The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.

She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become antagonistic.

“She’s got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women;

Woman, my dear friend, is a very peculiar and delicate organism—a sensitive and highly organized woman, such as I know Mrs. Pontellier to be, is especially peculiar. It would require an inspired psychologist to deal successfully with them. And when ordinary fellows like you and me attempt to cope with their idiosyncrasies the result is bungling.

noted a subtle change which had transformed her from the listless woman he had known into a being who, for the moment, seemed palpitant with the forces of life. Her speech was warm and energetic. There was no repression in her glance or gesture. She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.

a radiant peace settled upon her when she at last found herself alone.

now that her time was completely her own to do with as she liked.

striving not toward accomplishment, she drew satisfaction from the work in itself.

Conditions would some way adjust themselves, she felt; but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.

“One of these days,” she said, “I’m going to pull myself together for a while and think—try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don’t know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can’t convince myself that I am. I must think about it.”

‘The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.’

There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual.

“In some way you seem to me like a child, Edna. You seem to act without a certain amount of reflection which is necessary in this life.

I’ve been working like a machine, and feeling like a lost soul.

perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”

she cast the unpleasant, pricking garments from her, and for the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her. How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! how delicious! She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.