Book Review: The Awakening by Kate Chopin

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The Awakening
Kate Chopin

Almost immediately upon picking up The Awakening I realized it was a great book. I don’t have the appropriate expertise to explain why, but there was something so wonderful about the prose that it had my synapses firing away in joyful anticipation. And it wasn’t just the fact that I knew that it is a classic, there was something in the words themselves that had me convinced that I was going to be experiencing a great novel. Their styles aren’t necessarily similar, but it reminded me of the first time I discovered Willa Cather. Not only was the writing good, but the book also felt very American (I won’t even try to explain that) and although it is a bit of a period piece, it has a fresh feeling to it that was very exciting. I am trying hard not to oversell this book, but there is no denying that I reacted to it positively and viscerally from page one.

Published in 1899, The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier a New Orleans society housewife who ends up throwing over convention in favor of her personal awakening. I won’t go into the plot because it is somewhat ridden with spoilers. Suffice it to say that the book was ahead of its time in dealing with the issues of female autonomy and the limited choices available to women during the period. In the process of telling the tale, Chopin wonderfully evokes well-to-do Orleans/Creole society. Not as Edith Wharton does with the very wealthy, old money New York milieu where their adherence to social mores seems innate, the society Chopin depicts has more of a self-conscious frontier quality to it. For Chopin’s characters their notions of society are inextricably intertwined with making money and getting ahead—nothing new in that—but it is a much more self-conscious, somewhat amateurish, rather provincial and parochial scene than the grand families of the East or in the old world. There is less room for eccentrics in Chopin’s world and this makes Edna’s choices much more limited and her non-conformance much more dangerous.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I highly recommend The Awakening.

Simon Tagged Me: Ten Random Books

Thomas19 Comments

Simon over at Stuck In A Book tagged me on a meme to randomly choose 10 books from my collection and then blog about them. These were his rules:

1.) Go to your bookshelves…

2.) Close your eyes. If you’re feeling really committed, blindfold yourself.
3.) Select ten books at random. Use more than one bookcase, if you have them, or piles by the bed, or… basically, wherever you keep books.
4.) Use these books to tell us about yourself – where and when you got them, who got them for you, what the book says about you, etc. etc…..
5.) Have fun! Be imaginative. Doesn’t matter if you’ve read them or not – be creative. It might not seem easy to start off with, and the links might be a little tenuous, but I think this is a fun way to do this sort of meme.
6.) Feel free to cheat a bit, if you need to…

So here we go:
 

A Folio Society Edition of Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate with illustrations by Ronald Pym. I bought it a few years ago at a used bookstore but I haven’t read it yet. Being an Anglophile, it just seemed like something I shouldn’t pass up.
I love Anita Brookner. I have read all but two of the 23 novels she has written since 1981 when she published her first fiction. They are all rather depressing tales of lonely people just waiting to die. That is a gross oversimplification of what Brookner covers in her novels, but is accurate nonetheless. I love, love, love these books. I like some better than others, but in the end, if you have read one you have kind of read them all.
I love planes. Got this on a bargain table at Borders just before Christmas.
This is my well thumbed copy of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I am not much of a poetry person but I love Whitman’s work. I really got to know it when I was getting my Masters in American Studies at the University of Hawaii in 1997. I have had some transcendent moments reading this book.
Love Trollope, but sometimes one needs a little help remembering who’s who.
One of the best Canadian novels you have never heard of. Set in dust-bowl era Skaskatchewan the rather quiet, uneventful outward action of the story belies the earth-shifting inner drama that takes place. This is the kind of book that Persephone or some other small press whould really reissue. I am not even sure it is still in print. My dear friend (and Canadian) Ron recommended this to me about 15 years ago. It still remains one of my all time favorite books.
The life of a used bookseller in Melbourne, Australia. Purchased on our trip to Australia back in 2007. Lots of fun for those who like books about books and bookselling.
This is Murdoch’s first novel, and the first Murdoch I ever read. Remains one of my favorites. This particular edition is the US First Edition that my husband gave to me on our third date. He had been travelling for work, was in a used book store, remembered that I was a fan of Murdoch and bought it for me. You might say literature sealed the deal. We have been together ever since.
Bought this in the gift shop at Sissinghurst I think. I haven’t read it yet. It appeals to the Urban Planner in me (which was Master’s degree number 2) and to the Anglophile of course.
The story of a char woman who saves up her money so she can go to Paris and buy a Christian Dior gown. A fantastically heart-warming and funny story, the title in the US is Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris.

Asia Trip II: Culture Shock in Cambodia

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JANUARY 1, 2010: We arrived in Bangkok just before midnight and were astounded to find that it was 81 degrees Farenheit with lots of humidty. It felt like we had walked in on the middle of a DC summer. We spent the night at the airport hotel to catch our flight to Siem Reap early the next morning.

JANUARY 2, 2010: The weather in when we landed in Siem Reap was so much more pleasant than Bangkok. Much cooler and very little humidity. The first thing we did when we got to our our hotel in Siem Reap was to take a tuk-tuk ride out to the river to see the community that lives along the shores. Most of those who live on these boats are Vietnamese rather than Cambodian.

It was fascinating to see how folks live. And disheartening to see the poverty and evironmental degradation.

We saw another mother/child on a bike where the child was much younger than this one and she was only being held on the bike by the mother with one hand behind her back as she used the other to hold the handle bars.
This woman ran a floating restaurant/grocery store.
Drinking water plant funded in part by the United States.