*

PPT: BY: Will Zorn

Catherine (Kate) O'Flaherty was born in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, on February 8, 1850. She was born in County Galway, Ireland, and Eliza Faris of St. Louis. Kate's family on her mother's side was of French extraction, and Kate grew up speaking both French and English. She was bilingual and bicultural--feeling at home in different communities with quite different values--and the influence of French life and literature on her thinking is noticeable throughout her early life had a great deal of trauma. In 1855, her father was killed in a railroad accident. In 1863 her beloved French-speaking great grandmother died. Kate spent the Civil War in St. Louis, a city where residents supported both the Union and the Confederacy and where her family had slaves in the house. Her half brother enlisted in the Confederate army, was captured by Union forces, and died of typhoid fever fiction. Kate met Oscar Chopin of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, whose French father had taken the family to Europe during the Civil War. Between 1871 and 1879 she gave birth to five sons and a daughter. She died in 1904.

*
* The novel was begun in 1897 and completed on January 21,
1898. Kate Chopin's original title was A Solitary Soul. It was published as The Awakening. Chopin set The Awakening in and around New Orleans, Louisiana. The novel opens on the vibrant Grand Isle, a favored summer spot for many New Orleans French Creoles, where Edna and Lonce Pontellier, along with their two children, are vacationing. A Kentucky native with a strict Protestant upbringing, Edna appears enamored by the free-spirited Creole culture and enthralled by the island's dreamy, luxuriant atmosphere. She undergoes a profound awakening and falls in love with Robert Lebrun, who flees to Mexico to avoid the potential scandal. Although the Pontellier family returns to life in New Orleans, Edna has changed irrevocably. Refusing her familial and societal duties, Edna moves out of her husband's home, indulges in her own artistic talents, develops eccentric friendships, and unapologetically yields to the sexual advances of the roguish Alce Arobin. Yet Edna's deeper desires remain unsatisfied. Disenchanted by her life as a piece of property and distraught at Robert's second abandonment, Edna Pontellier returns to Grand Isle and succumbs to the sea's final enchantment.

The Awakening has material that was discussed such as: *The cover page shows the painting of a woman's bare chest. *vulgar language *Sexual explicitness *violent imagery

*The reasons this book is being challenged is because

of Edna is wanting to cheat on her husband. There is a lot of sexual explicitness in this book, and because Edna doesnt want to sit in the house and do housework. Like they were supposed to back in their times, so she breaks the rules.

New York : Capricorn, 1964. - A Kate Chopin Miscellany * Boston Bedford, 1994 - A Kate Chopin Miscellany * Northwestern State UP, 1979 - Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon * New York: Norton, 1976 - Approaches to Teaching Chopin's The Awakening * Buhle, Mari Jo. , 1870-1920 - Women and American Socialism * Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1981 - An Authoritative Text Context Criticism

* I think that The Awakening, should not

be banned from schools. According to amendment one of the Constitution, Banning anything is patently Unconstitutional in the U.S. Let every written work be published as the author intended, and let the readers judge. Works stand or fall by their own merit. If you don't like what a book says, if you feel it too upsetting or feel offended by it, if you find it too racy or believe it 'corrupts the youth,' don't buy it, don't read it, convince others not to read it, don't check it out of your library and keep it away from your kids. Or better yet, write one rebutting it.

*http://almakepeace.wordpress.com/2011/

09/26/banned-books-week-the-awakening/ *www.abffe.org/bbw-booklist-detailed.htm *www.enotes.com ... The Awakening Discussion *www.katechopin.org/the-awakening.shtml *http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticg oddess/sprinkle.htm