I can’t remember how I discovered Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’. I have had the book for years. I must have got it during one of my weekend bookshop visits. I used to buy a lot of Bantam classics those days and I think I got it then. I normally remember the bookshop from which I had bought a book, but I can’t remember the bookshop from which I had got Kate Chopin’s book. By some deductive reasoning, I have narrowed down the suspects to two. And that is where it will stay, I think.
I don’t know why Chopin’s book was lying unread on my shelf for so long. It is not too long and the story is interesting. Well, fortunately for me, the stars got aligned this weekend and I picked the book to read. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop. I put down everything else I was doing – tasks, chores, TV – and read it till I finished it. Here is what I think.
‘The Awakening’ is about Edna Pontellier, who is in her late twenties, happily married by conventional standards, has a husband who is successful in his profession and takes care of her and two children who are delightful and undemanding. She has all the material comforts that a woman of her era would need. She also has a wonderful circle of friends, especially Adèle Ratignolle, who is her closest friend and Robert Lebrun who is always there with her during the summer. Once, while spending the summer holiday near the sea, with Robert for company during most days, something happens to Edna. Her heart opens up and she sees something new and it is the end of life as she knows it. She starts falling in love with Robert. She wants to do something new – like painting. She starts yearning for more independence. She wants to move away from her husband and her family, though she loves them, and get her own house and paint in that house. All these new thoughts and emotions explode in her heart at around the same time. As Chopin says while describing this event :
“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in this tumult!”
Things become complicated for Edna after that. Is Edna able to leave her home and chart an independent life path successfully? What does her family feel about it? Can Edna part from her husband, whom she likes, and her children, whom she loves? What does her best friend Adèle have to say about it? Does Robert return her love? And if things don’t work out what would Edna do? The answers to all these questions form the rest of the story.
‘The Awakening’ has been frequently compared to ‘Madame Bovary’. I haven’t read ‘Madame Bovary’ and so I am not able to compare. On its own, I think it is a story of a woman who is trying to discover herself and her relationship to the world around her and in the process how her heart opens up to new vistas and she strives for freedom and an independent expression of her vision which contradicts with the social norms of her era and the complexities which arise from that and how it affects her and how she copes with them. It is a beautiful story, though with a tragic ending, and I loved it. It is definitely one of my favourite reads of the year. (The introduction said that the book was banned in America, when it was published, for its ‘indecency’. I couldn’t believe it when I read that. The book didn’t deserve to be banned. It deserved literary awards. I can imagine how heartbroken Kate Chopin must have been when the literary world spurned her masterpiece.)
The edition of the book I read had a beautiful introduction by Marilynne Robinson, she of ‘Housekeeping’ and ‘Gilead’ fame. It also had eight short stories. I liked most of the stories. My favourite was ‘Désirée’s Baby’. (If you are curious about it, here is the story – an orphan girl is adopted by a childless couple. When she grows up, a young man from a distinguished family meets her one day and falls in love with her at first sight. They get married and a year later she becomes a mother. Puzzlingly, though our heroine and her husband are white, the baby is not. The husband starts hating his wife after that. What happens after that? What is the truth? – you should read the story to find out. It read like a Heinrich von Kleist story to me.). I also loved ‘A Reflection’ and ‘A Pair of Silk Stockings’.
There is a small, interesting story behind ‘Désirée’s Baby’. I first discovered ‘Désirée’s Baby’ through a book that I read years back called ‘River Town’ by Peter Hessler. It is Hessler’s account of his time in China when he spent a couple of years teaching English in a small town in Sichuan province near the bend of the Yangtze river. Hessler said in the book that he frequently read and discussed ‘Désirée’s Baby’ with his students in English class. I am happy to have finally read it. Now I wonder what Hessler discussed with his students on the story. I should go back and read ‘River Town’ again.
I will leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book. Kate Chopin’s prose is beautiful and brilliant.
The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining.
The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned newly awakened being demanded.
Robert’s going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing.
There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.
There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why, – when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood.
“There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the impression of an oar upon the water.”
Have you read ‘The Awakening’? What do you think about it? Have you read ‘Désirée’s Baby’?
I reject the comparison with Madame Bovary. Flaubert’s character is deluded in her values, seeking pleasure and material things. That’s why she breaks the conventional rules — while trying to cover her tracks. The heroine here is more concerned with self development and self expression. For a woman, that requires breaking the conventional rules.
Their goals were quite different.
Interesting to know that, Nancy. I haven’t read ‘Madame Bovary’ yet. I should read that soon and compare. I loved what you said about the heroine of ‘The Awakening’ – on how she is concerned with self development and self expression. Very beautifully put.
Ah, good to see you back again, Vishy. Visited your blog just the other day, and saw you hadn’t posted in a while. Hope you’ve been OK.
I have the opposite problem to you – I’ve read Madame Bovary, but not The Awakening. We need a Star Trek-style mind meld 🙂
Thanks Andrew 🙂 Nice to see you too. I have not blogged much in the past month – got distracted by life. Hope you are doing well.
Star Trek style mind meld sounds interesting 🙂 Nice to know that you have read ‘Madame Bovary’. Did you like the book? I am hearing conflicting thoughts about it – some readers say that it is wonderful while others say that it is not – and so haven’t picked it up yet.
Yes, I liked Madame Bovary, and had more sympathy for Emma than some of your other commenters. To me she was trying to escape from a life that felt constricting, and although she was naive and made bad choices, I could understand where they came from. Worth a read, I think, since the mind meld is probably out of the question.
Interesting to know that, Andrew. It is sad that Emma Bovary had to make questionable choices to get out of her contricting life. I will try to read ‘Madame Bovary’ soon. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Great review and commentary, Vishy; I think I’d like this book very much. I do like the quotes you’ve included, especially the penultimate two concerning days when Edna was happy and days when she was unhappy.
I’ve yet to read Madame Bovary, although I have the Lydia Davis translation waiting patiently.
Thanks Jacqui! Hope you get to read Chopin’s book and like it. I will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it. Those lines about Edna being happy and unhappy are so beautiful, aren’t they?
So nice to know that you have the Lydia Davis translation of ‘Madame Bovary’. I remember it creating a lot of waves when it came out. Hope you enjoy reading it. Will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.
Loved to have a post of yours show up in my mail after such a long time! I haven’t read The Awakening, and I struggled with Madame Bovary (it’s still sitting half-read on my shelf.) But this does sound wonderfully written. And I respect every book that makes you put every thing else aside and sucks you in! That quote about beginnings is fabulously true, makes me want to pick up this book at once. 🙂
Thanks Priya 🙂 Hope you get to read Chopin’s book and like it. It is not very long (around 150 pages) and so it is a quick read. Chopin’s prose is so beautiful and the story is also wonderful. I will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it. Happy reading!
I love Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and I adore the quotes you have selected Vishy, especially the first one, the allure of the sea – so poignant and yet so devastating.
My copy had just ‘A Reflection’ accompanying it and I remember writing it out word for word in a notebook and relating so well to both the quiet of the wayside and the rhythm of the march, Kate Chopin found such perfect words, like a melody almost, to express a kind of human desire that expressed itself and its opposite, that contraditction of wanting the thing and also its opposite, the human dilemma.
Madame Bovary, I also loved, but for the richness of the prose perhaps more than the sentiment of the character, as Nancy points out. Madame Bovary and Gustave Flaubert surprised me given I don’t read so many classics, it felt more contemporary and I was sucked in by the use of language. I didn’t care what she did, the way he expresses her thoughts is to dwell in reading bliss.
Another book that comes to mind is Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept. Have you read it? If not, keep an eye out for it.
So good to be reading your reviews again Vishy! Missed you.
Thanks Claire 🙂 I am very happy to be back. Nice to know that you liked ‘The Awakening’ too. That passage on the sea is so beautiful, isn’t it? I was heartbroken when it came again in the end as a premonition of the tragic things to come. Glad to know that you liked ‘A Reflection’ too. It is so beautiful – Chopin says so many profound things in less than a page. I hope you get to read ‘Désirée’s Baby’ and ‘A Pair of Silk Stockings’. They are wonderful too. Thanks for recommending Elizabeth Smart’s ‘By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept’. I haven’t read it but have heard of it. It is such a powerful title. I want to read it sometime. I will look for it.
Nice to see you back, Vishy and thank you for this wonderful review.
Have you seen my suggestions of Fernando Pessoa’s translations? If not, just let me know and I’ll send them to you again.
Thanks Isolete 🙂 Thanks a lot for telling me about Richard Zenith’s translation of Fernando Pessoa’s poems. I haven’t got it yet, but I have added it to my list of books that I am planning to get soon. I am looking forward to reading Pessoa’s poems and I will share my thoughts on them with you once I get to read them.
It’s so good to see you liked this book, Vishy.
I admire the author, to write about such a delicate subject in 1899 must have been a great act of courage.
Madame Bovary was different – I thought the heroine, Emma, was spoiled, unreasonable, and very intense, while Edna in The Awakening was a woman who wakes up slowly to a new life. I liked them both for different reasons.
Nice to know that you liked Chopin’s book too, Delia. I agree with you – it must have taken a lot of courage for Kate Chopin to write this book in 1899. Interesting to hear your thoughts on Emma Bovary. Glad to know that you liked ‘Madame Bovary’ too. I hope to read that sometime soon and compare.
I’m so glad you liked it. As you know it’s one of my favourite novels. Reading the quotes makes me want to re-read it.
I don’t think this is anything like Mme Bovary. As great as Mme Bovary is, I didn’t love it and had no feelings for the heroine whatsoever. It’s annoying that every time someone commits adultery or thinks about it in a novel, the book ends up being compared to Flaubert’s novel.
Thanks for gushing about Chopin’s book, Caroline. It inspired me to read the book sooner. I wish she had written more novels. I would have loved to read all of them. Yes, I agree with you – it is sad that many novels with unconventional heroines get compared to ‘Madame Bovary’. I remember when I read Elke Schmitter’s ‘Mrs.Sartoris’, I discovered that, that was also compared to ‘Madame Bovary’ 🙂
What a wonderful read for you to enjoy this summer. I do agree with Caroline about the comparison to Madame Bovary. Whenever I read comments that compare books such as those I have the feeling that the reviewer really didn’t read the book- perhaps just the comments on the back of the book!
One thing that stands out in my memory about reading the book is that I could actually feel the humid, cloying heat, and also felt Edna’s restless ennui. In her heart I felt that Robert was who she attached her emotions to, but that he was partly the vehicle for expressing the changes within her…not just her attachment to him.
As for banned books, it is actually an interesting situation. Any group of a community can ban a book…normally it would be banned at a local library. It then usually becomes news. The news generated from this ban, as well as the title being banned, and added to lists stirs up far more i terest in a book than before it was banned. The Awakening was actaully a book that was taught in high schools where I worked. The beauty of banned books was most evident during banned book week when I would make large displays of books that had been banned somewhere in the US. Students became really curious about these titles and many students would check them out. I could say a lot more about that, but will stop here.
I can only think of a few books that were not available in the US when I wanted to read them, I believe around 1980. Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and also Tropic of Capricorn h just couldn’t be found…of course that was in the pre-computer days so it wasn’t so easy to find “hard to find” items in thlse days. I remember finding copies in Paris on a very stormy, rainy day. I haven’t finished either book though because of Miller’s comments about women…someday, though. Sorry for the long digression…but back to my point, that a banned book in the US doesn’t mean that it isn’t available, or used in schools…just means that somewhere it has been banned. The Bible is one such book.
THanks for your excellent review of a very sad and lovely book.
Thanks for the long, wonderful comment, Heidi. I agree with you – sometimes people read comments about different books without actually reading the actual books themselves and start comparing them. I liked very much what you said about how Robert was partly Edna’s vehicle for expressing the changes within her – it made me think a lot.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on banned books. It is interesting that a book which is banned generates more interest than it did before. And it is fascinating and surprising that The Bible is also one such banned book 🙂 I remember reading Irving Wallace’s novel on banned books ‘The Seven Minutes’ years back in which he quotes passages from The Bible which people might find objectionable, but I didn’t know that in some places The Bible was actually banned. Nice to know that ‘The Awakening’ is taught in high schools. It must lead to a lot of interesting discussions in class. I have seen banned book week celebrated in the blogosphere, but I didn’t know that it is an actual event celebrated across libraries. It is so wonderful that you used to display many wonderful banned titles during that time. I wish I had been able to visit your library during banned book week 🙂
Interesting to read your thoughts on Henry Miller’s books. I think they were banned for a long time. I have read that before the current era (starting probably from the early ’70s when the censorship laws across the world were relaxed) many writers (who wrote in English) used to publish books which were controversial, through Obelisk press in Paris. So, it is interesting that you found Henry Miller’s book there. I read the introduction to the book when I first got it and I found it beautiful, but I couldn’t read the main book because it couldn’t hold my attention. Maybe I will try again one of these days. Sorry to know about Miller’s comments on women. Now I don’t know whether I will read his books.
I read this book for class a few years ago, and loved it. It’s very sad to know it was banned for a while :(, but I guess that’s the fate of books dealing with “uncomfortable” things that might contest social mores… in any way! And I think that’s precisely why books like this are necessary. And of course, because it’s beautifully written.
Great review! 🙂
Thanks Marta. Nice to know that you have read the book and liked it. It is sad when books are banned and I find it interesting that most times those banned books attain great critical acclaim and cult status with later generations.
Good to have you back Vishy.
Oh, I really need to read this one. There’s a feminist feeling in it that appeals to me.
I’ve read (and reviewed) Madame Bovary. From your post I don’t think there’s in The Awakening the caustic tone there is in Flaubert. He just shoots at society with a shotgun in this one. What Emma Bovary does is wrong but the way she does it had her author trialed for immorality.
I really recommend the Flaubert.
Thanks Emma. Hope you get to read Kate Chopin’s book and like it. I will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it. I loved the story and Chopin’s prose. I hope to read it again sometime.
I remember your review of ‘Madame Bovary’. I want to read it sometime. Hopefully later this year. Thanks for recommending it.
I’ve heard of both stories but never looked into them. I would love to read both as it sounds as though they’re packed with detail, and also I can suppose answers for the baby, that must be a rather compelling ride.
Hope you get to read them, Charlie. I will look forward to hearing your thoughts on them. I really loved ‘Désirée’s Baby’.
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I recently picked up a copy of Missing Person by Patrick Modiano based on the review you wrote last year. I’m going to Paris in a few weeks and I’m thinking about bringing it with me for reading on the plane. It’s the only unread French book I have and it seems appropriate to bring a book written by a Frenchman. It might not be long enough, though.
That is what I wanted to tell you. Imagine my surprise when I get over here only to discover that you yourself are a missing person! It’s been over a month without a post. I hope you are doing well and nothing serious has kept you away from your book reviews. I look forward to your eventual return.
Nice to know that, M—–l. Hope you enjoy Modiano’s book. I will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it. So wonderful to know that you are travelling to Paris soon! So jealous of you! Have a wonderful time! I will look forward to reading about your Paris adventures and seeing the pictures.
I am doing well, thank you for asking. Have been on a blogging slump recently, but am getting back to it now.
I wanted to write to you about Geoges Perec’s ‘Void’. Will write to you separately.
[…] The Awakening by Kate Chopin – I have wanted to read Kate Chopin’s only novel for years. Finally got to read it. Chopin’s prose is exquisite and her sensitive portrayal of a woman who yearns to be free is beautifully told. A book which I will be reading again. […]
I have always been amazed by Kate Chopin’s writing. I love The Awakening, although it is emotionally difficult to read. I haven’t read Desiree’s Baby, and it sounds wonderful. Thanks for reviewing this, Vishy!
So glad to know that you like Kate Chopin, Valorie. I wish she had written more novels. I hope you get to read Desiree’s Baby. It is a beautiful story with a heartbreaking twist in the end.
[…] owe the discovery of The Awakening to Vishy and read his post here. Many thanks, Vishy, I loved it and I think it’s an important milestone in the 19thC […]