The Awakening and Other Stories

Trade Paperback

To all outside appearances, Edna Pontellier is a respectable married woman living in New Orleans with her fond, indulgent husband and her two young sons. Beneath Edna s smooth, graceful face, however, lurks a woman of passion, a woman who will not or simply cannot efface herself in the role that her husband expects of her: an angelic being who reveres him, dotes on their children, and obediently erases her individuality in service to the family s happiness.But one lazy summer vacation and an apparently harmless infatuation will push Edna beyond this quiet, settled life, placing her directly at odds with society s expectations of what a woman should be.This volume features additional short stories, including works that wrestled with such topics as racial passing, in Desiree s Baby, infidelity, in A Respectable Woman, and queer attraction, in Fedora.