50 Fun Facts About The Awakening

Which caged pet opens The Awakening by shrieking French phrases until Léonce Pontellier walks away?

A parrot, green and yellow, keeps screaming at him to go away until he gives up reading there and walks off to his own cottage. It belongs to Madame Lebrun, so it has the right to make all the noise it likes.

Which skill does Edna finally master one moonlit night in The Awakening, after failing all summer?

Swimming comes to her all at once, like a tottering child who suddenly finds it can walk alone. Robert Lebrun had given her lessons almost daily and was close to giving up.

After quarrelling with Léonce in The Awakening, Edna flings down which item and stamps on it in vain?

Her wedding ring survives without a mark, however hard her boot heel comes down. A maid hands it back a few minutes later and Edna slips it onto her finger again.

Robert Lebrun abruptly leaves Grand Isle in The Awakening, claiming a business opening in which country?

Mexico had been his talk for years, so Edna is stunned to hear at dinner that he is leaving that very night. He later admits the trip was an excuse to get away from his feelings for her.

How does Edna Pontellier die in the final chapter of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, back on Grand Isle?

By drowning, though Chopin never shows the death itself. The last page stays inside Edna's mind as sounds and scents from her childhood come back to her.

What nickname is given to the small rented home Edna moves into alone in The Awakening?

The pigeon house is her servant Ellen's name for it, because it is so small. Edna arranges the move without waiting for her husband's opinion, and carries it out while he is away.

In The Awakening, Edna marries into which French-descended Louisiana community without ever feeling at home?

Creoles at the resort talk so frankly about private matters that Edna is shocked at first. What strikes her most is their complete lack of prudery, which goes hand in hand with a lofty chastity.

Which pursuit does Edna devote her days to in The Awakening, working in a top-floor studio?

Painting brings her real money once a dealer named Laidpore begins selling her work. Léonce calls it folly for the mother of a family to spend her days in a studio.

On the night Robert Lebrun declares his love in The Awakening, Edna is called away to attend what?

A friend's childbirth calls her to Adèle Ratignolle, who has begged Edna to come at once. Edna watches in dread, and Adèle's exhausted parting whisper is a plea to think of the children.

In The Awakening, Edna tells Adèle Ratignolle she would give her life for her children, but not what?

Herself is the one thing she will not sacrifice; money and even life she calls the unessential. Adèle cannot follow the distinction, and the two friends argue as if in different languages.

In The Awakening, Edna recalls walking as a child through a meadow of waist-high grass in which state?

Kentucky bluegrass country was her girlhood home, and the meadow seemed as big as an ocean to the small girl. The memory returns as she sits looking at the Gulf with Adèle Ratignolle.

Returning home late in The Awakening, Edna finds Robert Lebrun gone and what left behind for her?

A farewell note on a scrap of paper tells her he is leaving because he loves her. Edna does not go to bed; she is still awake when the servant comes in to light the fire next morning.

Léonce Pontellier leaves Edna on her own in The Awakening when business calls him away to which city?

New York takes him away while his mother carries the children off to the country. Left on her own, Edna breathes a sigh of relief and walks through the house as if inspecting it for the first time.

The Awakening is often paired with which Ibsen play, whose heroine also walks out on husband and children?

A Doll's House dates from 1879, twenty years before Chopin's novel. The two works share an almost identical theme: a woman who gives up her family in search of a life of her own.

Whose kiss in The Awakening is the first Edna's nature truly answers, though she does not love him?

Alcée Arobin, a young man of fashion with a bad reputation, kindles desire in her like a flaming torch. Afterwards Edna feels a dull pang of regret that it was not love that had stirred her.

Which woman in The Awakening feels Edna's shoulder blades to test whether she can rise above convention?

Mademoiselle Reisz, the sharp-tongued pianist, warns that defying tradition and prejudice takes strength. She calls it a sad spectacle to see weaklings fall back to earth bruised and exhausted.

What does Doctor Mandelet advise when Léonce consults him about Edna's odd behaviour in The Awakening?

Leave her alone for a while, he says, and the mood will pass happily over. Privately the old doctor wonders whether another man is involved, but he knows better than to ask.

In the last chapter of The Awakening, Edna does what in the open air for the first time in her life?

Stands naked under the sky, which strikes her as strange, awful and delicious all at once. She feels like a new-born creature opening its eyes on a familiar world it had never known.

In The Awakening, Edna remembers running away as a girl from her father's gloomy services in which church?

Presbyterian prayers, read by her father in a spirit of gloom, still chill her to think of. Her family's violent opposition to her marrying a Catholic was one reason she accepted Léonce.

One night at Grand Isle in The Awakening, Edna defies Léonce's order to come indoors by staying where?

In a hammock outside their cottage she tells him she means to stay out and will not answer if he speaks that way again. Léonce responds by sitting nearby with wine and cigars, outlasting her.

Léonce Pontellier opens The Awakening by eyeing his sunburned wife like a damaged piece of what?

Personal property that has suffered some damage is how he looks at her, remarking that she is burnt beyond recognition. Edna only studies her strong, shapely hands and laughs across at Robert Lebrun.

Which label does The Awakening give wives like Adèle Ratignolle, who idolize children and worship husbands?

Mother-women count it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals, the narrator says. Edna Pontellier, the same passage declares flatly, is not one of them.

Back in New Orleans in The Awakening, which weekly social duty does Edna abandon, to Léonce's alarm?

Tuesday reception day meant an afternoon at home in a handsome gown, receiving a constant stream of callers. One week she simply goes out instead, and Léonce lectures her that people do not do such things.

Edna funds her independence in The Awakening partly with a large sum won one winter doing what?

Betting on horses suits Edna, who knows the animals as well as any track man and plays for very high stakes. She adds the winnings to a small income from her mother's estate.

To save appearances when Edna moves out in The Awakening, Léonce has the family home undergo what?

Lavish remodeling, ordered by letter to a well-known architect, explains to society why the house stands empty. A newspaper notice adds that the couple are planning a summer abroad.

In The Awakening, Edna quarrels violently with her father after refusing to attend which family occasion?

Her sister's wedding goes ahead without her, and Edna offers no excuse at all. Léonce plans to stop at the ceremony on his own, hoping that money and love can atone for his wife's absence.

Edna's father, who visits New Orleans in The Awakening, held which rank in the Confederate army?

Colonel is still his title, and he keeps the military bearing, with coats padded to broaden his chest. He drinks numerous toddies in the course of a day without showing the slightest effect.

Which occasion does Edna reveal to guests at the grand dinner she gives before moving out in The Awakening?

Her birthday, her twenty-ninth, is admitted only once the party of ten is seated around the table. In her hair is a cluster of diamonds, a present from her husband that had arrived that morning.

Adèle Ratignolle warns Robert Lebrun off Edna in The Awakening, fearing Edna might make which mistake?

Take him at his word is the blunder Adèle fears, because Edna is not one of them and may not see the flirting as a game. Robert had played devoted attendant to some woman every summer since he was fifteen.

Reviewing The Awakening in 1899, Willa Cather set it beside which earlier European novel of adultery?

Madame Bovary was her comparison, made in a review for the Pittsburgh Leader. Cather admired the flexible, iridescent style but hoped Chopin would devote it to a better cause.

Kate Chopin, who set The Awakening in Louisiana, was born and died in which city far to the north?

St. Louis was home for most of her life; she lived in Louisiana only from her marriage in 1870 until she moved back as a widow in the 1880s. She is buried there in Calvary Cemetery.

Before publication as The Awakening, Kate Chopin's novel carried which working title of her own choosing?

A Solitary Soul was the title on the manuscript Chopin finished in January 1898. Nobody knows who changed it or why, though a newspaper rumour of 1899 pointed at the publisher.

Which shorter work by The Awakening's author follows a wife told that her husband has died in a rail accident?

The Story of an Hour gives Louise Mallard a brief taste of freedom before her husband walks through the door alive. The shock stops her weak heart.

Kate Chopin, author of The Awakening, shaped her style on which French writer whose short stories she marvelled at?

Guy de Maupassant struck her as a man who had escaped tradition and authority and looked out on life with his own eyes. What she found in his stories, she wrote, was life, not fiction.

On her first evening on her own in The Awakening, Edna reads which American writer until she grows sleepy?

Emerson, read in the library after dinner, soon makes her drowsy. She resolves to begin a course of improving studies, now that her time is completely her own.

Which unnamed figure in The Awakening paces Grand Isle telling her beads, often just behind a pair of young lovers?

The lady in black is never given a name. With her gold-clasped prayer-book and silver beads she follows the two lovers down to the wharf on the morning of the Sunday boat trip.

As a young woman in The Awakening, Edna kept a framed picture on her desk of which kind of public figure?

A tragedian's face and figure haunted her imagination, and when alone she would kiss the cold glass of the frame. Marrying Léonce, she believed, closed the door for good on romance and dreams.

In The Awakening, Edna turns jealous when Robert Lebrun comes home with which embroidered gift from a girl?

A tobacco pouch of embroidered silk, plainly a woman's handiwork, has replaced the rubber one he used to carry. Edna questions him about the giver until he thrusts it back in his pocket.

Adèle Ratignolle's husband in The Awakening owns which prosperous business, with the family living upstairs?

A drug store on a street corner near Edna's home gives the Ratignolles a steady trade. Edna leaves their harmonious household feeling pity for a life that never rises beyond blind contentment.

Edna and Léonce Pontellier in The Awakening are the parents of which young children, usually trailed by a nurse?

Two sons, Raoul and Etienne, are four and five as the novel opens. If one takes a tumble at play he is more likely to pick himself up and carry on than to run crying to his mother.

The Pontellier mansion that Edna leaves behind in The Awakening has which New Orleans address?

Esplanade Street is the address of their large double cottage, painted a dazzling white with green shutters. Léonce likes to walk through it inspecting his possessions, prized chiefly because they are his.

Edna and Robert Lebrun sail from Grand Isle to which nearby island for Sunday Mass in The Awakening?

Chênière Caminada was a real settlement across the bay, destroyed by a hurricane in 1893, a few years before Chopin began the novel. Edna grows drowsy in its stifling church and walks out mid-service.

The pianist who befriends Edna in The Awakening always pins which artificial flowers in her hair?

Violets, a shabby artificial bunch, sit on the side of her head in every season, above a batch of rusty black lace. Other guests joke that she stays out of the sea for fear of getting them wet.

The closing sentence of The Awakening pairs the hum of bees with the musky scent of which garden flowers?

Pinks are the last thing in the book, after Edna hears her father's voice, a chained dog barking and an officer's spurs clanging across a porch. The novel ends inside her earliest memories.

In the last chapter of The Awakening, what does Edna Pontellier watch reeling and circling down through the air?

A broken-winged bird beats the air above her, fluttering as it falls. It answers the pianist's earlier warning that only the strong can rise above tradition and prejudice.

The Awakening's 1960s revival was led by Per Seyersted, a scholar from which country who edited Chopin's works?

Norway supplied the critic who rescued her: in 1969 Seyersted published a biography and The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. By the 1950s every one of her books had fallen out of print.

Which actress played Edna in Grand Isle, the 1991 screen version of The Awakening directed by Mary Lambert?

Kelly McGillis played Edna opposite Adrian Pasdar as Robert Lebrun. The film takes its title from the resort island where the story begins and ends.

In which HBO drama does a professor played by John Goodman assign The Awakening to his university class?

Treme casts him as Creighton Bernette, who teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans. He sets Chopin's novel for his freshman class near the end of the show's first season.

Five years after The Awakening appeared, Kate Chopin fell fatally ill after a hot day at which event near her home?

The World's Fair was close enough to her house that she had bought a season ticket. She came home very tired on a sweltering August Saturday, complained of a pain in her head, and died two days later.

According to the pianist's advice to Edna in The Awakening, an artist must possess which kind of soul?

Courageous is her word, meaning the soul that dares and defies. Edna recalls the phrase in the final chapter, picturing how the old musician would have laughed at her pretensions.