The Awakening in 2015 Reading Challenge [Closed]

Mar 08, 2013 Kallie rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

This book is about an existential crisis for the main p.o.v. character. Readers need to keep in mind that Chopin wrote The Awakening before women had the right to vote. Lack of enfranchisement is not simply a political handicap, immediately remedied by gaining that right, but a reflection of the status of women in Chopin's time. Women appeared to (generally) have two levels of status, either poor and worked nearly to death, or infantilized, which Chopin portrays in the sensual treatment of Edna, ...more

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Aug 15, 2013 Desertisland added it · review of another edition

I'm intrigued by books read by book characters: novel read by Edna which somewhat shocked her (lent by friends literate in French) was likely MADAME BOVARY. "The Awakening" seems like a woman's version of the basic story, like LAURA by Vera Caspary (turned into classic 1940's Noir film) seems feminist rebuttal to WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins.

Flaubert intended to make beauty out a sordid situation, about a reader ruined by romantic novels (perhaps a modern Don Quixote--tho latter character i ...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Tanya rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2012, list-1001-btrbyd, list-rory-gilmore, list-1001-btrbyd-2006

In those days, women really didn't have so many options as today. The process of her awakening and not wanting to be controlled is understandable and to a degree, so are the lack of options she had to take personal control of her destiny.

I didn't like reading this as a book, but found it more doable as an audiobook. ...more

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