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Title: The Awakening (Cliffs Notes) by Maureen Kelly ISBN: 0764586521 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.91
Rating: 5
Summary: The Awakening, a radical story
Comment: This classic of the english literature, written by Kate Chopin, is a revolutionary novel for the time she had to live. It was bad seen and was forbiden for more than 50 years. The idea that a woman, a married woman, would laeve her husband and her children, to live with another man,wasnt allowed in her society. Im not saying that nowdays such a thing is allowed, but in those earlies days, this thing wasnt even thought, thats why this book can not have a happy end for Edna, because in no way her dream would have been come true. Personally Y think Robert loved Edna vey much, but he knew, he never could have been with the woman he loved. Her friend Madmoisselle Reisz, told her she needed to be strong to face her feelings and let Robert by side, because he finally would destroy her life. At the end that was what finally happened, Ednas complete life turned around Robert until that point, in the absence of her husband, she left home with the only purpuse of beeing alone until Roberts return. Y think that she was so in love, that she was forced to sink in the sea. Personally I found it an excellent book and it could bea very good advice for further generations.
Rating: 5
Summary: Readers...Awaken
Comment: Though at one time I, too, would have rated "The Awakening" one of the worst reads of a lifetime--for its predictability in the context of a woman oppressed by Victorian society, and the most undeveloped, unsympathetic heroine for whom I was unable to muster the slightest emotional investment--a nagging, relentless undercurrent of something I couldn't quite identify festered long inside me regarding this novel until the story, and author, were at last redeemed upon my third reading, in a literature course that finally ended this internal struggle.
Having much faith in Kate Chopin as a writer, I never felt 'the awakening' was about sex. This was too easy, even for a book set in Victorian Society. Further, it occurred to me that although women were limited beyond the domestic sphere in this era, suicide was not particular to the phenomenology of Victorian women (as it was, say, to Wall Street brokers at the onset of the Great Depression).
"The Awakening," in title and content, is irony. Edna Pontellier's awakening is about who she perceives herself to be, and who she actually is. She dreams of passion and romance and embarks on a summer affair, yet she married Leonce simply to spite her parents, who don't like him. She moves out of the family home to live on her own--with the permission, and resources, of Leonce--hardly independent. She claims to crave intimacy, yet she fails horribly at every intimate relationship in her life: she is detached with her children, indifferent to her husband, leery of her artist friend, and can hardly stand another minute at the bedside of her warm, maternal friend, Mrs. Ratignolle, to assist her in childbirth. (Ratignolle was my favorite character of all, read after read, simply because she was so content with herself.)
The Awakening? The surprise is on Edna, who is not the person she imagines herself to be. The irony? Edna Pontellier is never awakened to this, even at the bitter end. Feminists have adopted this book as their siren song...embarrassing at least! A feminist reading would, predictably, indict Victorian society as oppressive to women. Yawn...So that's new?!! Tell us something we don't know! I can tell you that concept wouldn't be enough to keep a book around for a hundred years.
But the concept that has sustained this novel over a century's time is its irony. And it is superbly subtle. I believe Chopin deliberately set up Victorian society as her backdrop to cleverly mask this irony...'the awakening' is not something good (a daring sexual awakening in a dark era for women): it is something horrible that evolves and is apparent to everyone except the person experiencing it. This reading makes Edna's character worth hating! Chopin herself hated Edna Pontellier and called her a liar through her imagined conversation with her artist friend at the end of the novel.
Chopin also cleverly tips the scales in Edna's favor in the first half of the novel, but a careful read reveals those scales weighed against her in the second half. I give the novel 5 stars because it took me three readings and help from a PhD lit professor to figure out this book. And I'm proud to say that I am, at last, awakened.
Rating: 5
Summary: truly thought-provoking
Comment: Can you imagine the impact this book must have had when it was first published in 1899? So scandalous! And it still has the power to make its readers eyes grow wide.
My only complaints are that the ending was unrealistic. (Of course, it fit the BOOK completely---it just wasn't practical.) I also think the portrayal of Edna as a nonchalant mother (as opposed to a nurturing mother) was unfair. Chopin wanted readers to view Edna as a victim, and when Edna turned around and neglected her own children...that didn't help our sympathy for her. ...Yet surely we readers realized this was a woman who was too oppressed and stifled to know what to do with herself.
Anyway, before I forget, a word of caution: HAVE A DICTIONARY NEARBY!! WHOA! Chopin was obviously VERY intelligent, along with being ahead of her time. Vocab. word after vocab. word, I tell ya.
Overall, the reader feels pity for practically every character. But it's not such a melancholy atmosphere that would make one want to stop reading it; it's merely proof that Chopin can weave a web of believable characters struggling with believable circumstances.
I would voice one more disappointment, though, if it wouldn't serve as a spoiler. ...Um, I think I was hoping that Edna would betray her husband a little more than she did...succumb to temptation a bit more...because I was rooting for her! I was sympathizing with her, and I thought she should get what she has longed for. But no such luck. Her conscience probably prevented something from going too far. Rats.
This is a sophisticated read laced with French phrases and lengthy paragraphs, but worth your while.
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Title: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston ISBN: 0060931418 Publisher: Perennial Classics Pub. Date: 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne ISBN: 0553210092 Publisher: Prentice Hall (K-12) Pub. Date: 01 March, 1981 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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Title: The Awakening (Cliffs Notes) by Kay Carey ISBN: 0822002183 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 1997 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: Heart of Darkness (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by Joseph Conrad, Woolley ISBN: 0140281630 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 1999 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: My Antonia by Willa Cather ISBN: 039575514X Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 1995 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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