Margo Culley is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the editor of American
Women�s Autobiography: Fea(s)ts of Memory and A Day at a Time: Diary Literature of American Women, and co-editor
of Women�s Personal Narratives: Essays in Criticism and Pedagogy and Gendered Subjects: The Dynamics of Feminist
Teaching. She teaches courses in American studies, women�s studies, and ethnic studies.
Chopin, Kate (Ed.) :
Summary
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.
First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished
for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening has been hailed as an early vision of
woman's emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman's abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her awakening
to desires and passions that threated to consume her. Originally entitled "A SolitarySoul," this portrait
of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction, rooted firmly in the romantic tradition
of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in search of self-discovery turns away from convention and
society, and toward the primal, irresistibly attracted to nature and the senses The Awakening, Kate Chopin's
last novel, has been praised by Edmund Wilson as "beautifully written." And Willa Cather described its
style as "exquisite," "sensitive," and "iridescent." This edition of The Awakening
also includes a selection of short stories by Kate Chopin.
"This seems to me a higher order of feminism than repeating the story of woman as victim... Kate Chopin
gives her female protagonist the central role, normally reserved for Man, in a meditation on identity and culture,
consciousness and art."
-- From the introduction by Marilynne Robinson.
Table of Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
The Text of The Awakening Illustration: Page from Kate Chopin's Notebook: "A Solitary Soul"
The Awakening
Biographical and Historical Contexts
Editor's Note: Biography
Emily Toth · A New Biographical Approach
Editor's Note: Contexts of The Awakening
An Etiquette/Advice Book Sampler
Duties of the Wife
Avoid All Causes of Complaint
Beware of Confidants
Influence of Mothers
Reception Days
Rules for Summer Resorts
Flirtation and Increasing Fastness of Manner
Musicales
The Street Manners of a Lady
Places of Amusement
Formal Dinner Parties
Dress to Suit the Occasion
Carriage Dress
The Full Dinner Dress
Costumes for Country and Sea-side
Bathing Dresses
Fashion Plates from Harper's Bazar
Mary L. Shaffter · Creole Women
Wilbur Fisk Tillett · [Southern Womanhood]
Dorothy Dix · Are Women Growing Selfish?
· The American Wife
· Summer Flirtations
· A Strike for Liberty
· Women and Suicide
Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Gilman) · From Women and Economics
Thorstein Veblen · [Conspicuous Consumption and the
Servant-Wife]
Criticism Editor's Note: History of the Criticism of The Awakening CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS
From Book News (March 1899)
From The Mirror (May 4, 1899)
From the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat (May 13, 1899)
From the St. Louis Daily Post Dispatch (May 20, 1899)
From the Chicago Times-Herald (June 1, 1899)
From The Outlook (June 3, 1899)
From the Providence Sunday Journal (June 4, 1899)
From the New Orleans Times-Democrat (June 18, 1899)
From Public Opinion (June 22, 1899)
From Literature (June 23, 1899)
From the New York Times (June 24, 1899)
From the Pittsburgh Leader (July 8, 1899)
From The Dial (August 1, 1899)
From The Nation (August 3, 1899)
From The Congregationalist (August 24, 1899)
Letters from "Lady Janet Scammon Young" and "Dr. Dunrobin Thomson"
Chopin's "Retraction"
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM
Percival Pollard · [The Unlikely Awakening of a Married Woman]
Daniel S. Rankin · [Influences Upon the Novel]
Cyrille Arnavon · [An American Madame Bovary]
Kenneth Eble · [A Forgotten Novel]
Marie Fletcher · [The Southern Woman in Fiction]
Larzer Ziff · From The American 1890s
George Arms · [Contrasting Forces in the Novel]
Per Seyersted · [Kate Chopin and the American Realists]
George M. Spangler · [The Ending of the Novel]
John R. May · Local Color in The Awakening
Lewis Leary · [Kate Chopin and Walt Whitman]
Jules Chametzky · [Edna and the "Woman Question"]
Donald A. Ringe · [Romantic Imagery]
Ruth Sullivan and Stewart Smith · [Narrative Stance]
Cynthia Griffin Wolff · [Thanatos and Eros]
Suzanne Wolkenfeld · Edna's Suicide: The Problem of the One and the Many
Margo Culley · Edna Pontellier: "A Solitary Soul"
Nancy Walker · [Feminist or Naturalist?]
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese · [Progression and Regression in Edna Pontellier]
Paula A. Treichler · [Language and Ambiguity]
Sandra M. Gilbert · [The Second Coming of Aphrodite]
Lee R. Edwards · [Sexuality, Maternity, and Selfhood]
Patricia S. Yaeger · [Language and Female Emancipation]
Anna Shannon Elfenbein · [American Racial and Sexual Mythology]
Helen Taylor · [Gender, Race, and Religion]
Elizabeth Ammons · [Women of Color in The Awakening]
Elaine Showalter · [Chopin and American Women Writers]
