{"product_id":"the-awakening-and-selected-stories-isbn-9780593468791","title":"The Awakening and Selected Stories","description":"\u003cb\u003eA feminist literary landmark: the daring story of a woman's search for personal freedom that was so controversial in 1899 that it ended its author's career.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eWith an effortless, sure-handed artistry, Kate Chopin tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a young mother and model wife, whose romantic involvement with a young man at a seaside resort allows her for the first time to imagine a freer life. Upon her return to New Orleans, Edna leaves her husband’s home for her own cottage, pursues her artistic ambitions, and begins an affair, only to discover that the constraints of social custom are more powerful than she had thought. Contemporary readers were shocked by the frank, unapologetic treatment of adultery in \u003ci\u003eThe Awakening\u003c\/i\u003e, but over the ensuing century the novel went on to achieve the status of a classic for its visionary prescience and narrative brilliance.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eIntroduction by Jane Smiley\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Awakening\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSelected Stories\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     Wiser Than a God\u003cbr\u003e    A Point at Issue!\u003cbr\u003e    A Shameful Affair\u003cbr\u003e    Miss McEnders\u003cbr\u003e     At the ’Cadian Ball\u003cbr\u003e     Désirée’s Baby \u003cbr\u003e     At Chênière Caminada \u003cbr\u003e     The Story of an Hour \u003cbr\u003e     Lilacs \u003cbr\u003e     The Kiss\u003cbr\u003e     Athénaïse \u003cbr\u003e     A Pair of Silk Stockings\"A Creole Bovary is this little novel of Miss Chopin's.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Willa Cather\u003cb\u003eKATE CHOPIN\u003c\/b\u003e (1851-1904) brought out her first novel, \u003ci\u003eAt Fault\u003c\/i\u003e, at her own expense in 1890. It was followed by two well-reviewed collections of her short stories: \u003ci\u003eBayou Folk\u003c\/i\u003e in 1894 and \u003ci\u003eA Night in Acadie\u003c\/i\u003e in 1897. \u003ci\u003eThe Awakening\u003c\/i\u003e appeared in 1899 to an explosion of disapproving reviews and the cancellation of her next book contract. However, within a decade of her early death at the age of fifty-four, her literary genius began to be widely recognized.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eABOUT THE INTRODUCER:  JANE SMILEY \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of numerous novels, including \u003ci\u003eA Thousand Acres,\u003c\/i\u003e which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the Last Hundred Years Trilogy: \u003ci\u003eSome Luck, Early Warning,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eGolden Age. H\u003c\/i\u003eer most recent novels are \u003ci\u003ePerestroika in Paris\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eA Dangerous Business\u003c\/i\u003e. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature.from the Introduction by Jane Smiley\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I first read \u003ci\u003eThe Awakening\u003c\/i\u003e, in my thirties, I didn’t know a thing about Kate Chopin, but her novel spoke to me because she delves so precisely into the mind of her pro­tagonist, Edna Pontellier. Edna has thoughts and feelings that I considered to be normal for married women of her age—a withdrawal from her “duties,” a retreat into her inner life, and an urge to discover more about the world, both her social world and the natural world. I had a little trouble with a writing style that I considered archaic, but at the same time, I was put­ting together a novel that made use of a very archaic style (\u003ci\u003eThe Greenlanders\u003c\/i\u003e), and so I appreciated what readers learn about the characters of a novel by uncovering the details of that style.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIt wasn’t until I read \u003ci\u003eThe Awakening \u003c\/i\u003eagain, in my fifties, that I got to know about the history of the novel and learned what a scandal its publication had caused. Not only did I still appreciate it, I appreciated it even more because an honest and explorative novelist is likely to cause a scandal at some point—novelists are literary explorers who use stories to uncover the secrets of human nature and display them. You don’t have to be the Marquis de Sade or Émile Zola to cause a scandal—in 1899, when \u003ci\u003eThe Awakening \u003c\/i\u003ewas published, you could do it by giving a wife and a mother a growing sense of independence and then honestly portraying the despair that her choices pres­ent to her.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eKate Chopin grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri, and was liv­ing in Saint Louis when she wrote \u003ci\u003eThe Awakening\u003c\/i\u003e, at around the same time that the Saint Louis suburb that I grew up in was being established. It doesn’t surprise me that Chopin turned out to be an independent-minded novelist and short story writer. Saint Louis has a way of infusing its children with a sense of curiosity and ambition, maybe because Saint Lou­isans have always known that you could get out of town—by steamboat, by airplane, or by Route 66 (Chuck Berry made sure we would never forget this). She was born Katherine O’Flaherty in 1851 in Saint Louis, and she understood from the beginning that her Irish and French inheritance set her apart from the American culture into which she was born. She was educated intermittently at a local Catholic school and was an avid reader in both English and French. Her father died in a bizarre railroad accident when she was only five—the state was celebrating a new bridge across the Missouri River, and various prominent figures were invited to take part in the first trip. The bridge collapsed.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eKate’s mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother devoted themselves to educating her, and in doing so, they gave her a strong sense of how independent, thoughtful, and self-supporting women could be. She also made a lifelong friend, Kitty Garesché, with whom she rode ponies, ice-skated, and climbed trees. Like Kate’s female relatives, Kitty was passion­ate about music, art, and gossiping—the perfect friend for a future novelist.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe Civil War, in Saint Louis, was a perfect example of the complicated history of Saint Louis, a home for both avid abo­litionists and slave-owning Southern sympathizers. According to Emily Toth, one of Chopin’s biographers, in early May, after the declaration of war, there was a skirmish at a local Con­federate barracks; twenty-eight people were killed, and the mayor declared martial law. Lots of citizens fled to Illinois, and Kitty Gareshé’s family, as Southern sympathizers, were kicked out of town. Not long afterward, Kate’s great-grandmother, from whom she had learned a lot, and her half brother died. Other relatives, in Louisiana, died during the siege at Vicks­burg, a battle that spurred more violence in Saint Louis. In the spring of 1865, the Confederate army planned an attack on Saint Louis, causing more flight and further barricading, but the war ended before they managed to instigate it. Kate was fourteen. After the war, she returned to school, to the Sacred Heart Academy (which is still there, now called the Academy of the Sacred Heart, and serves kindergarten through grade eight). At the academy, she met a young nun from Ireland who was not much older than she was and who encouraged Kate to fulfill the talents she saw in her student. Kate kept notes on all sorts of things—books she read, people she read about, events in her life —and she wrote poems, jokes, and observa­tions about women (Toth, \u003ci\u003eUnveiling Kate Chopin\u003c\/i\u003e, chapter 3).\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWhen she was eighteen, she “came out” into society (a significant Saint Louis tradition that I was spared), and she continued to write about her new social life as “a nuisance” (\u003ci\u003eUnveiling Kate Chopin\u003c\/i\u003e, 47). When she was twenty, she joined some friends on a steamboat trip to New Orleans and was charmed by the region. It may have been around that time that Kate met Oscar Chopin, from New Orleans, and fell in love. They married on June 9, 1870. She was twenty-one. They cel­ebrated with a honeymoon in Europe and were in Paris when Emperor Napoleon III was captured by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War and the Second French Empire was replaced by the French Third Republic. They escaped.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWhen Kate and Oscar returned to New Orleans, she was pregnant with her first child. Eventually, she and Oscar had six children. Toth suspects that in the fall of 1872, Kate met Edgar Degas, who was visiting New Orleans. Not only did Degas’s uncle and brother work in the same business as Oscar (and one of the paintings Degas produced in New Orleans was titled \u003ci\u003eA Cotton Office in New Orleans\u003c\/i\u003e), Degas was also an avid walker and observer. There is a great deal of circumstantial evi­dence that \u003ci\u003eThe Awakening \u003c\/i\u003ewas inspired by information Degas may have exchanged with Kate as they strolled together or socialized in New Orleans (see below).\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChopin’s life now became very busy, of course, but she remained independent, interested in her own career, and con­stantly observant. As an independent, active young woman from Saint Louis, she did not completely fit in in New Orleans, but Oscar didn’t try to make her. As someone who loves to walk, observe, and eavesdrop myself, I know that doing this teaches a writer much of what she knows and also sparks inspi­ration. Through the 1870s, while raising her children, Cho­pin also had to navigate post–Civil War unrest, a yellow fever outbreak, and in 1879, the failure of Oscar’s business (cotton trading between the growers and the manufacturers). The fam­ily moved out of New Orleans to Cloutierville, where Oscar’s relatives lived, 225 miles northwest of New Orleans. Oscar bought the local general store, and Kate continued to be her independent and observant self, which meant that in a very small town (the population now is about eight hundred), she was judged both positively (for her looks) and negatively (for her habit of doing what she wished, including going for solo evening horseback rides). She began to spend more time back in Saint Louis, and Oscar dealt with several bouts of illness. He died in December 1882. Kate was thirty-two, her oldest child was ten, and her youngest was not quite three. Kate returned to Saint Louis.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFor the next seventeen years, Kate Chopin drew on her expe­riences in Louisiana (and, to some degree, in Saint Louis) to fulfill her ambitions and support her family. She wrote ninety-seven short stories, many of which were published in local or national magazines, including \u003ci\u003eVogue \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic \u003c\/i\u003e(see \u003ci\u003eThe Complete Works of Kate Chopin\u003c\/i\u003e, edited by Per Seyersted), and three books, \u003ci\u003eBayou Folk\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAt Fault\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Awakening\u003c\/i\u003e. She was eager to express herself and also to demonstrate what she had learned from her experiences, but she also knew that she had to conform more or less to the ways in which women (and moth­ers, or, perhaps, especially mothers) were expected to comport themselves in Saint Louis and Louisiana. Perhaps we can say that she walked along many treacherous paths that abounded in edges and even cliffs, which included social dangers, eco­nomic dangers, artistic dangers, and emotional dangers of the sort that women writers of my generation have rarely had to deal with (I even wrote a book that did its best to get banned, because banning spurs discussions and often sales in our liter­ary world—\u003ci\u003eTen Days in the Hills\u003c\/i\u003e, about the beginning of the Iraq War—but it did not get banned).\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWhen Chopin was writing her stories, the ones with sur­prise endings were especially popular (think O. Henry or Saki). Perhaps Chopin’s most popular story, “Désirée’s Baby,” was admired because of that, too, but she does not use the surprise ending for humor, as they often did (see “Tobermory,” Saki’s story about a talking cat, or O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief”). She uses it to investigate and display the idio­syncratic inner lives of her apparently normal (and socially accepted) characters. “Désirée’s Baby” was published in \u003ci\u003eVogue \u003c\/i\u003ein January 1893, and so had a large audience of women, and “The Kiss” was also published in \u003ci\u003eVogue \u003c\/i\u003e(September 1894). The surprise in “Désirée’s Baby” is who is at fault for breaking anti-miscegenation laws, and the surprise in “The Kiss” is what the young woman really feels, in spite of what she says. Chopin explores different types of surprises. “The Story of an Hour” is very short but, perhaps, the most affecting, and it seems to set up some of the themes that Chopin explores in \u003ci\u003eThe Awaken­ing\u003c\/i\u003e. I think my favorite is “Lilacs,” and not only because I love lilacs and Chopin evokes their beauty and fragrance beauti­fully. It is set in a convent near Paris and, perhaps, was partially inspired by Chopin’s relationship with her childhood friend Kitty Garesché, who had become a nun. The protagonist visits the convent every year for about two weeks, and her visit is a beloved respite from her otherwise chaotic life. Because the story is perhaps Chopin’s longest (and for that reason, she had a difficult time finding a magazine willing to publish it), the surprise that the protagonist has to endure is more affecting than in her other stories, though not quite as shocking.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWhat sets these stories apart from ones written now is that even though Chopin wanted to critique her world, give her female characters voices, and portray their emotional lives, she had to be so discreet that to us it is almost as if she is tell­ing us a secret that we can’t understand. However, the secrets she wanted to reveal were understandable to the newspapers and magazines that published her stories, and Chopin did have some difficulty placing a few of them. But, like all determined writers, she wanted to say what she had to say. And that brings us to \u003ci\u003eThe Awakening\u003c\/i\u003e. . . . . ","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301665657061,"sku":"NP9780593468791","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593468791.jpg?v=1767738238","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-awakening-and-selected-stories-isbn-9780593468791","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}