06/11/2025
In 1899, Kate Chopin wrote a novel about a woman who wanted more than marriage and motherhood—critics called it "poison," destroyed her career, and she died believing she'd failed; 70 years later, we call it a masterpiece and teach it to millions.
St. Louis, Missouri, 1899.
Kate Chopin was 49 years old when she published "The Awakening"—a short novel about a woman named Edna Pontellier who realizes she doesn't want the life society has given her.
Not her husband. Not her children. Not the endless domestic duties. Not the suffocating expectations.
Edna wants to paint. To swim in the ocean. To feel the sun on her skin. To have a life that belongs to her, not to everyone else.
In 1899 America, this was unthinkable.
The reviews came fast and brutal:
"Morbid."
"Unhealthy."
"Essentially vulgar."
"Poison."
The St. Louis Republic called it a story "which no respectable woman would want to read."
Bookstores pulled it from shelves. Libraries banned it. Kate's own social club—a literary society she'd belonged to for years—quietly asked her to leave.
Friends stopped inviting her to gatherings. Former supporters distanced themselves.
Within months, Kate Chopin's literary career was over.
Publishers rejected her next manuscripts. Magazines that had once eagerly published her short stories now returned them unopened.
She'd committed an unforgivable sin: she'd written honestly about a woman who wanted more.
Five years later, in 1904, Kate Chopin died of a brain hemorrhage at age 54.
She died believing she'd failed. That her most important work had been rejected by the world. That she'd sacrificed her reputation for nothing.
For the next seventy years, "The Awakening" was forgotten—out of print, unread, dismissed as a shameful mistake from America's literary past.
Then, in the 1960s and 70s, something changed.
But let's go back. Because to understand what Kate Chopin risked, you need to understand who she was.
Born Katherine O'Flaherty in 1850 in St. Louis, Kate grew up in a house full of strong women. Her father died when she was young. Her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother raised her—teaching her to read, to think, to question.
She married Oscar Chopin at 20 and moved to New Orleans, then to rural Louisiana. They had six children in nine years.
Kate seemed to have the perfect life Victorian America promised women: a prosperous husband, a house full of children, social standing.
Then, in 1882, Oscar died suddenly of malaria.
Kate was 32, a widow with six children and mounting debts. Oscar's business had failed. She was nearly penniless.
She moved back to St. Louis with her children and did something unusual for a respectable widow: she started writing.
Not poetry or domestic advice columns—the "appropriate" writing for women. She wrote short stories. Realistic, sharp, sometimes controversial stories about Creole life in Louisiana, about marriage, about women's inner lives.
And they were good.
Publishers bought them. Magazines printed them. Kate started earning money—not enough to be wealthy, but enough to support her children.
She was a working mother writer in the 1890s—already transgressive just by existing.
Then she started writing "The Awakening."
The novel tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a 28-year-old wife and mother vacationing with her family at Grand Isle, a resort near New Orleans.
Edna is... fine. Not unhappy exactly. Just numb. Going through the motions of being a wife, a mother, a respectable society woman.
Then she starts to feel things.
She learns to swim—feels the freedom of her body moving through water.
She starts painting again—something she'd abandoned after marriage.
She realizes she's attracted to a younger man, Robert. Not just polite interest—actual desire.
And she starts asking dangerous questions:
Why do I exist only to serve my husband and children?
Why can't I have desires of my own?
Why do I feel more alive when I'm alone than when I'm with my family?
Edna begins pulling away from her prescribed role. She moves out of her husband's house into a small cottage. She has an affair. She refuses to attend social obligations. She paints instead of managing the household.
She's trying to find herself—to become a person, not just a wife and mother.
In 1899, this was essentially a horror story.
Because Edna doesn't get a happy ending. She doesn't find fulfillment or freedom.
Robert leaves her. Her independence isolates her. Society offers no place for a woman who rejects her assigned role.
In the novel's final scene, Edna walks into the ocean and keeps swimming—away from shore, away from her life, into the water until exhaustion takes her.
It's ambiguous whether she intended to die or simply wanted to feel that freedom one last time.
Either way, she drowns.
Critics were appalled.
Not just by the ending—by everything.
By Edna's desire for autonomy. By her dissatisfaction with motherhood. By her sexuality. By the suggestion that a woman might want something other than husband and children.
The most offensive part? Kate didn't moralize. She didn't punish Edna with obvious judgment. She simply showed a woman's inner life honestly.
In 1899, that was revolutionary—and unforgivable.
Women were supposed to find complete fulfillment in domesticity. Suggesting otherwise was dangerous.
It might give other women ideas.
So they destroyed Kate Chopin's career.
She tried to defend herself. She wrote a response to critics:
"Having a group of people at my disposal, I thought it might be entertaining (to myself) to throw them together and see what would happen."
But it didn't help. The damage was done.
Her next novel was rejected by every publisher. Short story editors who'd once competed for her work now returned her submissions unread.
She kept writing, but nothing was published. She withdrew from public life. Her health declined.
In August 1904, Kate attended the St. Louis World's Fair. It was an oppressively hot day. She came home with a headache.
Two days later, she suffered a brain hemorrhage.
She died on August 22, 1904.
She was 54 years old. She'd written one of the most important novels in American literature.
And she died thinking it was a failure.
For sixty years, "The Awakening" was out of print.
Literary histories mentioned Kate Chopin briefly, if at all, as a "local color" writer of minor Louisiana tales.
The few critics who remembered "The Awakening" dismissed it as a misguided attempt at serious literature.
Then, in 1969, Norwegian scholar Per Seyersted published a biography of Kate Chopin and helped get "The Awakening" reprinted.
The timing mattered.
Second-wave feminism was rising. Women were questioning traditional roles, demanding autonomy, fighting for equality.
And suddenly, readers understood what Kate Chopin had been saying seventy years earlier.
"The Awakening" wasn't morbid or immoral.
It was honest.
Edna Pontellier wasn't mentally ill or morally depraved.
She was trapped in a system that gave women no options between total submission and death.
The novel wasn't advocating for Edna's choices—it was showing the impossible position women were in.
By the 1970s, "The Awakening" was back in print, taught in universities, analyzed in feminist literary criticism, recognized as a masterpiece.
Today, it's standard curriculum in American literature courses. It's considered one of the first feminist novels. Kate Chopin is recognized as a pioneer who wrote honestly about women's inner lives decades before it was acceptable.
But Kate never knew.
She died believing she'd written something shameful. That her most honest work had been rejected. That she'd sacrificed her reputation for nothing.
Think about that for a moment.
Kate Chopin wrote a novel that millions of students now study. That scholars analyze. That we call a masterpiece.
And she died thinking it was garbage that had ruined her life.
She never knew that Edna Pontellier's struggle would resonate with millions of women across generations.
She never knew that her honest portrayal of female desire and autonomy would help reshape American literature.
She never knew she'd be vindicated.
She just knew that she'd told the truth, and the truth had cost her everything.
Kate Chopin wrote about a woman who drowned trying to find freedom.
Then Kate herself was drowned by a society that couldn't tolerate her honesty.
She wrote one of the most important novels in American literature—and was punished for it with social exile, professional destruction, and historical erasure.
She died thinking she'd failed.
Seventy years later, we proved her right all along.
But she never knew.
Here's what makes this story so devastating:
Kate Chopin wasn't writing fantasy. She was writing reality.
Edna Pontellier wasn't crazy. She was trapped.
The novel wasn't about a woman who couldn't handle life. It was about a society that gave women no room to breathe.
Kate Chopin saw that clearly in 1899.
It took the rest of us seventy years to catch up.
And by the time we did, Kate had been dead for over sixty years.
She never got to see the vindication. Never got to know she was right. Never got to hear "thank you" from the millions of women who would find themselves in Edna's story.
She just got silence, rejection, and death in obscurity.
But she left the book behind.
And eventually, the world caught up.
Every year, thousands of students read "The Awakening" for the first time.
They meet Edna Pontellier—a woman who wanted more than the life prescribed for her.
They see her struggle. Her awakening. Her drowning.
And they understand something Kate Chopin understood in 1899:
That wanting autonomy shouldn't be a death sentence.
That women are people, not just wives and mothers.
That honesty about women's inner lives matters.
Kate Chopin died believing she'd failed.
But every student who reads her book proves she succeeded.
Every woman who sees herself in Edna validates Kate's vision.
Every literary scholar who teaches "The Awakening" honors Kate's courage.
She never knew.
But we know now.
And we won't forget.
Remember Kate Chopin.
Remember that she was a widowed mother of six who wrote to support her family and ended up writing something so honest it destroyed her career.
Remember that critics called her work "poison."
Remember that she was socially exiled, professionally ruined, historically erased.
Remember that she died believing she'd failed—and that seventy years later, we proved her right all along.
Remember that "The Awakening" wasn't about a woman who couldn't handle life.
It was about a society that gave women no room to breathe.
Kate Chopin saw that in 1899.
She paid for that clarity with her career, her reputation, and her peace of mind.
She died thinking it was all for nothing.
But it wasn't.
Every woman who's ever felt trapped and wanted more—Kate wrote for you.
Every person who's ever been ahead of their time and punished for it—Kate's story is yours.
Every artist who's created something honest and been destroyed for it—Kate understands.
She wrote about a woman drowning.
Then she drowned too—in silence, in rejection, in a world that wasn't ready for her truth.
But she left the book behind.
And eventually, the world caught up.
Kate Chopin didn't live to see her vindication.
But her words did.
And they're still awakening readers today.
