The Awakening

Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was born in St Louis, Missouri in a devout Catholic family. She began to write as a widowed mother of six producing over a hundred short stories that have since been anthologised for their psychological charge and tropes of female liberation. Among her most acclaimed short works of fiction are 'The Story of an Hour', 'The Storm' and 'A Pair of Silk Stockings'. Chopin's writing was influenced by some key realists of the era, in particular, Guy de Maupassant. Her novel The Awakening was rediscovered before the second wave of feminism after spending half a century in literary oblivion. The reason for such a belated recognition were harsh reviews from the male-dominated criticism of the age for the novel's content matter. Her distilled prose helps to reveal the core of the female psyche that underpins the literary vitality of this work and Chopin's entire oeuvre.