Report on Essay

"A man adores his wife who is the mother of children, and she, in turn, loves another man. They are all spending an idle summer together, and when matters have come to such a crisis that the man who has won the love of his friend's wife, tells her of it, and then goes far awake, she, one morning, walks far out into the sea, and never returns alive. It would be difficult to say for what purpose such a book is written, or what inspiration there is to produce such tales of morbid life."
The St. Paul Globe Sunday, June 18, 1899

"The heroin Edna Pontellier is an impulsive, passionate, and somewhat self-centered Southern girl...the case, the agency of the 'awakening' is a man, Robert Le Brun, whom she suddenly discovers that she lives. He, on his part, recognizing the nature of the abruptly  leaves her and goes to Mexico...Whether the book was worth writing or not is a question which the public will settle. That it is well written is beyond doubt. It is the inner history of one of those women who, in modern days, figure in divorce suits; two centuries ago they would have figured in grim and horrible tragedies. It is a psychological dissection of such a woman's soul; and most people will not understand the woman herself. "
The Times, Washington, Sunday June 24, 1899

"Leonce Pontellier maries a beautiful Kentuckian and grows jealous of her for cause. She has married him to crush from her heart a fancied love of her girlhood, but she finds neither marriage nor motherhood cause enough in their holiness to keep her in the paths of virtue. The awakening is full of tragedy, for unrepentant, she finds oblivion in the waters f the gulf. The story is vulgar, but the style in which it is handled refined and graceful."
The San Francisco Call, Sunday July2, 1899

“that the author herself would probably like…to tear…to pieces by criticism if only some other person had written it” (139).
Peer- Review Journal “Gender and Literary Valorization: The Awakening of Canonical Novels” quotes The St. Louis Daily GlobeDemocrat in 1899

The Pair of Silk Stockings
Woman goes to town to bargain shop for her family but ends up buying things for herself.

Story of an Hour
Woman finds out her husband has died and is excited.

Parallel of Edna and Kate Chopin
Edna is how Kate Chopin wishes she could act.