The Awakening is considered by many to be an American classic and a forerunner of modern feminist literature. Yet when it was published in 1899, it received more negative criticism than positive, leading author Kate Chopin to dedicate her talents to writing short stories exclusively for the remainder of her life. Given that most journalists and literary critics in the late 19th century were men, the chilly reception shouldn’t be surprising. The Awakening is about a married woman named Edna Pontellier who, while spending her summer on Grand […]
Winter Break
Oroonoko – 2/5 Stars This novel, or maybe not a novel, came out in 1688 and like most early novels there is a strong narrative discomfort in the telling of narrative fictionally. So throughout the novel there’s a lot of extra-text discussions of the truth of the story. Novels have often been mistrusted because of this, but of course, the goal and function of fiction is that sometimes truth isn’t fully explored in nonfiction. And like with theater and poetry, there is a need to […]
Mommy Wars, circa 1899
Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This classic of American Literature is the tragic story of Edna Pontellier as she awakens to the reality of her own desires and the limits her world places upon them. Like Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, this novel shows the unfairness of restrictions that men and society at large placed on women, and women’s growing […]