The Awakening and Selected Short Stories

The Awakening tells the story of 28-year-old Edna, a Kentuckian married to 40-year-old French Creole Léonce Pontellier, a New Orleans businessman. The novel opens as Edna and her two young sons are summering along the Gulf of Mexico at Grand Isle, in beachfront cottages owned by Madame Lebrun from New Orleans, where "exclusive visitors … enabled [Madame Lebrun] to maintain the easy and comfortable...