The Awakening (Chopin novel)

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The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published on 22 April 1899. Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South. It is one of the earlier American novels that focuses on women's issues utilizing narrative techniques. It is also widely seen as a landmark work of early feminism, generating a mixed reaction from contemporary readers and critics. The book may be considered as being aligned with the nineteenth-century female traditions of writing, in particular the Anglo-American New Woman fiction. The novel's blend of realistic narrative, incisive social commentary, and psychological complexity makes The Awakening a precursor of American modernist literature; it prefigures the works of American novelists such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway...

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