Author(s): Mehmet Recep TA
Although, at the time it was published, the novel and the author were severely condemned by the literary and religious circles due to its - as it was claimed - unconventional and immoral context, The Awakening was rediscovered in the 1960s (the period in which the feminist movement, known as the second wave, was in its heydays) by the feminist scholars and theorists who regarded Edna Pontellier, Chopin’s protagonist, as a prototype of feminism. But, considering the period in which the novel was written, the author’s biography, the feminist theory, and Sigmund Freud's ‘structural model of the psyche’, it is obvious that Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening and her protagonist Edna Pontellier have hardly anything to do with the theory of feminism and women’s rights. It is rather a novel that has been ‘strongly misread.
The Journal of International Social Research received 7760 citations as per Google Scholar report
