Chopin's Life and Silence

Kate Chopin was a widow who supported six children through her writing — short stories of Louisiana's Creole and Cajun communities that sold well and were warmly received. The Awakening was meant to be her masterpiece.

The reviews destroyed that ambition. Critics called it "morbid," "unwholesome," and "essentially vulgar," and her local library reportedly pulled it from the shelves. Chopin published only a handful of stories afterward and died in 1904 at age 54. Feminist scholars rediscovered it in the 1960s as a masterpiece decades ahead of its time.