SOURCE: Cutter, Martha J. “The Search for a Feminine Voice in the Works of Kate Chopin.” In Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1850-1930, pp. 87-109. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1999.

In the following essay, Cutter explores the differences in Chopin's portrayal of women in her short stories from that in The Awakening.

When Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening was published in 1899, it was condemned as vulgar, morbid, and unwholesome. The book was allegedly banned from some libraries, and Chopin was ousted from social clubs. She eventually lost the contract for her next collection of fiction, A Vocation and a Voice, and it was not published until almost a hundred years later. About the whole furor, Chopin commented ironically: “I never dreamt of Mrs. Pontellier making such a mess of things and working out her own damnation as she did. If I had had the...