Awakening and Selected Short Stories Book

Kate O'Flaherty Chopin was a 19th century author of short stories and novels with a Louisiana Creole setting. She is most noted for two short story collections, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her novel The Awakening (1899) is set in New Orleans and Grand Isle. The short stories included in this collection include, Beyond the bayou - Maame Pelagie -- Desiree's baby -- A respectable woman -- The kiss -- A pair of silk stockings -- The locket and A reflection.

Publishers Weekly

Chopin's (1850-1904) The Awakening , whose heroine rejects her husband and children as she indulges in solitude and in an adulterous infatuation, was embraced by the women's movement 70 years after its publication. Although they pale in comparison to the novel, these stories, which comprise Chopin's third and last short-fiction collection, serve to flesh out the Chopin oeuvre and deserve a place on women's studies syllabi. As in The Awakening , the author's social critiques here demythologize women, marriage, religion and family. A women escapes ``the incessant chatter'' of other females at a party and retires to the male domain of the smoking room, where she puffs on hashish and dreams of a love affair torn asunder. The perverse Mrs. Mallard revels in her newfound freedom when informed that her husband is a casualty of a train accident and dies of a heart attack when he shows up alive. Her fiance is wasted by illness and reeks death, and a repulsed Dorothea bolts; elsewhere, a monk is lured by the voice of a woman, a former intimate. And in a twist on the plot of The Awakening , a husband, plagued by suspicions of his late wife's infidelity, casts himself in the river. Toth wrote the biography Kate Chopin. (Jan.)