GajimaruClassics.
The AwakeningOn the coverStrolling along the Seashore, Joaquín Sorolla, 1909
The Awakening
On a Louisiana summer holiday, a comfortable wife and mother begins to wake to her own desires, for art, for freedom, for a life of her own, and finds her world has no room for them. A quietly radical American novel.
Character notes and context for the chapter you’ve read.
A short, luminous, decades-ahead-of-its-time book about a woman coming awake to herself, sensuous, sad, and quietly devastating. It reads like it was written yesterday.
Setting1890s · Louisiana
Genteel Creole society on the Gulf Coast at the turn of the century, where a respectable woman’s life was mapped out for her and stepping off the path was unthinkable.
On screen & beyond
- Grand Isle, film adaptation directed by Mary Lambert (1991)