As a Louisiana native, English major, and self-proclaimed avid reader, I have read and studied “The Awakening” many times over. For the unfamiliar, it is about a woman who struggles against the bonds of her marriage, and the confines of society in Louisiana at the turn of the century. Here is the first line of the Goodreads synopsis. When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. I was not a fan of The Awakening initially. As a teenager […]
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 […]