书名：The Awakening 觉醒
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数960L
作者：Kate Chopin
出版社名称：Signet Classics
出版时间：1985
语种：英文
ISBN：9780553213300
商品尺寸：10.5x1.4x 17.4 cm
包装：简装
页数：210

The Awakening《觉醒》是美国女作家凯特·肖邦所著小说，于1899年发行。之后有好几十年遭受谴责，圣路易斯等地的图书馆甚至把它列为禁书。它从上世纪50年代开始受到重视，如今已是经典美国文学作品，并已改编成歌剧演唱。
就创作艺术而言，本书从一开始就被认为是上乘之作。例如本书发表之后，很不喜欢这本书内容的文学评论家C. L. Deyo就说这本书的确是伤心，的确是疯狂，的确是坏，但是的确全是ding峰的艺术。20世纪50年代，著名学者Brooks说许多多产作家一辈子写的东西还不如这本完美的小书（one small perfect book that mattered more than the whole life-work of many a prolific writer）。
本书为Bantam Classics出版的英文原版简装本，包括The Awakening《觉醒》等9个短篇故事，由Marilynne Robinson撰写序言，内容无删减，小巧轻便，方便随身携带阅读。

First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening has been hailed as an early vision of woman’s emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman’s abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her awakening to desires and passions that threaten to consumer her. Originally entitled “A Solitary Soul,” this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction, rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in search of self-discovery turns away from convention and society, and toward the primal, from convention and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly attracted to nature and the sensesThe Awakening, Kate Chopin’s last novel, has been praised by Edmund Wilson as “beautifully written.” And Willa Cather described its style as “exquisite,” “sensitive,” and “iridescent.”
This edition of The Awakening also includes a selection of short stories by Kate Chopin. 

“This seems to me a higher order of feminism than repeating the story of woman as victim... Kate Chopin gives her female protagonist the central role, normally reserved for Man, in a meditation on identity and culture, consciousness and art.”— From the introduction by Marilynne Robinson 

美国女作家凯特·肖邦于1899年创作的小说The Awakening《觉醒》通过描述女主人公艾德娜·庞蒂利埃的几个层面的“觉醒”，努力塑造了一位要求个人自由、敢于表达实现自身价值的愿望、敢于表达女性自我意识的“新女性”。然而，艾德娜的这些顿悟只能被看作是一种勇敢却痛苦的历程，远没有达到“醒”的目标。在寻求女性独立人格的过程中，她的许多梦想一个个地破灭，让她认识到，作为一位女性，现实中许多事情都超越了自己能够掌握的界限，她永远都不可能成为她自己，最终迫使她彻底放弃自己的所求。

凯特·肖邦，美国女作家，本名凯萨琳·欧福拉赫蒂（Katherine O’Flaherty）。自1889年至1902年间，她撰写供成人和孩童阅读的短篇小说，刊载于《大西洋月刊》《时髦》《世纪》和《哈伯青年手册》等杂志。主要作品为《河口人们》（1894年）和《阿卡迪亚之夜》（1897年）两部短篇小说集。重要的短篇小说包含《黛泽蕾的婴孩》，其内容为南北战争前路州境内异族通婚的故事。另有《一小时的故事》和《暴风》。
Kate Chopin (1851-1904) did not begin to write until she was thirty-six years old. Up to that time, her life gave no hint of either literary talent or literary ambition. Yet after the publication of her first stories in 1889, she enjoyed ten years of a productive, serious, and fairly successful career. Her first novel, At Fault (1890), had difficulty finding a publisher, so she brought it out at her own expense and sent review copies to important journals. Her short stories—close to a hundred of them—were published for the most part in prestigious national magazines. They gave her a solid reputation as a gifted ‘local color’ writer—that is, an author specializing in the depiction of a particular region of the country and its inhabitants. From these many stories, she culled two well-reviewed collections: Bayou Folk in 1894 and A Night in Acadie in 1897. The Awakening, now her best-known work, appeared in 1899. 
Critics of Chopin’s own day disapproved of the sexual frankness of The Awakening and were especially disturbed by the narrator’s neutrality toward the unconventional behavior of Edna Pontellier, the heroine. All reviews of the novel were unfavorable. Soon after this setback, a planned third collection of short stories was rejected by a publisher, and Kate Chopin essentially ceased to write. In poor health, she died some five years after The Awakening appeared. She was only fifty-three.

Introduction
The Awakening
Beyond the Bayou
Ma’ame Pelagie
Desiree’s Baby
A Respectable Woman
The Kiss
A Pair of Silk Stockings
The Locket
AReflection
Bibliography

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over:
“Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!That’s all right!” 
He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence.
Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper with any degree of comfort, arose with an expression and an exclamation of disgust. He walked down the gallery and across the narrow “bridges” which connected the Lebrun cottages one with the other. He had been seated before the door of the main house. The parrot and the mockingbird were the property of Madame Lebrun, and they had the right to make all the noise they wished. Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their society when they ceased to be entertaining.
He stopped before the door of his own cottage, which was the fourth one from the main building and next to the last. Seating himself in a wicker rocker which was there, he once more applied himself to the task of reading the newspaper. The day was Sunday; the paper was a day old. The Sunday papers had not yet reached Grand Isle. He was already acquainted with the market reports, and he glanced restlessly over the editorials and bits of news which he had not had time to read before quitting New Orleans the day before.
Mr. Pontellier wore eye-glasses. He was a man of forty, of medium height and rather slender build; he stooped a little. His hair was brown and straight, parted on one side. His beard was neatly and closely trimmed.