SOURCE: Showalter, Elaine. “Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book.” In New Essays on The Awakening, edited by Wendy Martin, pp. 33-57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

In the following essay, Showalter examines the ways in which Chopin defied the female literary tradition with The Awakening.

“Whatever we may do or attempt, despite the embrace and transports of love, the hunger of the lips, we are always alone. I have dragged you out into the night in the vain hope of a moment's escape from the horrible solitude which overpowers me. But what is the use! I speak and you answer me, and still each of us is alone; side by side but alone.”¹ In 1895, these words, from a story by Guy de Maupassant called “Solitude,” which she had translated for a St. Louis magazine, expressed an urbane and melancholy wisdom that Kate Chopin found...