Kirkus Style Review

THE AWAKENING

BY KATE CHOPIN     RELEASE DATE: FEB. 20, 2021

A journey of self-discovery by a woman experiencing an emotional awakening in Grand Isle, Louisiana at the turn of the 20th century. 

Edna Pontellier is a wife and mother vacationing at a resort in Grand Isle for the summer. She spends her days at the beach socializing with friends, tasked only with watching over her children, which she often neglects to do. She spends an exorbitant amount of time with a young man, Robert LeBrun, who sees after the guests at the resort. Edna’s husband, Léonce Pontellier, worships her and is often praised by Edna’s friends as the “best husband in the world.” Edna is his “sole object of affection,” but she has little interest in him. Instead, she is fixated on Robert, the young man whom she can talk to for hours at ease or sit with in comfortable silence. As she falls in love with him, she is haunted by his voice, and memories of him singing, “Ah! Si tu savais (Oh! if you knew), confirming for her the secret love shared between them. Edna struggles throughout the novel, conflicted by her “outward existence which conforms, an inward life which questions.” As Edna’s love for Robert grows, so does her clarity and self-confidence. She comes to reject herself as the mother-type and often finds her children annoying. This budding confidence propels her into the ocean, where she faces her fears and discovers her ability to swim. Becoming one with the ebb and flow of the tide, she feels the release of “a certain ungovernable dread” that has been hanging about her. This accomplishment melts away her fear and motivates Edna to leave her husband as she “resolves never again to belong to another than herself.”

Thought-provoking and reflective, this novel will stay with you long after you read it. It will leave you wondering, “Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select?”