This one was on Jane Smiley’s list, but since I’d wanted to read it for a really long time and it was eye-level in the “cheap classics” section of the bookstore at Christmas time, I figured I had to include it on mine, too. It’s considered a classic piece of feminist literature, which may be part of the reason I wanted to read it, but also part of the reason I hadn’t read it yet.
The Awakening is about Edna Pontellier, a woman living in New Orleans at the turn of the century. At the start of the book, Edna is a dutiful wife and mother, away with her family on a vacation. But right from the beginning, something isn’t quite right with her world. You get the sense that even in her comfortable life, in an idyllic setting, Edna isn’t happy. She chafes against her role in society.
The novel caused a lot of controversy when it was published in 1899, and it’s not hard to see why when you read it. Even today, some of the reviews on Amazon.com point to Edna’s behavior as “selfish.” I guess on many levels it is – she abandons her role as wife and mother, stops taking visitors, keeps questionable company, and indulges her passions for art. She doesn’t fit the mold, and it seems to unnerve everyone… including Robert Lebrun, the young man with whom she falls in love and, in many ways, the person who sets her transformation in motion.
I’m going to admit right here that I was unsettled by the ending. Enough that I had to look for spoilers on the internet to see if I’d interpreted it correctly. I can’t decide if the ending is the only way it could end, or if I feel cheated by it, or both. I do know that that the book in general made me ponder, as great books always do, how much and how little has changed in 100 years.