No other American book was so maligned, neglected for so long, and then embraced so quickly and with such enthusiasm as Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel, The Awakening. For the twelve scholars, whose essays make up this collection, reading the novel was a life-changing event. Awakenings explains how, as graduate students and young college instructors, they carried out some of the basic research, thought through some of the critical approaches, and developed some of the present directions for reading, studying, and teaching Kate Chopin, a foundation narrative that focuses on what happened a generation ago and why.
