【文章內容簡介】 mporaries such as Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Gee Bernard Shaw.Also evident in The Awakening is the future of the Southern novel as a distinct genre, not only in setting and subject matter but in narrative style. Chopin39。s lyrical portrayal of her protagonist39。s shifting emotions is a narrative technique that Faulkner would expand upon in novels like Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury. Chopin portrays her experiences of the creole lifestyle, in which women were under strict rules and limited to the role of wife and mother, which influenced her local color fiction and focus on the creole culture. Chopin adopted this style in her early short stories and her first novel At Fault, which also deals with some of the issues of creole lifestyle. By using characters of French descent she was able to get away with publishing these stories, because the characters were viewed as foreign, without her readers being as shocked as they were when Edna Pontellier, a white Protestant, strays from the expectations of society.The plot looks forward to the stories of Eudora Welty and Flannery O39。Connor and the plays of William Inge, while Edna Pontellier39。s emotional crises and her eventual tragic fall look ahead to the plex female characters of Tennessee Williams39。s plays. Chopin’s own life, particularly in terms of having her own sense of identity – aside from men and her children – inspired The Awakening. Her upbringing also shaped her views, as she lived with her widowed mother, grandmother and great grandmother, all of whom were intellectual, independent women. After her father was killed on All Saints’ Day and her brother died from typhoid on Mardi Gras Day, Chopin became skeptical of religion, which she presents through Edna, who finds church suffocating. Being widowed and left with six children to look after influenced Chopin39。s writing, which she began at this time. Emily Toth argues against the view that Chopin was ostracized from St. Louis after the publication of The Awakening, stating that many St. Louis women praised her。 male critics condemned her novel.Aspects of Chopin39。s style also prefigure the intensely lyrical and experimental style of novelists such as Virginia Woolf and the unsentimental focus on female intellectual and emotional growth in the novels of Sigrid Undset and Doris Lessing. Chopin39。s most important stylistic legacy 4is the detachment of the narrator. About the Novel The Awakening ,originally titled A Solitary Soul ,is a novel by Kate Chopin,first published in 1899. The novel is set in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana coast at the end of the nieenth century, the plot around Edna Pontellier telling her antitraditional struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turnofthecentury South. The novel is the first one to concern about women39。s issues without arrogant words. It is considered as the milepost of early feminist, and continues to have a different effect on the readers and critics. The novel39。s blend of realistic narrative, incisive social mentary, and psychological plexity makes The Awakening a precursor of American modernist literature。 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 also be considered among the first Southern works in a tradition that would culminate with the modern masterpieces of Faulkner, Flannery O39。Connor, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Tennessee Williams.The novel begins the Pontellier family vacationing on Grand Isle at a resort on the Gulf of Mexico managed by Madame Lebrun and her two sons, Robert and Victor. Leonce Pontellier is a merchant of Louisiana Creole, he and his wife Edna had two sons, Etienne and Raoul. Most of the time, Edna was together with her best friend Adele Ratignoller. Adele is a boisterous and cheerful person, she continues to prompt Edna to do her duty as a wife and mother. In Grand Isle, Edna and Robert Lebrun became friends, and the latter is a charming, energetic young man who actively seeks attention from Edna. When they fall in love, Robert senses the doomed nature of such a relationship and flees to Mexico under the guise of pursuing a nameless business venture.After The summer vacation, the Pontelliers return to New Orleans. Edna begins to reexamine her own life, and pay more attention to her own happiness. She grows to get out of the social circle, and gives up some traditional maternal duties. Leonce is worried about her mental 5abnormality, and asks for the doctor to help her. The doctor advises Leonce to let her be and assures him that things will return to normal.When Leonce starts to do business in New York, he sends the boys to his mother and leaves Edna alone at home for an extended period. It gives her enough physical and mental space to think over her life. When her husband stays out, she moves out of her house, and into a small bungalow nearby. She starts flirting with Alcee Arobin who is a playboy. In the novel, Edna shows her sexuality for the first time. But the relationship has been proved to be clumsy and ominous.Mrs. Edna goes to visit Miss Reisz, a gifted and famous pianist, in New Orleans but who maintains a generally hermetic existence. Earlier in the novel，at a party , Miss Reisz39。s playing deeply moves Edna. Miss Reisz’s life represents what Edna always want to live: independent. What she focuses on is not the social expectation but herself and the music. In contrast to Adele Ratignolle, the latter always try to persuade Edna to observe the conventional standards. Miss Reisz has contact with Robert in Mexico, and gets letters from him. Edna prays for reading the contents of the letter,and Miss Reisz conse