Her tragedy is that she doesn't quite complete her mission, society's dictates are in the end too powerful and her attempt at living her life for herself above all others compels her to suicide. Importantly, this is not because she is a fallen woman nor because she feels any guilt, (she never succumbs to these conventions), but because she cannot fully attain selfhood, she cannot reconcile all that she wants for herself with the life that she is already living. But Chopin still doesn't deliver a neat resolution or a "final truth." Published at a time when there were no ready historical solutions to Edna's dilemna, The Awakening manages, however, to pose important questions about women's roles and obligations, and to challenge easy answers which would limit a woman's ability to choose and change her circumstance.

After nearly a half century of virtual absence from bookshelves, critics and readers started to rediscover Chopin's writings. During the 1950s and 1960s critics' declarations ranged from Kenneth Eble's "Quite frankly, the book is about sex," to Larzer Ziff's calling The Awakening "the most important piece of fiction about the sexual life of a woman written to date in America." Among the most important contributions to Chopin's resurrection were those made by a Norwegian named Per Seyersted. In 1969 he published The Complete Works of Kate Chopin and a critical biography of her. Starting in the 1970s, with reprints of The Awakening circulating, dissertations on the novel proliferating in the universities across the country, and critical works produced mainly by an inner circle of devotees piling up, Chopin's work finally received the long overdue recognition it merited, and the discussion it inspired naturally followed.

Modern readers, like modern critics, probably find it easier to understand Edna's attempt to rid herself of stultifying traditions, social rituals, and domestic obligations, than Chopin's contemporaries did. The goal she set for herself—to find a replacement for these things, something more honest, more personally rewarding, and more worthy of her passion—strikes us as a completely deserving one. We understand better what must be Edna's motives when she so feelingly tells a friend "I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me."

—Laura Victoria Levin
1995

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The Awakening

I

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over:

"Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!"

He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence.

Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper with any degree of comfort, arose with an expression and an exclamation of disgust. He walked down the gallery and across the narrow "bridges" which connected the Lebrun cottages one with the other. He had been seated before the door of the main house. The parrot and the mocking-bird were the property of Madame Lebrun, and they had the right to make all the noise they wished. Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their society when they ceased to be entertaining.

He stopped before the door of his own cottage, which was the fourth one from the main building and next to the last. Seating himself in a wicker rocker which was there, he once more applied himself to the task of reading the newspaper. The day was Sunday; the paper was a day old. The Sunday papers had not yet reached Grand Isle. He was already acquainted with the market reports, and he glanced restlessly over the editorials and bits of news which he had not had time to read before quitting New Orleans the day before.

Mr. Pontellier wore eye-glasses. He was a man of forty, of medium height and rather slender build; he stooped a little. His hair was brown and straight, parted on one side. His beard was neatly and closely trimmed.

Once in a while he withdrew his glance from the newspaper and looked about him. There was more noise than ever over at the house. The main building was called "the house," to distinguish it from the cottages. The chattering and whistling birds were still at it. Two young girls, the Farival twins, were playing a duet from "Zampa" upon the piano. Madame Lebrun was bustling in and out, giving orders in a high key to a yard-boy whenever she got inside the house, and directions in an equally high voice to a dining-room servant whenever she got outside. She was a fresh, pretty woman, clad always in white with elbow sleeves. Her starched skirts crinkled as she came and went.