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Summary: A great class assignment
Review: I was given The Awakening for a class assignment over vacation for English class. I was angry to have to read a book over vacation..but once I got into this novel, I instantly changed my mind. I had no problems getting through this book. There were some parts that did confuse me a bit, which I had to read over a few times, but overall it was a touching story that I could relate to in many ways. The ending is heartbreaking.
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Summary: This book AWAKENED me
Review: 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 consumer her. Originally entitled "A Solitary Soul," 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.
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Summary: Smashing!
Review: It's a pity that Kate Chopin was so scared of the media that she didn't write anymore books. This is the only Chopin book that you can savor, so go ahead and eat this away. It's soothing and relaxing, a reader's dream...and swim.
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Summary: WASTE OF TIME, DISAPPOINTING NOVEL
Review: This novel was very difficult to understand right from the beginning. Written in archaic English, sprinkled with French words left undefined, the reader must have on hand a translating dictionary to understand anything at all. The tone was dry and uninteresting, displaying the life of a very lucky woman as a painstaking monotony. The reader had to figure out the character's actions since the story merely implied situations and intentions. The ending was pathetic. The character ruined her life, but she commited suicide because she felt sorry for herself, instead of repenting and facing the consequences. Regreting that she could not reinstitute her first flame, she walked out into the sea, abandoning her innocent children and husband. This character was a coward, not the heroine some claim her to be. The world's view of morality may have changed, but when this book was first published it shocked unsuspecting readers. The book was banned shortly after its release, and in my opinion, should have been burned. It is not worth the paper it is written on. I rated this novel with one star, simply because there was not a lower rating available. I am grateful for the short length of the novel since I was required to finish reading it for a class assignment. If I had been given a choice, I would have closed the book after page one. Now the choice is yours. To read or not to read? That is the question!
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Summary: Chopin's (1850-1900)
Review: Chopin's heroine rejects her husband and children as she indulges in solitude and in an adulterous infatuation, was embraced by the women's movement 70 years after its publication. Although they pale in comparison to the novel, these stories, which comprise Chopin's third and last short-fiction collection, serve to flesh out the Chopin oeuvre and deserve a place on women's studies syllabi. As in The Awakening , the author's social critiques here demythologize women, marriage, religion and family. A women escapes ``the incessant chatter'' of other females at a party and retires to the male domain of the smoking room, where she puffs on hashish and dreams of a love affair torn asunder. The perverse Mrs. Mallard revels in her newfound freedom when informed that her husband is a casualty of a train accident and dies of a heart attack when he shows up alive. Her fiance is wasted by illness and reeks death, and a repulsed Dorothea bolts; elsewhere, a monk is lured by the voice of a woman, a former intimate. And in a twist on the plot of The Awakening , a husband, plagued by suspicions of his late wife's infidelity, casts himself in the river. Toth wrote the biography Kate Chopin.
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Summary: Highly controversial at the time of its...
Review: publication in 1899, this story was rediscovered in the 1960s and is today celebrated as a feminist classic. Deluxe slipcased edition includes a signed and numbered lithograph by artist John Collier.
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Summary: The Awakening
Review: "Denounced at the time of its original publication in 1899, and out of print for decades, 'The Awakening' is an American masterpiece: the brilliantly conceived story of a woman's 'awakening' to erotic love, and to her predicament in a patriarchal society."
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Summary: Review
Review: "A Creole 'Bovary' is this little novel...and I shall not attempt to say why Miss Chopin has devoted so exquisite and sensitive, well-governed a style to so trite and sordid a theme."
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Summary: Haunting and passionate literature.
Review: Originally titled A SOLITARY SOUL, Kate Chopin's book caused quite a stir in it's day. It is far from shocking however, in these fast-track and oh-so-apathetic nineties. How can it be then, that it is still so rich and luxuriously full? Edna's captivity becomes the reader's captivity. Her longing, our longing. Her exhaustion pulsates through our veins almost as it coursed through her own. Subtle yet explosive. Numbing yet resounding with passion, this timeless story has the melody to capture even the most jaded millenial reader's soul.
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Summary: oh, you all didn't read it well enough!!!!!
Review: this book is great. it holds so much knowledge to be learned, especially when read by a women! men may misunderstand it, but that's to be expected. if a woman dislikes this book, there must be something hanging over her head, telling her that it's not good to free yourself from what the town, state, country, culture, and world expect from a woman. edna does what's right for her, and no one understands her. sadly, this book will be relevant to the us for many years to come, but perhaps that time can be shortened if more people would read this book and undersatnd it for what it is! beauty!
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