Kate Chopin The Awakening

From The Awakening: "Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inner life which questions.""

When Kate Chopin's The Awakening was written and published

The novel was begun in 1897 and completed on January 21, 1898. It was published by Herbert S. Stone & Company in Chicago on April 22, 1899.

Kate Chopin's The Awakening on line and in print

You can read the novel on line here, among other places.

In print you can find the novel in The Complete Works of Kate Chopin and in the Library of American Literature Kate Chopin volume. There are many paperback editions of the novel available today. Several include background readings, critical comments, bibliographies of scholarly articles and books, Chopin short stories, and other materials. For publication information about these books, see the section "For students and scholars" near the bottom of this page.

The Awakening characters

• Edna Pontellier
• Léonce Pontellier, husband of Edna
• Etienne and Raoul Pontellier, children of Edna and Léonce
• A quadroon who cares for Etienne and Raoul
• Madame Aline Lebrun, owner of a pension on Grand Isle
• Robert Lebrun, son of Madame Lebrun
• Victor Lebrun, brother of Robert Lebrun
• Mariequita, woman of Spanish descent who lives on Grand Isle
• Adèle Ratignolle, guest at the pension on Grand Isle
• Alphonse Ratignolle, a pharmacist, husband of Adèle
• Mademoiselle Reisz, a pianist, guest at the pension on Grand Isle
• Others on Grand Isle--two lovers, a lady in black, the Farival twins, old Monsieur Farival, Beaudelet. . . .
• Madame Antoine, woman of Chênière Caminada across the bay from Grand Isle
• Tonie, son of Madame Antoine; he and his mother appear in the Chopin short story "At Chênière Caminada"
• Old Celestine, Ellen, Joe, and other servants in the Pontellier's house in New Orleans
• Doctor Mandelet, the Pontellier's physician
• Edna's father, a former colonel in the Confederate army
• Alcée Arobin, a young man of fashion in New Orleans
• Mrs. Highcamp, friend of Alcée Arobin
• James Highcamp, husband of Mrs. Highcamp; the Highcamp's daughter
• Mrs. Merrimam and Miss Mayblunt, guests at Edna's part in Chapter XXX of the novel
• Gouvernail, a journalist, also a guest at the party; he plays a central role in the Chopin stories "A Respectable Woman" and "Athénaîse"
• Madame Pontellier, mother of Léonce

The Awakening time and place

The Awakening is set in the late nineteenth century on Grand Isle, off the coast of Louisiana; on the Chênière Caminada across the bay from Grand Isle; and in the city of New Orleans. It begins on Grand Isle, shifts to New Orleans, and concludes on Grand Isle

Frequently asked questions about The Awakening

Q: Was The Awakening really banned from libraries in Chopin's hometown of St. Louis?

A: Not so far as we can tell. Emily Toth, Chopin's biographer, tried to verify that claim—one that has been repeated for decades—but could find no evidence to support it. But it is true that The New York Times on July 6, 1902, reported that the Evanston, Illinois, Public Library had removed from its open shelves The Awakening and other books that the library board found objectionable (the article is on p. 9 of the newspaper).

Q: Why are there so many French expressions in the novel? If I don't understand French, how do I know what those expressions mean?

A: Most of the characters in the book speak French, Spanish, Creole, or all three, in addition to English. Many people with French and Spanish roots live in Louisiana, and some of them speak more than one language. Like Mark Twain and other writers of her time, Chopin was determined to be accurate in the way she recorded the speech of the people she focused on in her work. Some editions of The Awakening include translations of French expressions, and Chopin usually subtly glosses such expressions in the text. Missing the meaning of a French expression is not likely to lead to a mistake in understanding the novel.

Q: Does Edna Pontellier have sex with Alcée Arobin in Chapter 27 of the novel?

A: Yes. The language in Chapter 27 reflects literary conventions of the 1890s. Kate Chopin almost certainly would not have found a publisher for the novel if she had included more sexually explicit phrasing.

Q: What about the more explicit phrasing in “The Storm”?

A: Chopin did not try to publish that short story. It did not appear in print until long after her death.

Q: Was The Awakening forgotten until Kate Chopin's literary revival in the 1970s?

Q: Has The Awakening been translated into other languages?

A: Yes. It appeared in a French translation by Cyrille Arnavon in 1953.

That edition has illustrations by André Hubert. Here's Edna and Robert:

And here is the first page of the 1953 French translation:

The Awakening has also ben translated again into French and into other languages, including Dutch, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, and Polish since 1953.

And it was Per Seyersted, a Norwegian scholar, who made Chopin’s complete works available to Americans in the 1960s. Kate Chopin has been an international figure for a long time.

Q: Has The Awakening been made into a film? I can't find such a film anywhere.

A: In 1982 director Bob Graham did a feature-length version of the novel called The End of August. It's apparently not available on DVD, but you may be able to find a VHS copy:

There is also a fine novel by Robert Stone called Children of Light, about a production company making a film of The Awakening using a performer struggling with some of the same issues that Edna struggles with.

Q: Was Kate Chopin involved in the women's suffrage movement, in the progressive movements for educational reform, health care reform, or sanitation improvement? Was she involved in any other historically significant happenings of her time?

A: Kate Chopin was an artist, a writer of fiction, and like many artists--in the nineteenth century and today--she considered that her primary responsibility to people was showing them the truth about life as she understood it.

So if you're asking if Kate Chopin was involved in social activism as political scientists today would understand that term, the answer is no. She was not a social reformer. Her goal was not to change the world but to describe it accurately, to show people the truth about the lives of women and men in the nineteenth-century America she knew.

If, however, you're asking if Chopin was involved in "historically significant happenings" as many artists would understand those words, then the answer is yes. She was among the first American authors to write truthfully about women's hidden lives, about women's sexuality, and about women's relationships with their husbands.

As the critic Per Seyersted phrases it, Kate Chopin "broke new ground in American literature. She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman’s submerged life. She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman’s urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom."

Artists like Kate Chopin see the truth and help others to see it. Once people are able to recognize the truth, then they can create social reform movements and set out to correct wrongs and injustices.

You can read more questions and answers about Kate Chopin and her work, and you can email us your questions.

Links to more information about The Awakening

PBS program, "Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening"

Kate Chopin, The Awakening by students of Barbara Ewell at Loyola University of New Orleans

For students and scholars

Accurate texts of the novel

The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Edited by Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.

The Awakening and Selected Stories. Edited by Sandra Gilbert. New York: Penguin, 1984.

Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Short Stories. Edited by Sandra Gilbert. New York: Library of American Literature, 2002.

Recent publications about The Awakening

Some of the articles listed here may be available on line through university or public libraries.

Streater, Kathleen M. "Adele Ratignolle: Kate Chopin's Feminist at Home in The Awakening." Midwest Quarterly 48 (2007): 406-416.

Frye, Katie Berry. "Edna Pontellier, Adèle Ratignolle, and the Unnamed Nurse: A Triptych of Maternity in The Awakening." Southern Studies 13.3-4 (2006): 45-66.

Gaskill, Nicholas M. "'The Light Which, Showing the Way, Forbids It': Reconstructing Aesthetics in The Awakening." Studies in American Fiction 34.2 (2006): 161-188.

Heuston, Sean. "Chopin's The Awakening." Explicator 64 (2006): 220-223.

Bradley, Patricia L. "The Birth of a Tragedy and The Awakening: Influences and Intertexualities." Southern Literary Journal 37 (2005): 40-61.

Felder, Deborah G. A Bookshelf of Our Own: Works That Changed Women's Lives New York: Citadel, 2005.

Margraf, Erik. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening as a Naturalistic Novel." American Literary Realism 37.2 (2005): 93-116.

Parvulescu, Anca. "To Die Laughing and to Laugh at Dying: Revisiting The Awakening." New Literary History 36 (2005): 477-495.

Richter, Eva, and Bailin Song. "Translating the Concept of 'Identity'." Translation and Cultural Change: Studies in History, Norms and Image-Projection. 91-110. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins, 2005.

White, Roberta. A Studio of One's Own: Fictional Women Painters and the Art of Fiction Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2005.

Biggs, Mary. "'Si tu savais': The Gay/Transgendered Sensibility of Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Women's Studies 33 (2004): 145-181.

Davis, Doris. "The Enigma at the Keyboard: Chopin's Mademoiselle Reisz." Mississippi Quarterly 58.1-2 (2004): 89-104.

Dunphy, Mark. "New England Transcendental Gumbo: Edna Pontellier's Awakening to Emersonian Self-Reliance in The Awakenin." Emerson at 200. 153-160. Rome, Italy: Aracne, 2004.

Martinez, Inez. "Reading for Psyche: Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Harvest: International Journal for Jungian Studies 50 (2004): 105-119.

Mikolchak, Maria. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening as Part of the Nineteenth-Century American Literary Tradition." Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 5 (2004): 29-49.

Sielke, Sabine. "'Rowing in Eden' and Related Waterway Adventures: Seaward Visions in American Women's Writing." The Sea and the American Imagination. 111-134. Tübingen, Germany: Stauffenburg, 2004.

Singer, Sandra. "Awakening the Solitary Soul: Gendered History in Women's Fiction and Michael Cunningham's The Hours." Doris Lessing Studies 23 (2004): 9-12.

Xue, Mei. "Destiny of 'the Second Sex': A Study of the Heroine in The Awakening." Re-Reading America: Changes and Challenges. 363-371. Cheltenham, England: Reardon, 2004.

Birnbaum, Michele. Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860-1930 Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2003.

Boynton, Victoria. "Writing Women, Solitary Space and the Ideology of Domesticity." Herspace: Women, Writing, and Solitude. 147-164. New York: Haworth, 2003.

Elz, A. Elizabeth. "The Awakening and A Lost Lady: Flying with Broken Wings and Raked Feathers." Southern Literary Journal 35 (2003): 13-27.

Jones, Paul Christian. "A Re-Awakening: Anne Tyler's Postfeminist Edna Pontellier in Ladder of Years." Critique 44 (2003): 271-283.

Kinnison, Dana. "Female Resistance to Gender Conformity in Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender. 22-25. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003.

Rich, Charlotte. "Reconsidering The Awakening: The Literary Sisterhood of Kate Chopin and George Egerton." Southern Quarterly 41 (2003): 121-136.

Valkeakari, Tuire. "A 'Cry of the Dying Century': Kate Chopin, The Awakening, and the Women's Cause." NJES: Nordic Journal of English Studies 2 (2003): 193-216.

Varley, Jane, and Aimee Broe Erdman. "Working for Judith Shakespeare: A Study in Feminism." Midwest Quarterly 44 (2003): 266-281.

Disheroon-Green, Suzanne. "Mr. Pontellier's Cigar, Robert's Cigarettes: Opening the Closet of Homosexuality and Phallic Power in The Awakening'." Songs of Reconstructing South: Building Literary Louisiana, 1865-1945. 183-195. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002.

-------. "Whither Thou Goest, We Will Go: Lovers and Ladies in The Awakening." Southern Quarterly 40 (2002): 83-96.

Dyer, Joyce. "Reading The Awakening with Toni Morrison." Southern Literary Journal 35 (2002): 138-154.

Maguire, Roberta S. "Kate Chopin and Anna Julia Cooper: Critiquing Kentucky and the South." Southern Literary Journal 35 (2002): 123-137.

Mathews, Carolyn L. "Fashioning the Hybrid Woman in Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Mosaic 35 (2002): 127-149.

Petruzzi, Anthony P. "Two Modes of Disclosure in Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 13 (2002): 287-316.

Strozier, Robert. "Interiority, Identity, Knowledge: Unraveling the Cartesian Cogito." Thresholds of Western Culture: Identity, Postcoloniality, Transnationalism. 14-31. New York: Continuum, 2002.

Asbee, Sue. "The Awakening: Contexts." The Nineteenth-Century Novel: Identities. 269-286. London, England: Open UP; Routledge, 2001.

-------. "The Awakening: Identities." The Nineteenth-Century Novel: Identities. 242-268. London, England: Open UP; Routledge, 2001.

Bunch, Dianne. "Dangerous Spending Habits: The Epistemology of Edna Pontellier's Extravagant Expenditures in The Awakening." Mississippi Quarterly 55 (2001): 43-61.

Green, Suzanne Disheroon. "Awakening the 'Essence of Blue': The Emerging Southern Women of Kate Chopin and Moira Crone." Songs of the New South: Writing Contemporary Louisiana. 143-151. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001.

Pizer, Donald. "A Note on Kate Chopin's The Awakening as Naturalistic Fiction." Southern Literary Journal 33 (2001): 5-13.

Walker, Nancy A. Kate Chopin: A Literary Life Basingstoke, England: Palgrave, 2001.

Araújo, Helena. "Marvel Moreno, ¿modernista?." Literatura y cultura: Narrativa colombiana del siglo XX, I: La nación moderna: Identidad; II: Diseminación, cambios, desplazamientos; III: Hibridez y alteridades. 168. Bogotá, Colombia: Ministerio de Cultura, 2000

Barrish, Phillip. "The Awakening's Signifying 'Mexicanist' Presence." Studies in American Fiction 28 (2000): 65-76.

Bartley, William. "Imagining the Future in The Awakening." College English 62 (2000): 719-746.

Faraudo, Rosario. "El trágico vuelo de Icaro. Entramado mitológico y simbólico que subyace en The Awakening de Kate Chopin." Anuario de Letras Modernas 10 (2000): 43-50.

Heynitz, Benita von. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Richard Wagner's Musical Concepts." English in the Modern World. 57-67. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 2000.

Lippincott, Gail. "Thirty-Nine Weeks: Pregnancy and Birth Imagery in Kate Chopin's The Awakening." This Giving Birth: Pregnancy and Childbirth in American Women's Writing. 55-66. Bowling Green, OH: Popular, 2000.

McGee, Diane. "The Structure of Dinners in Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Proteus 17 (2000): 47-51.

Treu, Robert. "Surviving Edna: A Reading of the Ending of The Awakening." College Literature 27 (2000): 21-36.

Yoon, Junggil. "[The Significance of Music in Kate Chopin's The Awakening]." Journal of English Language and Literature/Yongo Yongmunhak 46 (2000): 507-527.

Selected books that discuss The Awakening.

Toth, Emily. Unveiling Kate Chopin Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999.

Petry, Alice Hall (ed.), Critical Essays on Kate Chopin New York: G. K. Hall, 1996.

Elfenbein, Anna Shannon. Women on the Color Line: Evolving Stereotypes and the Writings of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Kate Chopin Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1994.

Keesey Donald, The Awakening: Contexts for Criticism Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1994.

Dyer, Joyce. The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings New York: Twayne, 1993.

Walker Nancy, Kate Chopin: The Awakening (in the Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism series), New York: St. Martins, 1993.

Boren, Lynda S. and Sara deSaussure Davis (eds.), Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1992.

Perspectives on KateChopin: Proceedings from the Kate Chopin International Conference, April 6, 7, 8, 1989 Natchitoches, LA: Northwestern State UP, 1992.

Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton New York: Greenwood, 1990.

Toth, Emily. Kate Chopin. New York: Morrow, 1990.

Elfenbein , Anna Shannon. Women on the Color Line: Evolving Stereotypes and the Writings of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Kate Chopin Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1989.

Taylor, Helen. Gender, Race, and Region in the Writings of Grace King, Ruth McEnery Stuart, and Kate Chopin Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.

Bonner, Thomas Jr., The Kate Chopin Companion New York: Greenwood, 1988.

Koloski, Bernard (ed.), Approaches to Teaching Chopin’s The Awakening New York: Modern Language Association, 1988.

Martin, Wendy (ed.), New Essays on The Awakening New York: Cambridge UP, 1988.

Bloom, Harold (ed.), Kate Chopin New York: Chelsea, 1987.

Ewell, Barbara C. Kate Chopin New York: Ungar, 1986.

Skaggs, Peggy. Kate Chopin Boston: Twayne, 1985.

Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969.

Arnavon, Cyrille (trans.), Edna Paris: Club Bibliophile de France, 1953.

Rankin, Daniel, Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1932.