The Awakening (novel) - Publication and Critical Reception

Publication and Critical Reception

The Awakening was particularly controversial upon publication in 1899. Although the novel was never technically banned, it was censored. Chopin's novel was considered immoral not only for its comparatively frank depictions of female sexual desire but for its depiction of a protagonist who chafed against social norms and established gender roles. The public reaction to the novel was similar to the protests which greeted the publication and performance of Henrik Ibsen's landmark drama A Doll's House (1879), a work with which The Awakening shares an almost identical theme.

However, published reviews ran the gamut from outright condemnation to the recognition of The Awakening as an important work of fiction by a gifted practitioner. A good example of this can be found in the divergent reactions of two newspapers in Kate Chopin's hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis Republic labeled the novel "poison" and "too strong a drink for moral babes" and the St. Louis Mirror said: "One would fain beg the gods, in pure cowardice, for sleep unending rather than to know what an ugly, cruel, loathsome Monster Passion can be when, like a tiger, it slowly awakens. This is the kind of awakening that impresses the reader in Mrs. Chopin's heroine." Later in the same year, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch would write in praise of the novel in an essay entitled "A St. Louis Woman Who Has Turned Fame Into Literature."

Some reviews clucked in disappointment at Chopin's choice of subject: "It was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the over-worked field of sex-fiction," (Chicago Times Herald). Others mourned the loss of good taste as when The Nation referred to Chopin as "one more clever writer gone wrong."

And some reviews indulged in outright vitriol, as when Public Opinion stated: "We are well-satisfied when drowns herself."

Chopin did not garner unqualifiedly negative reviews. The Dial called The Awakening a "poignant spiritual tragedy" with the caveat that the novel was "not altogether wholesome in its tendencies." In the Pittsburgh Leader, Willa Cather set The Awakening alongside Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert's equally notorious and equally reviled novel of suburban ennui and unapologetic adultery—though Cather was no more impressed with the heroine than were most of her contemporaries. Cather concluded her review: "next time I hope that Miss Chopin will devote that flexible, iridescent style of hers to a better cause."