Quotes from book
The Awakening

Kate Chopin
Kate Chopin photo

“Even as a child she had lived her own small life within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Kate Chopin photo

“At a very early period she had apprehended the instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Kate Chopin photo

“She had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“Does he write to you? Never a line. Does he send you a message? Never a word. It is because he loves you, poor fool, and is trying to forget you, since you are not free to listen to him or to belong to him.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Kate Chopin photo

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Kate Chopin photo

“one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Kate Chopin photo

“All sense of reality had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“I've been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grand Isle; the quiet, grassy street of the Chênière Caminada; the old sunny fort at Grand Terre. I've been working with a little more comprehension than a machine, and still feeling like a lost soul.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“Looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of property which has suffered some damage.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“Edna wondered if they had all gone mad, to be talking and clamoring at that rate. She herself could think of nothing to say about Mexico or the Mexicans.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking, and unguided.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her with a vague anguish…like a shadow… a mist passing across her soul's summer day.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle — a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin photo

“You have been a very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontelliere's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)