First published in 1899, this novel is set in New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana coast at the end of the nineteenth century. The plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century South. Widely seen as a landmark work of early feminism, this is one of the earliest American novels to focus on women's issues without condescension.
The novel's blend of realistic narrative, incisive social commentary, and psychological complexity also makes The Awakening a precursor of American modernism; it prefigures the works of American novelists such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway and echoes the works of contemporaries such as Edith Wharton and Henry James. It can be considered too among the first Southern works in a tradition that would culminate with the modern masterpieces of Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Tennessee Williams.
