The awakening : an authoritative text, contexts, criticism / Kate Chopin ; edited by Margaret Culley.

Includes bibliographical references.

[Table of Contents] -- Preface -- The Text of The Awakening -- CONTEXTS: -- The Context of The Awakening / Margaret Culley -- Creole Women / Mary L. Shaffter -- [Southern Womanhood] / Wilbur Fisk Tillett -- Are Women Growing Selfish? (August 13, 1897) / Dorothy Dix -- The American Wife (January 23, 1898) / Dorothy Dix -- Summer Flirtations (August 13, 1899) / Dorothy Dix -- A Strike for Liberty (October 29, 1899) / Dorothy Dix -- Women and Suicide (October 8, 1899) / Dorothy Dix -- (Gilman) from Women and Economics / Charlotte Perkins Stetson -- [Conspicuous Consumption and the Servant-Wife / Thorstein Veblen -- CRITICISM: -- Editor's Note -- Contemporary Reviews: -- From The Mirror (May 4, 1899) -- From the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat (May 13, 1899) -- From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (May 20, 1899) -- From the Chicago Times-Herald (June 1, 1899) -- From the Providence Sunday Journal (June 4, 1899) -- From the New Orleans Times-Democrat (June 18, 1899) -- From Public Opinion (June 22, 1899) -- From Literature (June 23, 1899) -- From the Los Angeles Sunday Times (June 25, 1899) -- From the Pittsburgh Leader (July 8, 1899) -- Letters from "Lady Janet Scammon Young" and "Dr. Dunrobin Thomson" -- Chopin's "Retraction" -- ESSAYS ON CRITICISM: -- [The Unlikely Awakening of a Married Woman] / Percival Pollard -- [Influences Upon the Novel] / Daniel S. Rankin -- A Forgotten Novel / Kenneth Eble -- [The Southern Woman in Fiction] / Marie Fletcher -- From The American 1890s / Larzer Ziff -- [Contrasting Forces in the Novel] / George Arms -- [Kate Chopin and the American Realists] / Per Seyersted -- [The Ending of the Novel] / George M. Spangler -- Local Color in The Awakening / John R. May -- [Kate Chopin and Walt Whitman] / Lewis Leary -- [Edna and the "Woman Question"] / Jules Chametzky -- Romantic Imagery / Donald A. Ringe -- Thanatos and Eros / Cynthia Griffin Wolff -- Edna's Suicide: The Problem of the One and the Many / Suzanne Wolkenfeld -- Edna Pontellier: "A Solitary Soul" / Margaret Culley -- Selected Bibliography

In the summer of her 28th year, Edna Pontellier and her children, along with the wives and families of other prospective businessmen, spend the summer in an idyllic coastal community away from their husbands and the sweltering heat of 1890s' New Orleans. Aware of deep yearnings that are unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood, Edna plunges into an illicit liaison that reawakens her long dormant desires, inflames her heart, and eventually blinds her to all else.