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A review by slichto3
The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin
2.0
This was a chore for me. It's probably because I'm dumb, but that's who I am. I had a difficulty getting engaged in the stories and characters in this book. The stories were tough because the prose often lost me. I think I need more practice reading classics. The characters lost me because I couldn't understand them. They seemed petulant with little reason.
The Awakening and Selected Stories is a compilation of stories. The longest of these is called The Awakening. The Awakening is about a young married woman named Edna Pontellier. She falls in love with another man. This man moves away, because he realizes he's falling in love with Edna. Then Edna determines that she's not happy being married. She grows more and more distant from her husband, then kind of moves away and ghosts him. Meanwhile, she has an affair with another man and sort of enjoys her bachelorhood.
You can probably tell that I wasn't too sympathetic to Edna. I just felt that her motivations either didn't make sense or were incredibly selfish. Her husband wasn't really a bad guy, but she treated him like shit. She could have at least tried to communicate with him, but instead she just blew him off. I guess I can understand how frustrated women must have felt in marriage at the time. It really was a cage, and it seems like it would be really tough to have a satisfactory identity under those circumstances. But the book didn't communicate that! Instead, I had to try to reason it out for myself. Further, the book doesn't really make clear what she really wants to do. The other men that she's with seem pretty crappy. She becomes a painter, but doesn't seem to really care about it. I just don't get the character, so I didn't get the story. I understand that the situation for women really sucked, and that this was a novel attempt to show this, but... ugh, it felt ineffective.
I enjoyed the other short stories more, but, after reading The Awakening, I just wanted to get this book over with. Still, they are incisive and have some twists and engaging moments. My mind still wandered quite a bit while reading, but if you're more disciplined than me, you'll probably get more out of it.
On the whole, I wouldn't recommend this book. I felt that Madame Bovary was similar but much, much more affecting. Still, if you think I'm dumb, I'd love to hear what you think.
The Awakening and Selected Stories is a compilation of stories. The longest of these is called The Awakening. The Awakening is about a young married woman named Edna Pontellier. She falls in love with another man. This man moves away, because he realizes he's falling in love with Edna. Then Edna determines that she's not happy being married. She grows more and more distant from her husband, then kind of moves away and ghosts him. Meanwhile, she has an affair with another man and sort of enjoys her bachelorhood.
You can probably tell that I wasn't too sympathetic to Edna. I just felt that her motivations either didn't make sense or were incredibly selfish. Her husband wasn't really a bad guy, but she treated him like shit. She could have at least tried to communicate with him, but instead she just blew him off. I guess I can understand how frustrated women must have felt in marriage at the time. It really was a cage, and it seems like it would be really tough to have a satisfactory identity under those circumstances. But the book didn't communicate that! Instead, I had to try to reason it out for myself. Further, the book doesn't really make clear what she really wants to do. The other men that she's with seem pretty crappy. She becomes a painter, but doesn't seem to really care about it. I just don't get the character, so I didn't get the story. I understand that the situation for women really sucked, and that this was a novel attempt to show this, but... ugh, it felt ineffective.
I enjoyed the other short stories more, but, after reading The Awakening, I just wanted to get this book over with. Still, they are incisive and have some twists and engaging moments. My mind still wandered quite a bit while reading, but if you're more disciplined than me, you'll probably get more out of it.
On the whole, I wouldn't recommend this book. I felt that Madame Bovary was similar but much, much more affecting. Still, if you think I'm dumb, I'd love to hear what you think.