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.

This scandalous turn-of-the-century story follows 28-year-old Edna Pontellier, wife and mother, who one day awakens to the pangs of passion for the first time in her life.

One of the earliest feminist works in American literature, "The Awakening" tells the story of Edna Pontellier. Unsatisfied with societal expectations and unhappy with her family life, she begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun....

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.....

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.

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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.

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....

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

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

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

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....

Widowed at thirty, beautiful, resourceful Therese Lafirme is left alone to run her Louisiana plantation. When Therese falls in love with David Hosmer...

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....

Presented here are three of the most important feminist novels ever written: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and The Awakening by Kate Chopin....

Kate Chopin is a widely considered the forerunner to the feminist authors of the twentieth century. Focusing on themes of race and gender, her short stories largely center on rural life....