The Awakening - Kate Chopin

 You can purchase books from Rovingheights with the link below

https://rhbooks.com.ng/?ap_id=Jannaonyemaobi


Hello everyone, it has been a while. Today I am going to review a book titled The Awakening by Kate Chopin. 



The Awakening is a book set at the end of the  19th century in new Orleans. The plot is centered on Edna Pontellier, a young woman who struggles with femininity, marriage and motherhood. Edna is married to Mr Pontellier and they have two sons. Mr Pontellier always travels for business so Edna spends most of her time with her friend Adele Ratignolle; who is seen as the ideal wife and mother, Robert Lebrun; a man Edna forms a deep connection with and Mademoiselle Reisz; a gifted pianist who Edna seeks for advice.

Edna discovers an identity independent from her role as wife and mother and decides to explore it. She believes this awakening is what she was truly created to live for. Femininity and female independence was not a social norms at the time this book was released, so it had a lot of controversial views.

The awakening was written in a time where divorce was extremely rare, women were seen as possessions purchased by their husbands and were expected to stay faithful.

The themes of this book include;

Femininity; Gender roles and Social constraints, 

Solitude, 

Motherhood, 

Marriage, 

Romance,

Passion; as a form of expression.


The author also explores how difficult it is for people to admit the truth about themselves, we see that they prefer to lie because it is a whole lot easier believing in the lie you tell yourself than admitting the truth especially if social circumstances prevents you from doing so.

It is written in the third person omniscient narrative. While some sentences are short and precise, Kate Chopin could however take a few paragraphs to a page to describe one event or ones feeling.

While I enjoyed reading this book, I rated it 3.5 out of 5 stars because it was a bit difficult for me to understand some of the decisions Edna made, and this is probably because I was not born in the 1890s. Also, the end of the book did not sit quite well with me. Regardless, I would still recommend the book especially to those who enjoy reading books set in the 19th century.

If you have read the book, let me know what you think.

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