The Awakening: A Novel of Self and Society

A late nineteenth-century American novel examining the interior life of Edna Pontellier within the social framework of the Gulf Coast. First published in 1899, The Awakening traces Edna's gradual movement away from the expectations of marriage, motherhood, and social conformity, toward a more self-directed, though uncertain, sense of identity.

Set primarily in Louisiana, the novel situates its central figure within a carefully observed domestic and social environment, where shifts in percept...