And gone is the idea that The Awakening is a bad novel. Gone are stringent societal views about women enjoying painting, music, swimming and-yes-having a rockin' good time in the sack with whomever they please. Gone are corsets, voting restrictions, obligatory 'honor thy husband' marriage vows, and laws condemning divorce. Luckily for us-if not the critics who gave The Awakening the 19th Century equivalent of a one-star rating on Goodreads-times have changed.

And then you would have picked up your pen and written a truly scathing review. If you had been reviewing this book when it first came out in 1899, you would have picked your jaw up off the floor, loosened your starched collar to avoid fainting, paced the room until your blood pressure returned to normal. She has steamy sex with a man she isn't married to-or even in love with-and likes it. She moves out of the house she shares with her husband and likes it. She admits that her world doesn't revolve around her children and likes it. She starts neglecting her household duties and likes it. And what's more, Edna enjoys this transformation. Into a self-realized, sexually liberated and independent woman. Kate Chopin's novel follows Edna Pontellier's transformation from an obedient, traditional wife and mother These are the facts-at least as far as you, or any of the bros in your literary critic circle, are concerned.Īnd then you open The Awakening, a book that challenges all of this. You're sure of a few concrete truths: that men like yourself are the superior sex, that women are too malleable and weak-minded to be independent, that becoming a wife and mother is the #1 dream of 100% of the fairer sex, that dudes are cursed with sexual appetites, and that ladies have only chaste romance on the mind. You're a dude, because you have a) a job as b) a literary critic.

Picture this: you're a literary critic in the last decade of the 19th Century. It's no big shocker that The Awakening garnered some truly abysmal reviews when it was first published.

The awakening novel by kate chopin