The Awakening

Description

Condemned as sordid and immoral on its first publication in 1899, this story of a woman trapped in her marriage effectively ended Chopin's career but was revived as a proto-feminist classic in the 1970s. It is one of the earliest American novels to focus on women's issues without condescension, blending a realistic narrative, incisive social commentary and psychological complexity and is arguably a precursor to Hemingway and Faulkner, whilst echoing the works of Edith Wharton and Henry James.

Kate Chopin lived in Louisiana during her marriage and began to write after her husband's death. In addition to The Awakening, she wrote a novel, At Fault, and more than 100 short stories.

"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read." -Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer "Small wonders." -Time Out London "[F]irst-rate...astutely selected and attractively packaged...indisputably great works." -Adam Begley, The New York Observer "I've always been haunted by Bartleby, the proto-slacker. But it's the handsomely minimalist cover of the Melville House edition that gets me here, one of many in the small publisher's fine 'Art of the Novella' series." -The New Yorker "The Art of the Novella series is sort of an anti-Kindle. What these singular, distinctive titles celebrate is book-ness. They're slim enough to be portable but showy enough to be conspicuously consumed-tiny little objects that demand to be loved for the commodities they are." -KQED (NPR San Francisco) "Some like it short, and if you're one of them, Melville House, an independent publisher based in Brooklyn, has a line of books for you... elegant-looking paperback editions ...a good read in a small package." -The Wall Street Journal