The Awakening

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

‘The Awakening’ by Kate Chopin is an 1899 novel that’s regarded as one of the most important feminist novels of the 19th century.

It is set in New Orleans at the end of the 19th century and follows Edna Pontellier, a woman who stands against the prevailing social attitudes of the time, supporting feminist beliefs and views on motherhood that no one agrees with. This early feminist novel blends together social commentary with a realistic and deeply moving narrative.

The novel focuses on Edna’s attempts to find more freedom in her restrictive society and gain independence over her body and mind. These desires, and her struggle to achieve them, set her apart from everyone around her, particularly other married women who seem content in their day-to-day lives.

Sadly, the novel’s end coincides with the fate of many 19th and 20th-century women, especially writers, whose quests to find happier, more independent lives end in suicide.

Key Facts about The Awakening

• Title: The Awakening
• Publication Date: 1899
• Protagonist: Edna Pontellier
• Antagonist: Society and its expectations of women
• Where Written: St. Louis, Missouri
• Literary Period: Late Victorian
• Genre: Bildungsroman (or coming-of-age novel)
• Setting: New Orleans in the late 19th century
• Climax: Edna’s death
• Point of View: Third person

Kate Chopin and The Awakening

As a female writer who is best known for writing about a female protagonist, Chopin has been compared by many to her main character, Edna Pontellier.

Kate Chopin was born Kate O’Flaherty in St. Louis in 1850. She was the only child in her family to live past the age of twenty-five. Throughout her married life, Kate Chopin was well known for her intelligence, independence, and the amount of freedom that her husband permitted in their marriage. She gave birth to five boys and two girls before she was 28 years old.

Her independence in her marriage is something that her protagonist, Edna, did not enjoy. Léonce, Edna’s husband, only furthers Edna’s feelings of confinement and loneliness. In the 19th century, women’s lives centered around the will and whim of their husbands. Chopin’s husband provided her with freedoms that most women didn’t know during this period.

Edna’s husband, though, acts very differently. He puts up barriers to her discovering her own identity and some degree of happiness in her day-to-day life.

Unfortunately, Chopin’s husband died in 1882, only 12 years after the two were married. Kate began to write to support herself and her seven children. The novel was inspired not by her own life but by a story of a New Orleans woman who lived in the French Quarter.

After she published ‘The Awakening,‘ she caused something of an uproar in the local literary community. One well-known event occurred when she was denied access to the St. Louis Fin Art Club because of the novel’s subject matter.

Chopin, like her protagonist, Edna, suffered because of her liberal social views on women’s rights and motherhood. She was upset by how negatively the public reacted to her novel, and during the last years of her life, she only wrote a few short stories. Both she and her protagonist are remembered for their quests to find acceptance in societies that were never able to admire them for who they were. 

Books Related to The Awakening

There are a number of literary fiction novels and early feminist novels that share qualities with Chopin’s ‘The Awakening.’ These include the novels of Edith Wharton, who is best known for her The Age of Innocence, and Ethan Frome. The novel has also been linked to Sartre’s Nausea in its depiction of existential dread and alienation.

Readers might also enjoy exploring the work of Margaret Atwood (like The Handmaid’s Tale) and that of Virginia Woolf. The latter’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’ is a particularly effective related essay.

More contemporary examples, like ‘When Women Were Dragons’ by Kelly Barnhill and ‘Trespasses: A Novel’ by Louise Kennedy, are also thoughtfully connected to Chopin’s early feminist work. 

Lasting Legacy of The Awakening

Literature by Kate Chopin

Explore literature by Kate Chopin below, created by the team at Book Analysis.