Awakening : A Novel

The Awakening
Bok av Kate Chopin
First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief  novel so disturbed critics and the public that it  was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read  and admired, The Awakening has  been hailed as an early vision of woman's  emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman's  abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her  awakening to desires and passions that threated to  consumer her. Originally entitled "A Solitary  Soul," this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old  Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction,  rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman  Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in  search of self-discovery turns away from convention and  society, and toward the primal, from convention  and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly  attracted to nature and the sensesThe  Awakening, Kate Chopin's last novel, has been  praised by Edmund Wilson as "beautifully  written." And Willa Cather described its style as  "exquisite," "sensitive," and  "iridescent." This edition of The  Awakening also includes a selection of  short stories by Kate Chopin. "This seems to me a  higher order of feminism than repeating the story  of woman as victim... Kate Chopin gives her female  protagonist the central role, normally reserved  for Man, in a meditation on identity and culture,  consciousness and art." -- From the  introduction by Marilynne Robinson.
En underbart vacker och poetisk bok om en kvinnas dröm att slå sig fri från samhällets inhängnad. Utspelas under sekelskiftet 18-1900 i de sk franska kvarteren i New Orleans. En kvinnas plats var i hemmet men Edna drömmer om något större, något mer, men det kan komma till ett stort pris.

Jag har läst många böcker men skulle jag välja en favorit så är det denna, tänker på den ofta. Språket och sättet att bära historian framåt är enastående och poetiskt, den kommer att stanna med dig länge. En juvel som många missat.

Nyckelord: Kvinnohistoria, New Orleans, sekelskifte, familj, kärlek, feminism och könsroller.