Kate Chopin

The American Classics Collection is a century-spanning collection of 17 classic novels, short stories, essay, and poetry by American authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators.

Edna Pontellier is married, twenty-eight, and at a crossroads in her life. She is passionate and artistic but has no one who understands her deep yearnings. She jumps at the chance to spend a summer away from her husband and the heat of New Orleans at a small coastal retreat. Enveloped by a...

The Awakening is among the most-read American novels in colleges and universities and is considered an early example of American realism....

Edna Pontellier has everything that a woman and mother should want - two wonderful sons, a husband, and good financial fortune. But still, she feels like something may be missing. While vacationing with her family, she meets a young man who shows affection....

Kate Chopin's brilliant short story about an hour in the life of a young wife....

Life has the capacity of great moments and attainment, of lives well lived, fulfilling for ourselves and for those we touch. But for others life is arduous. There is no spark to ignite the curiosity, to explore and achieve a stability and a growth to their lives....

Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renowned musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence...

This classic novel focuses on a female protagonist named Edna Pontellier who rebels against the conventional roles of an upper-class conservative woman. Set in New Orleans, the novel weaves a rich tapestry of southern life and culture through the lens of a woman who feels trapped in a cage of...

On vacation in Grand Isle, Louisiana, a married woman falls in love with a charming, attentive young man. The relationship spurs Edna Pontellier to explore her longing for independence and creative fulfillment. It also compels her to defy conventions, rejecting the constraints of marriage and...

The title of this short story from 1894 refers to the time elapsed between the moments at which the protagonist, Louise Mallard, hears that her husband is dead, then discovers that he is alive after all. The short story is a mainstay of feminist literary study....

Kate Chopin’s novel, a landmark work of early feminism, is seen as a precursor to the works of American novelists such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.....

Durante unas vacaciones en Grand Isle, en la costa sur de Luisiana, Edna Pontellier empieza a conocerse como mujer y su vida, tal y como la ha concebido hasta ese momento, comienza a carecer de sentido. Edna entra en crisis al poner en duda el papel del matrimonio y la maternidad....

In Désirée’s Baby, the adopted daughter of a wealthy prewar French Creole couple is courted by the son of another wealthy, respected French Creole family. After they marry, their child is born with dark skin and believed to have African ancestry, a problem for a prewar white family. Accused...

This powerful story concerns a wife who learns that her overbearing husband has been killed....

Kate Chopin is a widely considered a forerunner to the feminist authors of the twentieth century. Focusing on themes of race and gender, her short stories largely center on life in rural Louisiana. In "A Pair of Silk Stockings," a young woman unexpected finds herself with fifteen dollars...

The American literary tradition has, in a far shorter span of time than others throughout history, achieved a glowing and glittering reputation. From its transatlantic roots it has absorbed the sons and daughters of other cultures, other lands and made them part of her own....

Step beyond the lamplight and into the gilded darkness of a vanished world. Ghost Stories from the Gilded Age is a classic ghost story anthology featuring eerie tales by female authors who defied convention—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and more.

War is always a tragedy. There may be a winner of sorts but always a loser. The cost in injuries, death, destruction can never be fully recovered even if glossed over by a military or political elite that proclaims otherwise.

The Awakening revolves around a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier, who grapples with her burgeoning awareness of self in late 19th century Louisiana....

The inevitable is understood by each and every one of us who faces the final calling. So too are the effects on those left behind. The memories are there but the empty space, the void can never be refilled. It remains a dark, unreliable pit of loneliness....