FROM OUR EDITORS

Discontented with her comfortable but stagnant marriage, a New Orleans woman on vacation with her family meets several remarkable women and two desirable men who set her off on a different and difficult path: to live according to her own needs rather than in accordance with the rigid standards of society. First published in 1899, this book was rediscovered in the 1960s and pronounced a feminist classic for its open treatment of a woman's search for self-understanding. Includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields, plus a sampling of early reviews, a biography of Chopin, and essays by modern scholars.

ANNOTATION

An American classic of sexual expression that paved the way for the modern novel, The Awakening is both a remarkable novel in its own right and a startling reminder of how far women in this century have come. The story of a married woman who pursues love outside a stuffy, middle-class marriage, the novel portrays the mind of a woman seeking fulfillment of her essential nature.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Novelist and short story writer Kate Chopin (1851-1904) was the first American woman to deal with women's roles as wives and mothers. The Awakening (1899), her most famous novel, concerns a woman, dissatisfied with her indifferent husband, who gives in to her desire for other men and commits adultery. This is a searing depiction of the religious and social pressures brought to bear on women who transgress restrictive Victorian codes of behavior.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Chopin's (1850-1904) The Awakening , whose heroine rejects her husband and children as she indulges in solitude and in an adulterous infatuation, was embraced by the women's movement 70 years after its publication. Although they pale in comparison to the novel, these stories, which comprise Chopin's third and last short-fiction collection, serve to flesh out the Chopin oeuvre and deserve a place on women's studies syllabi. As in The Awakening , the author's social critiques here demythologize women, marriage, religion and family. A women escapes ``the incessant chatter'' of other females at a party and retires to the male domain of the smoking room, where she puffs on hashish and dreams of a love affair torn asunder. The perverse Mrs. Mallard revels in her newfound freedom when informed that her husband is a casualty of a train accident and dies of a heart attack when he shows up alive. Her fiance is wasted by illness and reeks death, and a repulsed Dorothea bolts; elsewhere, a monk is lured by the voice of a woman, a former intimate. And in a twist on the plot of The Awakening , a husband, plagued by suspicions of his late wife's infidelity, casts himself in the river. Toth wrote the biography Kate Chopin. (Jan.)

Library Journal