The Awakening Reflection

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is a book about one woman, Edna Pontellier, and about every woman in her society. Though it is not in itself a book of feminist teachings, its purpose was to enlighten---and hopefully awaken---its female readers to their selves and their humanity by showing the awakening of one such woman. Presumably, her intended audience was young to middle-aged women, both married and single, who were interested in love stories, art, scandals, or social analysis. As a young, single woman interested in social analysis books, I found The Awakening to be a very quietly intense book that I saw much of myself in.
Everyone was calmly tense; everyone seemed to know---exactly or vaguely---what was going on with Edna, but they all seemed afraid to say something, as though one misstep would set off a chain reaction. There’s always this fear in people that acknowledging something will make …show more content…
Though the writing style is not the type I typically prefer, and I did not relate to the personality of the protagonist, the book seemed almost as though it was written for me, and that is the sign of a truly great work---that someone who, having never met the author or engaged in the exact experience of the character, can see themselves in the struggle. The slow burn of Edna’s growth paced the book beautifully: I felt like I could’ve set the book down if I had wanted to, I didn’t feel desperate to get to the climax, I simply was so interested in Edna that I didn’t notice how slowly time was passing. I don’t care for books that are so interesting that there is a need to fly through them at a breakneck pace, like many of today’s popular books. Rather, I like the books that are written so that written to be analyzed in real time, books that are written to provoke thought through fiction rather than provoke fiction through action. I believe that this is one of those books that will stay with me wherever I