A review by lavrendy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin

3.0

Completely torn on this one. I really wanted to be happy for Edna, especially when she got her own apartment and started painting and going on walks etc etc etc but I just couldn’t look past how even in a time that was significantly worse for women, she was sooo privileged. She had the money to pay people to watch her children 24/7. She had a mansion and endless time to spend with her suitors. She even had extra money from her family to get her own place once she made up her mind to do it. So while I get why this was revolutionary for its time, it doesn’t feel right to praise as a brilliant manifesto for women everywhere. A lot of women do still feel similarly to Edna, but they are often required to sacrifice a lot more to empower themselves than she did. And tbh I’d rather just read those stories instead.

All that being said, the characters in this book, including Edna, were extremely complex and felt real to me as soon as they were introduced. The writing was fresh and more straightforward than a lot of other works from the same time. I LOVED Mademoiselle Reisz and wish we had gotten more of her backstory.

Also I haven’t read Anna Karenina but I did just watch the Keira Knightley adaptation and wasn’t this basically the same plot??