The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Meeting at our usual place, The Shakespeare Hotel, Surry Hills, Sydney, on Thursday 7 January 2027, at 7.00m, we will be discussing The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

Kate Chopin (no relation to the composer) published the novel in 1899, and the Penguin Classics edition is approximately 150 pages.

The novel follows a married woman in Louisiana who begins to question the conventional expectations of marriage, motherhood and respectable society. As she becomes increasingly conscious of her own desires and independence, her relationships with her husband, her children and two very different men force her to confront the limited choices available to women at the time. The novel reaches a tragic conclusion as she seeks an absolute freedom that the society around her cannot accommodate.

Its frank treatment of female sexuality, marriage and motherhood was strikingly unconventional for 1899. It is part of genre sometimes described as feminist, modernist or naturalist. Think The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton or Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

Those wanting to read a little more over the New Year's break can find both The Awakening and some more short stories by her on Guthenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/160

Hard copies can be easily borrowed through local libraries.

An audio version can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYLdXYYKfsA

We meet in the Long Room (upstairs) which is a semi-private room, conducive to discussion. There are normally 20-30 people present. The format of the meeting is that we talk about the book as a 'big group' and then split up into smaller groups for further discussion.
We are a friendly lot. New people are very welcome. Contact [email protected] for more info.