The Awakening
For the first time she recognized anew the symptoms of infatuation which she felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her earliest teens, and later as a young woman. The recognition did not lessen the reality, the poignancy of the revelation by any suggestion or promise of instability. The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. 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, The Awakening
Published in 1899, Kate Chopins The Awakening is the story of Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her unorthodox views of the women’s realm with the prevailing social attitudes of turn-of-the-century Louisiana.
This quotation confronts multiple issues: forbidden infatuation, time, womanhood. Edna has already been “awakened” at this point and is dealing with the consequences of her awakening.