The Awakening

Editor's note. I come back to this book every few years, and it reveals something new each time. The Awakening is canonical feminist literature, full stop. If it isn't already on your syllabus, consider it.

A woman living in New Orleans at the turn of the century discovers desire, selfhood, and what it costs to want more. First published in 1899, The Awakening was met with scandal and near-suppression, then rediscovered by a generation of feminist scholars in the 1960s who recognized it for what it was: one of the most revolutionary American novels ever written.

Kate Chopin wrote Edna Pontellier with a frankness that made her contemporaries deeply uncomfortable. Edna is not redeemed, not punished into submission, not explained away. She simply awakens to her own body, her own mind, her own desires, and follows that awakening wherever it leads. The novel remains one of the most honest portraits of inner life in American literature.

A precursor to Faulkner, O'Connor, Welty, and Williams. Essential reading for courses in American literature, women's studies, and Southern studies.

Wilder Publications edition. 114 pages. Paperback.