The Awakening and Selected Stories (Modern Library) - Hardcover

Chopin, Kate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039460508X ISBN 13: 9780394605081

Publisher: Modern Library, 1984

Synopsis

Edited with an Introduction, by Nina Baym

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The Awakening shocked turn-of-the-century readers and reviewers with its treatment of sex and suicide.  In a departure from literary convention, Kate Chopin failed to condemn her heroine's desire for an affair with the son of a Louisiana resort owner, whom she meets on vacation.  The power of sensuality, the delusion of ecstatic love, and the solitude that accompanies the trappings of middle- and upper-class convention are themes of this now-classic novel.  

The book was influenced by French writers ranging from Flaubert to Maupassant, and can be seen as a precursor of the impressionistic, mood-driven novels of Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes.  Variously called "vulgar," "unhealthily introspective," and "morbid," the book was neglected for several decades, not least because it was written by a "regional" woman writer.  This edition also includes selected stories from Kate Chopin's Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, and an introduction and notes by Nina Baym.

From the Back Cover:

"A Creole Bovary is this little novel of Miss Chopin's."
--Willa Cather

About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Library
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 039460508X
• ISBN 13: 9780394605081
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416