The Awakening, originally titled A Solitary Soul, is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana coast at the end of the nineteenth century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century South. It is one of the earliest American novels that focuses on women's issues without . It is also widely seen as a landmark work of early feminism, generating mixed reaction from contemporary readers and criticism.
The novel's blend of realistic narrative, incisive social commentary, and psychological complexity makes The Awakening a precursor of American modernist literature; it prefigures the works of American novelists such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway and echoes the works of contemporaries such as Edith Wharton and Henry James. It can also be considered among the first Southern works in a tradition that would culminate with the modern masterpieces of Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Tennessee Williams.
Publication and critical reception
The Awakening was particularly controversial upon publication in 1899. Although the novel was never technically banned, it was censored. Chopin's novel was considered immoral not only for its comparatively frank depictions of female sexual desire but also for its depiction of a protagonist who chafed against social norms and established gender roles. The public reaction to the novel was similar to the protests which greeted the publication and performance of Henrik Ibsen's landmark drama A Doll's House (1879), a work with which The Awakening shares an almost identical theme. Both contain a female protagonist who abandons her husband and children for self-fulfillment.
However, published reviews ran the gamut from outright condemnation to the recognition of The Awakening as an important work of fiction by a gifted practitioner. Divergent reactions of two newspapers in Kate Chopin's hometown of St. Louis, Missouri reflect this. The St. Louis Republic labeled the novel "poison" and "too strong a drink for moral babes" and the St. Louis Mirror stated, "One would fain beg the gods, in pure cowardice, for sleep unending rather than to know what an ugly, cruel, loathsome Monster Passion can be when, like a tiger, it slowly awakens. This is the kind of awakening that impresses the reader in Mrs. Chopin's heroine." Later in the same year, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch praised the novel in "A St. Louis Woman Who Has Turned Fame Into Literature." As Chopin was the first woman from St. Louis to become a professional writer, she was of particular interest there.
Some reviews indulged in outright vitriol, as when Public Opinion stated, "We are well-satisfied when Mrs. Pontellier deliberately swims out to her death in the waters of the gulf."
Chopin's work also garnered qualified, though still negative, reviews. The Dial called The Awakening a "poignant spiritual tragedy" with the caveat that the novel was "not altogether wholesome in its tendencies." Similarly, The Congregationalist called Chopin's novel "a brilliant piece of writing" but concludes, "We cannot commend it." In the Pittsburgh Leader, Willa Cather set The Awakening alongside Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert's equally notorious and equally reviled novel of suburban ennui and unapologetic adultery-though Cather was no more impressed with the heroine than were most of her contemporaries. Cather "hope d] that Miss Chopin will devote that flexible, iridescent style of hers to a better cause."