# The Awakening

**Author:** Kate Chopin
**Lexile:** 960L
**Grade range:** Grades 11–12
**Age range:** 16–18
**First published:** 1899
**Page count:** 128
**Genre:** Literary Fiction
**ISBN-13:** `9780486277868`
**ISBN-10:** `0486277860`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/the-awakening
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

Edna Pontellier, a wife and mother in turn-of-the-century New Orleans Creole society, gradually awakens to her own desires for independence, art, and selfhood — and finds no place for them in the life prescribed for her. Kate Chopin's controversial 1899 novel was condemned in its day and is now a fixture of grades 11-12 and AP Literature for its early feminist themes and its unresolved, tragic ending.

## Themes

- women's independence
- identity
- marriage and class
- society

## Content notes

- suicide
- infidelity

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