I guess I can understand why The Awakening is considered so important in the development of the feminist canon. At the same time, I can understand why it was rejected so adamantly in its own time. Chopin is an okay writer. Her work, however, seethes ignorance. Her work was ignored in its time because it really was not worth the recognition. Anyway, that’s my humble, and not so intellectual, opinion.

The protagonist, 29, seems to awaken into an adolescence of sorts in this book. In the guise of discovering her sexuality and moving towards some kind of self-actualization, she does little more than become the town trollop while engaging in pseudo intellectual banter and hysterics. Yes, I said hysterics.

She addresses such issues as being a prisoner of marriage, society, social graces, and motherhood. At the same time, she never makes the mental baby steps towards a lifestyle that would give her the power of her own agency. She is spoiled, coddled, and does not have the courage to be a self sufficient person. When she decides to rebel, she does it by cheating on her husband, abandoning her children and responsibilities. All the time she is surrounded by servants, extravagance, and people feeding her distorted sense of entitlement. Ultimately she is humiliated when someone with a better sense of reality rejects her advances. She is left to build this new life for herself alone. Truly alone. This tremendous blow leads her to suicide. She could not handle standing on her own two feet.

You can’t tell me that Chopin’s work is so juvenile and lacking because she was the first. She wasn’t. Not in Creole Louisiana. Look at Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, even Mary Shelley. That was literature. Those were the building blocks of feminist writing. Chopin is spoiled, confused, and completely unaware of how the world around her really works.