The Awakening
Kate Chopin
In the late 1800s Edna Pontellier, a discontented wife and mother, vacations with her husband Léonce and their two sons at Grande Isle. Her visit to the island triggers an awakening in Edna, leading her to a greater awareness of her true self.
Major thematic elements: awakening, women in society, individuality, solitude, self-expression, marriage
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IB Literature and IB Language and Literature Connections
Place of publication: United States
Language: English
Era: 19th Century
Genre: Fiction
Author: Female
Readers, writers and texts | Time and space | Intertextuality: Connecting texts
Identity | Culture | Creativity | Communication
Perspective | Transformation | Representation
Full text, basic summaries, and overviews
The Awakening and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin | PDF Full Text
This PDF includes The Awakening and eight short stories in an easy to read and print format.
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The Awakening | Full Audiobook
Version three has the text on screen in a Word Doc, but the audio quality of the recording isn’t as high as the other two versions.
Version 1 by Artem VS on YouTube | Version 2 by NOOB on YouTube | Version 3 by High School Audiobooks on YouTube
The Awakening | Study Guides | SparkNotes and Course Hero
Both study guides are good; Course Hero’s also comes in video form both on the page and on YouTube.
Spark Notes Study Guide for The Awakening | Course Hero Study Guide for The Awakening | Course Hero Study Guide on YouTube
15 Facts About Kate Chopin’s The Awakening | Mental Floss | Kristy Puchko | February 9, 2018
This article is short and informative. It would be a great way to introduce the text to students.
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The Awakening | Wikipedia
Wikipedia’s article includes a summary of the text, main characters, style, symbolism, topics (themes), publication and reception and more.
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About the author
Kate Chopin Biography | New World Encyclopedia
This biography includes Chopin’s childhood, marriage, writing, influence, works, legacy and more.
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Kate Chopin: A Reawakening | 1998 | Louisiana Public Broadcasting | 26:47
This video is images with a voice over, but interesting and well-told. It covers a lot of information in 26 minutes.
Watch here | Read the transcript
Kate Chopin | Wikipedia
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Articles, essays, and videos about The Awakening
The Classic Novel that Saw Pleasure as a Path to Freedom | The New York Times | Claire Vaye Watkins | February 5, 2020
This article reflects on The Awakening and connects it to contemporary activists and issues.
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Crash Course on YouTube
Two videos help to contextualize The Awakening. In US History #16, John Green teaches about the expectations for women in the 19th century. In US History #31, Green teaches about Women’s Suffrage. Both videos are engaging and packed with information.
Watch Crash Course US History #16 | 13:10 | Watch Crash Course US History #31 | 13:30
Etiquette Sampler | Contexts of The Awakening | PDF
This PDF is a photocopy from the book Contexts of The Awakening. Etiquette rules include notes on musicales, street manners, and appropriate styles of dresses for different occasions.
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From Song to Silence: The Coding of Music in Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” | The College of William and Mary | Melanie V. Dawson 1990
From the abstract: Chopin “uses allusions to music to signify various feelings, attitudes, and thematic associations. Her uses of music are very different from typical nineenth-century allusions to music as part of moralistic views of society’s degeneracy.”
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Fine Southern Gentlemen: The Three Beaux of Edna Pontellier | Western Michigan University | Keli Masten | October 2018
From the abstract: Masten explores “the function gender roles play with regard not to the women in the story, to the men. In reviewing the circumstances surrounding the events which take place in this upper middle class, Creole, white community [Masters seeks] to explain how the sociocultural demands and expectations placed upon the men are equally as divisive as those placed upon the female characters of the same social status.
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Kate Chopin’s Contribution to Realism and Naturalism: Reconsiderations of W. D. Howells, Maupassant, and Flaubert | Louisiana State University | Jean Ann Witherow | 2000
This text is a great resource if you’re looking to highlight the intertextuality of Chopin’s writing. The text includes biographical influences on Chopin’s literary career, her departure from Determinism, her engagement with Maupassant in exploring the female consciousness, and her “re-vision” of the works of Flaubert.
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A Road Map to Awakening: Examining the Function of Supporting Characters in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening | University of North Carolina | Sarah Heisner | 2016
Mr. Pontellier, Adele Ratignolle, Robert Leburn, and Mademoiselle Reisz are the main focus of this essay.
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Lesson plans and other teaching resources
Teaching Guide: Exploring the Awakening | PBS Learning Media
From the description: “This teaching guide helps instructors use a specific primary source set, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, in the classroom. It offers discussion questions, classroom activities, and primary source analysis tools. It is intended to spark pedagogical creativity by giving a sample approach to the material.”
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Kate Chopin’s The Awakening | EDSITEment | NEH.gov
”In this curriculum unit, students will explore how Chopin stages the possible roles for women in Edna’s time and culture through the examples of other characters in the novella…As students pursue this central theme, they will also learn about Chopin, her life, and the culture and literary traditions in which she wrote.”
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Signet Classics | A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classics Edition of The Awakening by Kate Chopin
This PDF includes a list of characters, text synopsis, pre, during, and after reading activities and information about Chopin.
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Mrs. Jauregui’s English Class | Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
This website contains a unit for teaching The Awakening. Click through the tabs above the central image to explore.
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The Awakening by Kate Chopin | Student Packet | Pat Watson
This packet is almost certainly too simple for an IB or AP Literature course, but there are some nice reading questions on pages 8-12 that could be used as a guide for students as they read, quick reading tests, etc.
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Dr. Bordelon’s American Lit II on Campus | The Awakening
This teacher website includes background information students need to fully understand The Awakening (including maps and hyperlinks to additional resources), class discussion questions (which range from recall: in what month does the story start? to synthesis: what is Chopin sayin about fate in the novel?)
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The Symbolism of Birds in “The Awakening” | Anne Mulderig & Joshua Choi | Prezi Presentation
This presentation identifies bird-related quotes in the novel and suggests ways to interpret the significance of those quotes. This looks to be a student project, but it’s well put-together.
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The Advantages of Distance: Teaching The Awakening in the Online Classroom | Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice, Fall 2017 | Julie Wilhelm, National University
In this essay, Wilhelm describes “an approach to teaching Kate Chopin’s The Awakening online that treats the novel as what Lawrence Buell calls an ‘arena of ethical reflection’ (13) and exploits several types of distance characteristic of asynchronous online education, specifically in students’ interactions, identities and experiences, and between praxis and metacognition.” -It sounds complicated, but it’s an easy read.
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Shopping List
Texts and other resources you may find helpful.
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The Awakening and Selected Short Stories (Penguin Classics)
Paperback on Amazon.com
The Awakening: Norton Critical Edition
Paperback on Amazon.com
Approaches to Teaching Chopin's The Awakening Hardcover on Amazon.com
Kate Chopin's The Awakening (Bloom's Notes)
Hardcover on Amazon.comBack to Browse by Title | Browse by Author
