Kate Chopin, the awakening : complete, authoritative text with biographical and historical contexts, critical history, and essays from five contemporary critical perspectives

This volume reprints the full text of The Awakening , together with a detailed introduction placing the work in its biographical and historical context. Five contemporary critical essays reflecting diverse ways of approaching the text are also reprinted, including an essay from Elaine Showalter giving a feminist perspective on the work. Tradition And The Female Talent: The Awakening As A Solitary Book / Elaine Showalter -- Personal Property: Exchange Value And The Female Self In The Awakening / Margit Stange -- Thanatos And Eros: Kate Chopin's The Awakening / Cynthia Griffin Wolff -- A Language Which Nobody Understood: Emancipatory Strategies In The Awakening / Patricia S. Yaeger -- The Construction Of Ambiguity In The Awakening: A Linguistic Analysis / Paula A. Treichler. Tradition And The Female Talent: The Awakening As A Solitary Book / Elaine Showalter -- Personal Property: Exchange Value And The Female Self In The Awakening / Margit Stange -- Thanatos And Eros: Kate Chopin's The Awakening / Cynthia Griffin Wolff -- A Language Which Nobody Understood: Emancipatory Strategies In The Awakening / Patricia S. Yaeger -- The Construction Of Ambiguity In The Awakening: A Linguistic Analysis / Paula A. Treichler. Edited By Nancy A. Walker. Includes Bibliographical References. This edition of Chopin's classic novel presents the 1969 Seyersted text along with five critical essays--newly commissioned of revised for a student audience--that read The Awakening from five contemporary critical perspectives. Each critical essay is accompanied by a succinct introduction to the history, principles, and practice of the critical perspective, and a bibliography that promotes further exploration of that approach. The text and essays are further complemented by an introduction providing biographical and historical contexts to Chopin and The Awakening, a survey of critical responses to the novel since its initial publication, and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms --back cover The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South. It is one of the earliest American novels that focuses on women's issues without condescension. It is also widely seen as a landmark work of early feminism, generating a mixed reaction from contemporary readers and critics. Front Matter....Pages i-viii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Introduction: Biographical and Historical Contexts....Pages 3-18 The Awakening....Pages 19-137 Front Matter....Pages 139-139 A Critical History of The Awakening....Pages 141-157 Feminist Criticism and The Awakening....Pages 158-189 The New Historicism and The Awakening....Pages 190-217 Psychoanalytic Criticism and The Awakening....Pages 218-258 Deconstruction and The Awakening....Pages 259-296 Reader-Response Criticism and The Awakening....Pages 297-328 Back Matter....Pages 329-343 The Awakening (1899), by Kate Chopin, tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a wife and mother living in Victorian-era New Orleans. On a summer vacation with her children off the coast of New Orleans, Edna spends time with a young man named Robert LeBrun, the son of vacationing friends. Getting to know Robert in the island's lush and soothing environment leads to a series of unexpected, escalating events as Edna confronts and startlingly acts upon her deepening feelings of attraction and desire A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!"