotional writing abilities, and are staples of the Southern literature genre.

About Kate Chopin

American author Kate Chopin (1850-1904) wrote two novels and about a hundred short stories in the 1890s. Most of her fiction is set in Louisiana and most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women.

Her short stories were well received in her own time and were published by some of America's most prestigious magazines-Vogue, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Young People, Youth's Companion, and the Century. A few stories were syndicated by the American Press Association. Her stories also appeared in her two published anthologies, Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, both of which received good reviews from critics across the country. About a third of her stories are children's stories-those published in or submitted to children's magazines or those similar in subject or theme to those that were. By the late 1890s, she was well known among American readers of magazine fiction.

Her early novel At Fault had not been much noticed by the public, but The Awakening was widely condemned. Critics called it morbid, vulgar, and disagreeable. Willa Cather, who would become a well-known twentieth-century American author, labeled it trite and sordid. Chopin's third anthology of stories, to have been called A Vocation and a Voice, was for unknown reasons cancelled by the publisher and did not appear as a separate volume until 1991.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lesle on July 23, 2020

The Awakening Kate Chopin was a Mom of five and unfortunately a Widow living in Louisiana. After her Husband's death she was left with a huge debt that was followed shortly after the loss of her Mother leaving her extremely depressed. Chopin's Doctor suggested she write for therapeutic and finances t......more

3.5 stars rounded up This was such an interesting reading experience, and I'm glad I read the introduction for context. She's known for The Awakening (which is part of this collection) and its shocking focus on female sexuality and pleasure. And I do think her work is an important and complicated par......more

Goodreads review by Dusty on April 17, 2010

Most reviews of The Awakening begin with a qualification -- "For a woman of her time, Kate Chopin..." -- but not this one. I loved it from start to finish, loved it up, down, and sideways, loved it in a house, with a mouse, etc. It's an angsty American masterpiece -- a Catcher in the Rye for late 19......more

Goodreads review by sologdin on January 01, 2019

A complex text. On the one hand, it chronicles, somewhat sympathetically, worthless waste of space proprietor losers in New Orleans, who are unwilling to do anything for themselves and accordingly would not survive without their legions of anonymous servants, whom they identify on the basis of skin......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on December 18, 2020

More and more, it seems like I read books in snippets, a few pages or chapters at a time, forcing myself to sit still and stay focused on the text in front of me. I’ve discussed with multiple friends this strange disenchantment, the inability for novels to wholly draw me into their world as they did......more