The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin

Īnyhow last year I read a small collection of five of her short stories: A pair of Silk stockings, I was pretty impressed by them and so keen to return to The Awakening which I had only vague languid memories of, and perhaps I had seen a review here on Goodreads that roused me from my sleepiness - I am particularly interested in those reviews which draw out the comparison with Aphrodite, because it is there and it works and does not work, I wonder if this image is more linked with a broader idea of transcending and escaping human constraints rather than more narrowly than that Edna is an avatar of the Goddess cruelly marooned in Louisana. It made an impression on me as an archetypal nineteenth century story of an upper class woman achieving a degree of personal liberation and then finding in typical nineteenth century style that there was no place for her apart from in the graveyard figuratively speaking. I first read The Awakening some years ago, I think in a cheap edition with a couple of her other stories.

The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin