Backlisted - The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

The Awakening is an American classic, first published in 1899. The novel’s focus is the inner life of Edna Pontellier, a 29 year-old a married woman and mother of two boys, whose husband Léonce is a New Orleans businessman of Louisiana Creole heritage. The book’s notoriety derives from Edna’s refusal to accept the role that American society of the late 19th century has allocated to her. After the controversy that greeted it on publication, The Awakening sank from view until it was rediscovered by a new generation of readers after the Louisiana State University Press published Chopin’s collected works in 1969. Now acclaimed as a feminist classic – it was published in the UK in 1978 by The Women’s Press and is now both a Penguin and an Oxford classic, a Canongate Canon, and one of the most popular university set texts in America. We’re joined by the Irish American writer Timothy O’Grady and publisher Rachael Kerr to find out why. This episode also finds Andy revelling in Beware of the Bull, a new biography of the incomparable Yorkshire singer-songwriter Jake Thackray (Scratching Shed), while John enjoys Louise Willder’s Blurb Your Enthusiasm, the product of her twenty-five years as a copywriter at Penguin. Timings may vary as a result of adverts: 04:57 Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder 11:00 Beware of the Bull: The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray by Paul Thompson and John Watterson 18:59 The Awakening by Kate Chopin * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm * If you'd like to support the show, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us gazing out on the Gulf of Mexico, somewhere below New Orleans in the late 1890s. It's an early evening and the sea whispers, clamors and murmurs as the sun sinks. A tall, slender woman in a faded bathing suit is walking slowly towards the waves. She removes the suit, stands for a moment in the breeze and the

fading sunshine, and then walks calmly into the sea's embrace. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And today we're joined by two guests, one returning and one making their backlisted debut. Tim O'Grady, Rachel Kerr, hello to you both. Hello. Hello. Our new guest is the writer Timothy O'Grady.

Tim was born in Chicago and when he was 22, he migrated to an island off the northwest coast of Ireland. and when he was 22, he migrated to an island off the northwest coast of Ireland. Since then, he's lived in Dublin, London, Valencia, Spain, and Turin, Poland, the city of Copernicus. I just knew that. I just threw that in. He's the author of seven books. His novels are Motherland, I Could Read the Sky,

a collaboration with the photographer Steve Pike, and Light. His nonfiction books A Curious Journey, an oral history of the Irish Revolution of 1916-23, On Golf and Divine Magnetic Lands, an account of a return journey to the United States after 30 years of living in Europe. His book Children of Las Vegas, based on interviews with people who grew up in the city, was published by, that's right, Unbound in 2016. There's a certain theme that's about to reveal itself today. Unbound is also publishing a new edition of I Could Read the Sky, and in 2024, his new novel Monaghan. Monaghan? Monaghan?

Monaghan. And it's Torun. Torun. You got Polentia right. Yeah, I Torun Poland, the city of Copernicus. Torun, the city of Copernicus, as it will always be known. Monaghan, a collaboration with the artist Anthony Lott, which concerns an IRA sniper who has reinvented himself as a painter. Welcome, Tim.

Tim, have you ever met any of the other people around the table today? Well, I know John and Rachel for a long time because they were working at harville when that book you mentioned i could read the sky was published so we go back a long way uh 20 some years i guess 25 years 26 years um at least that i went to their wedding um been to their home i saw their little pigs and their bees and so we go back a long way they know each other I haven't done any of those things they shut me out

these bastards right okay that's good I'm pleased to hear that well it's nice of you to let me join you old pals together thank you so much let's talk about one of the other one of the gang Rachel Kerr is a publisher and has worked for Cape,

Pickardore and Harville and is now editor-at-large for Unbound. Unbound. She was part of the Harville team, as we just heard, that published I Could Read the Sky back in 1997 and will be the editor of Monaghan. And this is Rachel's fifth appearance on Batlisted. Thank you, Rachel. She has previously appeared on episodes 44, Charles Brawson's Forts of the Black Massacre,

83, D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow, 87. 87, you came back four episodes later, wow. Bruce Chapman's Oots, and 140, Dermot Healy's A Goat Song. And despite that, she is still married to John Mitchinson. Oh yes, I'm a hardy woman. Welcome back, Rach. Amazing but true. It's lovely to be here again.

Anyway, the book we're here to discuss is The Awakening by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899 by Herbert Stone & Co. in Chicago, just two years after they'd published What Maisie Knew by Henry Jones, another great American novel. After causing a great deal of controversy upon publication, The Awakening sank below the waves until it was rediscovered by a new generation of readers after the Louisiana State University Press published Chopin's Collected Works in 1969. Internationally acclaimed as a feminist classic,

it was published in the UK in 1978 by the Women's Press and is now both a Penguin and an Oxford classic and a Canongate Canon and apparently one of the most popular university set texts in America. We're here to find out why. But before we start sashaying our way through the French Quarter, John, let me ask you the traditional question. What have you been reading this week? Well, I've been reading a book that I think is kind of more or less peak backlisted fan

kind of fodder it's just an adorable uh book called blurb your enthusiasm an a to z of literary persuasion by louise wilder and louise worked uh has worked and continues to work as a as a blurb writer written more than 5 000 she's been a copywriter at Penguin for 25 years, and she reckons she's, over that time, done about 5,000 blurbs. If you're a new listener to Backlisted and you've never listened to it before, nearly every episode of Backlisted features us reading out the blurb on the chosen book, whatever edition of the chosen book we have, and trying to judge whether it's a good, bad, or indifferent blurb

for the book that we've read. So we ought to get, wouldn't it be amazing to get Louise on this to cast a professional eye over it? That would be incredible. I think so, because honestly, this book, it's five sections. Each of the sections is an individual A to Z. It's nicely structured. But if you're interested, I mean, you know, we all pick up books, right? Mostly what you see and feel and hold and look when you're looking at a book has got nothing to do with the author, really. It's mostly written, the words are written by publishers, the puffs and the blurbs come in from other people.

The kind of, all the accoutrements that make a book a book is the job of the publisher. And, I mean, obviously speaking as a working publisher, of course, I'm going to be the target market for this, but I mean, plenty of other people who aren't publishers, Lucy Mangan said, this is the bookiest book about books you'll ever read. And I would kind of agree with that, but she writes really, really well. It's really funny. It's, you wouldn't think there was so much to be said about blurbs, but blurbs are as she quotes, it's one of my favorite quotes, C. Day Lewis, the great poet and detective writer, that the sonnet, the detective novel,

and the blurb are the most extreme and difficult literary forms to master. Anyway, Benya Goder in the New York Times agrees that subtitles are the wallflower at the party. Nobody really notices subtitles. They're a sort of lottery ticket in the economics of non-fiction book marketing. Publishers throw all kinds of elements in them, vogue words and phrases, features of the book. The title didn't get around to mentioning talismanic locations like an American life in the almost always vain hope that something will pay off. The literary critic Robert McCrum goes as far as saying that publishers should scrap subtitles, that fig leaf of authorial shame, together, following his apoplexy at seeing that a biography, and we've noticed this, Andy, ourselves, that a biography of William Golding featured the subtitle

The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies. Yes. I feel his rage. Yes. Somebody once told me that if it's too hard to come up with a good subtitle for a book, the title probably isn't right. And if it's too hard to come up with a good title, the book's probably a dud and the jig is up. Gulp. Anyway, here's a little piece about the T.S. Eliot and blurbs. I wonder how the poet Louis MacNeice felt about the blurb that his editor T.S. Eliot wrote for the cover of his early collection, Poems, in 1935. This infamous copy includes the line, his work is intelligible but unpopular,

and has the pride and modesty of things that endure. I suspect my career might not have endured if I'd been that honest. It's a similar story with Eliot's copy for Robert Graves' The White Goddess, which states, this is a prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book. T.S. Eliot wrote hundreds of blurbs for favor and favor during his time as a publisher there, including works by Ezra Pound, Stephen Spender, Marianne Moore, Ted Hughes. They were often based on his numerous and rather marvelous notes from editorial meetings. Example, Uncle William is as loony as ever on WB8s, which sadly didn't make it to the jacket.

According to his Faber colleague, founding director Frank Morley, everyone admitted he was our best blurb writer. Morley continued, blurbs are the curse of publishing. They're torture to write. Eliot wrote thousands of them. I can testify from personal knowledge, both of Eliot and of blurb writing, that during his publishing career, he has turned to as at so many blurbs as to make it quite impossible. He should have had time or energy for everything else. But this is Eliot.

This is the bit I really love. Eliot described the process thus. Every publisher who is also an author considers this form of composition more arduous than any other that he practices. If you praise highly, the reviewer may devote a paragraph to redeeming the publisher's pretensions. If you try understatement, the reviewer may remark that even the publisher doesn't seem to think much of this book. I have had both experiences. Anyway, it's just full of lovely, some of her favorite blurbs. She dissects blurbs, what makes them good, what makes them... There are terrible blurbs in there. There's a wonderful bit about the man who loves blurbs so much,

Roberto Colasso of Adelphi Editions. He wrote all the blurbs for all the Adelphi books. And he calls this classic, you'll like this, Rachel, because you did his publicity once. Yes, I did. He takes a brief glance at the cover flap hoping for some assistance at that moment without realizing it he is opening an envelope those few lines external to the text of the book I like a letter written to a stranger and she really loves that and it's a lovely idea blurbs letters written to strangers

and he indeed collected all his blurbs together and published them as a wow that's some hooks pa called a hundred letters a hundred letters to a stranger and it is literally a book made up of a hundred blurbs he wrote over the years for works including karen blix and will and kudra samuel butler in no particular order all right so what is that lovely so what's it's called book called? It's called Blurb Your Enthusiasm, an 80s Ed of Literary Persuasion. It was published in September. It is a hardback, a B-format hardback,

£14.99, published by One World. And it's by Louise Wilder. All right. Your literary stocking filler is solved. Andy, what have you been reading this week? Thanks, John. I have been reading a biography called Beware of the Bull, the Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackeray by Paul Thompson, who plays

live as the Jake Thackeray Project, and John Watterson, who plays live as Fake Thackeray. And so you've got two tribute artists who've written a biography of the great, great, great Jake Thackeray. If you don't know for some reason who Jake Thackeray is, please go back and listen to episode 92 of Backlisted, which we recorded in the Church of St. James in St. Peterport, Guernsey in the Channel Islands, the venue where 34 years, I saw Jake Thackeray play a live concert. I went with my mum. She really hated it. But I can tell you, mum, sorry if you ever listened to this. You were wrong. It was absolutely great. And at the show, at the podcast that we recorded in the same venue, we played some of Jake Thackeray's music out into the room.

It was a sort of ghostly and rather special experience for me and I hope for members of the audience as well. He was famously a Yorkshire chansonnier. And to quote our former guest, the writer Andrew Mayle, this lugubrious woolly-jumpered raptor of a man, his voice a foggy, owlish hoot, steeped in dark Yorkshire bitter. He's a folk singer, but as Paul Thompson and John Weston say repeatedly in this book, he doesn't fit. He doesn't fit any category. He was a schoolteacher. He idolized people like Jacques Brelange, particularly Georges Brassens. He made records for EMI.

He appeared regularly on TV. He was prodigiously talented and productive in terms of the number of songs he produced, far more than he actually could record. I think he maybe had, there were five studio LPs, the first four on EMI. there were five studio LPs, the first four on EMI. And he recorded for EMI at the same time as another EMI act, The Beatles. And his first LP was recorded in the same week that The Beatles were in Abbey Road, working on Magical Mystery Tour in the very same studio, in Studio 2.

And John Lennon met Jake Thackay and was impressed by his dress sense, telling him, I like your gear, man. More importantly, the Beatles liked his songs and guitar playing. Paul McCartney later acknowledged Jake's influence on the White Album, recorded in 1968. A lot of it was written in India, where we were working with acoustic guitars. That affected the kind of music that was made. John had somehow sneaked in a cassette player, battery operated.

He was listening to a lot of folky stuff. He had about half a dozen cassettes with him, a Buddy Holly, an incredible string band tape, some Dylan, and a tape the singer Jake Thackrey had done for him. Imagine that. Imagine they go all the way to Rishikesh and they're listening to some tape that Thackrey's made them. He was one of the people we bumped into at Abbey Road. John liked his stuff, which he'd heard on television.

Lots of wordplay and very suggestive. So very much up John's alley. I was fascinated by his unusual guitar style. And John did Happiness is a Warm Gun as a Jake Thackery thing at one point, if I recall. So the idea that this Yorkshire school teacher who who when offered a record contract by EMI by Norman Euler EMI John doesn't write back for three weeks because he's busy because he's marking he's marking papers he's going on his ambivalent attitude to being famous

is sort of the theme of this book and what I loved it, if you're not a Jake Thackery fan when you start reading this book, you certainly will be by the end of it. And you will join the ranks of people like me and Andrew, Neil Gaiman, John Richardson, Keris Matthews, Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys. This guy was the real thing. The problem for him was he couldn't quite find an industry that could accommodate what he

did because he was a one-off. He kind of fits into his life. Is he light entertainment? Is he a folk singer? Is he a pop singer? What is he? It's one of those perfect stories to me about how creativity and artistic talent flow in ways that cannot always be accommodated by the industry in which they have to be sold. On that level, it's similar for me to Jonathan Coe's Wonderful Like a Fiery Elephant about B.S. Johnson. You know, again, someone who doesn't fit, whose talent burns very bright, but can't be sold easily. Anyway, this book was published by Scratching Shed Publishing,

an indie publisher. They're in their third reprint of this. It's been a big word-of-mouth success. I thought it was wonderful. It's called Beware of the Bull, the enigmatic genius of Jake Thackeray. And I would like to... We can't play any of Jake's music for copyright reasons,

but I can read the lyrics of the title track of his first album, which was called The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackeray. And I tried this earlier and just thought, oh, this is wonderful. Imagine you didn't know this was a song and I was just reading it to you. It's called The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackeray. Here we go. I, the undermentioned by this document, do declare my true intentions, my last will, my testament. When I turn up my toes, when I rattle my clack, when I agonise,

I want no great wet weepings, no tearing of hair, no wringing of hands, no sighs, no lackadais, no woe is me's and none of your sad adieus. Go, go, go and get the priest and then go get the booze, boys. Death, where is thy victory? Grave, where is thy sting? When I snuff it, bury me quickly, then let carousals begin. But not to do with a few ham sandwiches, a sausage roll or two, and a small port wine, please. Roll the carpet right back. Get cracking with your old gay Gordons and your knees up. Shake it up. Live it up. Sup it up. Hell of a kind of a time. And if the coppers come around, well, tell them the party's mine, boys. Let best beef be eaten. Fill every empty glass. Let no breast be beaten, let no tooth be gnashed.

Don't bother with a fancy tombstone or a big deal angel or a little copper flower pot. Grow a dog rose in my eyes or a pussy willow, but no forget-me-nots, no epitaphs, no keepsakes. You can let my memory slip, you can say a prayer or two for my soul then, but make it quick, boys. Lady, if your bosom is heaving, don't waste your bosom on me. Let it heave for a man who's breathing, a man who can feel, a man who can see. And to my cronies, you can read my books, you can drive around in my motor car and you can fish your trout with my fly and tackle you can play on my guitar and sing my songs wear my shirts you can even settle my debts you can kiss my little missus if she's willing then but no regrets boys No regrets, boys. Your rosebuds are numbered.

Gather them now for rosebuds' sake. And if your hands aren't too encumbered, gather a bud or two for Jake. Oh, that's lovely. Brilliant. Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake. So that is Beware of the Bolt, the enigmatic Genius

of Jake Thackery. You can listen to his records on YouTube or Spotify. You can read the book. Please buy it. Please read it. Support independent

publishing and the artists against the industry. Do it. Thanks very much. Excellent. Back to the main event.

The Awakening was Kate Chopin's second novel, and it followed two successful collections of stories, Bayou Folk in 1894 and A Night in Acadie in 1897. The novel's focus is the inner life of Edna Pontellier, a 29-year-old married woman and mother of two boys, whose husband, Léos, is a New Orleans businessman of Louisiana Creole heritage. The book's notoriety derives from Edna's refusal to accept the role that American society of the late 19th century has allocated to her. Inspired by her deep love of music and of art,

repelled by the sacrifices made by her female friends, she finds herself falling in love with one man, Robert Lebrun, who is young and attentive, and committing adultery with another, I'll say Arabin, who is dashing and shallow. It is her refusal to show remorse and to put her husband and children before her own emotional sexual needs that made the book so shocking. Willa Kether called it the Creole Bovary and hoped that Miss Chopin will devote that flexible, iridescent style of hers to a better cause. Male critics lined up to deplore it as gilded dirt that promoted unholy imaginations and unclean desire and condemned

Chopin as one more clever writer gone wrong. Yeah, wow. But since the book's rediscovery in the late 1960s, contemporary audiences found it to be a rich, subtle and rewarding novel. And Chopin's reluctance to draw easy conclusions make it even more subversive and powerful. Kate Chopin's book is now seen in its intense interior monologue as a bridge from the naturalistic fiction of the late 19th century to the bold narrative experiments of writers like William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf in the early 20th, and in her vivid portraits of Louisiana as a precursor to the tradition of southern writing which includes Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor and Tennessee Williams. As our go-to guest on American Literature, Sarah Churchwell, has written recently, The Awakening is not only one of the most important novels in

the history of American women's writing, it is an acknowledged American masterpiece. So we should start with our usual question, which I'm going to lob to you, Tim, as you chose The Awakening by Kate Chopin. When and where were you when you first read this novel? Well, I was here in the city of Copernicus, as you call it. But I bought it, I found it in a little bookshop in Dalston called Burley and Fisher. It was an edition, Alma Classics, which you didn't mention among the publishers of this book, but they also publish it in the cheap edition. I saw it on the bookshelf and i remembered having read a famous story of hers called the story of an hour which i was very taken with because of the boldness of it and i'd heard about the awakening and i bought it and i

took it home and uh and read it and read it again and read it again a third time in what in disbelief did it did it was it did it grow with every reading well you read it more and read it again a third time. In what? In disbelief? Did it grow with every reading? Well, you read it more than once, so that's a good... Well, I think this book is... I mean, there's hardly anything more important than what she talks about in this book. You know, it's somebody waking up to life. I mean, it was right beside her and she couldn't see it.

You know, just like physicists, maybe Einstein didn't see his theory of relativity until he looked one way and she saw it, she felt it, it came up in her. And it's just the primacy of life and a discovery of the intensification of life. And I think, you know, it sort of gets past artifice, it gets past ideology, it gets past prettiness of sentences and structures. I think you remember this book. It's an important book. It has flaws, but it's about something that is as important as anything could possibly be. I mean, I can remember feeling maybe like she did when I was a teenager and thinking, is this all there is, you know, looking at the world through a kind of mottled glass, everything sort of muted, and then suddenly feeling a dynamism in life. And it's a, you know, it's a marvelous thing to feel. And I think she conveys this. It's a marvelous thing to feel, and I think she conveys this.

She makes it the center of this book. It's not just a character's trait. It is the subject of the book. And I've recommended it to a lot of people because of that. I mean, whether anybody can be awakened by this book is another thing. I mean, it's really, in her case case it's like a wellspring you know that seems to come up unexpected i think it's it's very very memorable for the um you know for the vital importance of what it talks about i love that idea can could people still be awakened by reading the awakening with that's the subject we'll return to later in this discussion, I think. Rachel, when did you first read either this or other work by Kate Chopin,

or when did you become aware of her? Well, quite remarkably, given that I did an MA in English and American literature from 1880 to the present day, it never came up on my curriculum, never came up on the reading list. I hadn't heard of it until I think it was probably about 2014. And I was going to visit New Orleans. And as I like to do, I looked around for books that were set there. I wanted to read a novel set in New Orleans. And I found it. And of course, when I got to to New Orleans I was way too busy to read it there's much music to be listened to and many cocktail bars to be visited and many things to be done but I read it when I got home and I was completely blown away by it because it's one of those books I mean as John says it's evidently like a really important book on the on the university curriculum

in in America but I'm not sure whether it's actually on the I mean it may be now but it certainly wasn't when I was doing my degree which is it felt to me very much ahead of its time. It felt very much more like reading something written much later. And as you said, that bridge between the 19th century novel and Virginia Woolf. I mean, it felt more like Virginia Woolf than it felt like anything else written in the late 19th century. So that was hugely exciting to me. And I've read it several times since because it's just amazing. John, what I like about this novel, which I hadn't read before,

I don't know if you had, but I like how it can't be contained by any one reading. So the idea that Tim and Rachel have both read it several times, I look forward to reading it again because it's very much an example of a book that we like, the sort that we like on Batmastiff, where the first reading is just prep for the second reading, which is to consolidate your understanding for the third reading. What did you make of it?

Have you read it before? I can tell you exactly how I was first made aware of it. And I'm going to play a clip from it. It's in David Simon's Treme, which is set in his series set in New Orleans. And there's a lecturer in that, by John Goodman who is teaching it to his class and it really stuck in my just a little there's a little snippet that he reads from it just stuck in my mind is something I ought to really go back and look at because it's it I think as Rachel I think as you both said it's it just feels for the kind of um the kind of intensity of prose and the sort of

the that intense interiority of somebody reflecting on their lives and and behaving there's this there's almost a bartleby the scrivener thing about it she's sort of just it's it's not a flashy novel so i i picked it up and read it and i read it for this as you did and and in fact have read it now twice because I just needed to read it again because I felt there were so many joins in between the episodes that I hadn't really understood. It's such a strong and powerful atmosphere. It's not like any other American novel I've read.

Very moving and very strange. In a minute, we're going to appraise the blurb on the current Penguin Classic Edition. it's not like any other American novel I've read. Very moving and very strange. Yeah. In a minute, we're going to appraise the blurb on the current Penguin Classic Edition, in keeping with one of the themes of this show. With the theme of the show. But first, why don't we hear from John Goodman, that John was just talking about there from an episode of Treme. Yeah, first season of Treme.

This book is really old. Yes, it is. But the awakening's human concerns are as relevant today as they were at the end of the 19th century. Hey, at least it's short. Yeah, thank you, Professor Burnett. True. So I want you to take your time with it. Pay attention to the language itself, the ideas. Don't think in terms of a beginning and an end, because unlike some plot-driven entertainments, there is no closure in real life. Not really. You said that all books are about a problem that the protagonist has to solve. Or a quest. The protagonist is looking for something. So what's Edna looking for? Edna's journey is...

She's looking for truth. Or some kind of peace. There you go. That was giving me the fear, that clip. Can I just say, that felt like too many sixth form English lessons for me. Not the teacher, I guess the kind of, oh, at least it's short. At least it's short. Anyway.

Well, I'm going to read the blurb out from the Penguin Classic Edition now, and I will ask you, Tim Tim to give it your appraisal as you chose. Is this representative of the book you love? Here we go. The groundbreaking depiction of a woman who dares to defy the expectations of society in the pursuit of her desire. That's the full line at the top. When Kate Chopin's classic was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author's reputation. But a century after her death, The Awakening is widely regarded as Kate Chopin's great achievement and a celebrated work of early feminist literature. Through careful, subtle changes of style, Chopin shows the transformation of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother who, with tragic consequences, refuses to be caged by married and domestic life and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom. C-minus.

erotic freedom. C-minus. Thanks, Tim. I would agree with you. C-minus. Rach? It seems a shame that they've put with tragic consequences because that's, you know.

Spoilers. Spoilers. That comes out quite a lot in Burbier Enthusiasm, the very, very cavalier approach to the plots of books. I'm saying spoilers at this point to the listeners. We're going to have to discuss the ending of this novel at some point. So put a helmet on because, you know, we're going to do it.

So be warned. Yeah, C-minus, Tim. Why? What's missing from that blur? Well, I think it's a much bigger book than that, than what is described there. And I think it's a sort of sensationalist description of the book. It's to pinpoint scandal and desire.

And I mean, these things are part of it, and that she's pitting herself against the diktats of society. All that is part of this book, but the awakening is the central part of the book. And it's, it's, it's just something that anybody can identify with. And, um, you know, certainly you could, you could say there's a, there's a sort of, I mean, I can see why feminist critics would write about it as a text that would be important to them, but I think that you know, to talk about style and to talk about controversy and to just talk about feminism, I think is reductive. Rach, what do you think? I'd agree with that, with what Tim is saying. But I also think that the emotional intensity of the book is what leads people to sensationalise it um and obviously that's a neat that's a quick way of getting across but there's so much more in here there's so much more about

about actual consciousness about that you know anybody's consciousness be that female or male um or it's and it's about society it's about it's about the particular kind of society of New Orleans where at a point where the Creole kind of, there's always been that sort of thing about, you know, good, sturdy, clean living Americans and slightly effete sort of Creole old families who are, you know, there's a beautiful thing that she refers to in one bit about the thing about Creole culture being so sort of, it's sort of seen as slightly kind of dying and,

you know, so sort of hung up on beauty and courtliness and all that kind of stuff that there's a proverb in there about old Creoles don't die, they just dry up and blow away. It's that sort of sense of a dying culture being contrasted with this sort of, you know, this robust Presbyterian white. I mean, Edna is originally from Kentucky, although she's married a Creole man and she's living in Creole society. And there's something about that, which is also part of her awakening because she's in this society where the rules are different.

And given that Kate Chopin herself was married to a Creole man, I think that's something, that's always something that she's experienced directly. And that's a whole subtext of the book that's going really, you know, really important. Don't you think it's part, it's one of those books that suffers from what I call cliff notes syndrome. Yeah. Because it's been taught as a university text and it's kind of been packaged into this this is this it's an but actually it means that you kind of read it for its sociological significance yeah and you don't read it for for actually what it really is which

is a kind of book about as tim has said about somebody discovering extraordinary things about themselves and the potential within themselves. It doesn't often get said, but she finds a house, she starts to paint, she transforms her life, she throws an amazing dinner party that becomes famous throughout New Orleans. It would be very easy not to read it if you read that blurb. Yeah, the blurb for me, I agree with Tim, it gets a C- for me for the simple reason that it makes it sound like bad art. It makes it sound like Atlas Shrugged or The Ragged Trouser Philanthropist.

It makes it sound like a novel that is important because it represents an ideological point of view, right? Rather than that it breathes. that it breathes. And the thing I found so exciting about reading The Awakening is it didn't fit the exact category described by the blurb writer on that Penguin Classic Edition. What made it worth reading was all the stuff that is not encompassed in that blurb. So, in fact, I'm downgrading it to a D.

An F. I'm saying it's an F. Yeah, well, I think I remember a professor of literature from Kerry said to me, you read The Goat Song by Dermot Healy in one of your previous episodes, and he said one of the reasons why Dermot isn't really part of the canon as decided by the universities is because there are so many kind of isms in English departments now, post-colonialism and feminism, you know, very different, very many different things that are very easy ways to understand literature and works of the imagination don't necessarily fit.

In fact, they're a challenge to those things because it's very easy to take, as you were describing, I mean, to take a book just for the sociological message that it has, and then do a lecture on it and write a book about it. And I think this would do a disservice to this book. It's much larger than that. Come on, they're trying, aren't they? The blurb writer was trying. We don't wish to attribute bad faith to them. That would be unkind. hang on, the blurb writer was trying. We don't wish to attribute bad faith to them. That would be unkind.

But, nevertheless, the richness of the text, which cannot be encompassed in like a paragraph or two on the back cover. Rachel, could you read us, please, a representative, if such thing exists, section of this novel? So people who haven't read it can get a sense of the style in which it's written. I'd like to read a bit from really quite early on in the book where Edna and her husband and her children, they're all on holiday in Grand Isle,

which is a beautiful island on the Gulf of Mexico. It's about 50 miles from New Orleans. But in those days, you'd have had to go over on a steamboat and it's quite a long way. And the fathers, much like people do in the Hamptons now, the fathers go back into the city during the week and come back out into the island at weekends. And this is just a description of Mr. Pontellier,

Edna's husband, who is 40, and she is 28, I think, in the novel. At some point, he's just said, oh, I'm off to Klein's, I'm off to the bar at the hotel on the island. And this is when he comes home. It was 11 o'clock that night when Mr. Pontellier returned from Klein's hotel. He was in an excellent humour, in high spirits and very talkative. His entrance awoke his wife, who was in bed and fast asleep when he came in. He talked to her while he undressed, telling her anecdotes and bits of news and gossip that he'd gathered during the day. From his trousers pockets he took a fistful of crumpled banknotes and a good deal

of silver coin which he piled on the bureau indiscriminately with keys, knife, handkerchief, whatever else happened to be in his pockets. She was overcome with sleep and answered him with little half utterances. He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which would concern him and valued so little his conversation. Mr. Pontellio had forgotten the bonbons and peanuts that he'd promised the boys. Notwithstanding, he loved them very much and went into the adjoining room where they slept to take a look at them and make sure they were resting comfortably. The result of his investigation was far from satisfactory. He turned and shifted the youngsters about in bed. One of them began to kick and talk about a basket full of crabs. Mr. Pontellier

returned to his wife for the information that Raoul had a high fever and needed looking after. He then lit a cigar and went and sat near the open door to smoke it. Mrs. Pontellier was quite sure that Raoul had no fever. He'd gone to bed perfectly well, she said, and nothing had ailed him all day. Mr. Pontellier was too well acquainted with fever symptoms to be mistaken. He assured her the child was consuming at that moment in the very next room. He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after the children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business. He could not be in two places at once, making a living for his family on the street and staying at home to see that no harm befell them. He talked to him in a monotonous, insistent

way. Mrs. Pontellier sprang out of bed and went to the next room. She soon came back and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning her head down on the pillow. She said nothing and refused to answer her husband when he questioned her. When his cigar was smoked out, he went to bed, and in half a minute he was fast asleep. Mrs. Pontellier, by that time, was thoroughly awake. She began to cry a little, wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir. Blowing out the candle which her husband had left burning, she slipped her feet into a pair of satin mules at the foot of the bed and went out onto the porch, where she sat down on the wicker chair and began to rock gently to and fro. It was then past midnight. The tears came so fast to Mrs Pontellier's eyes that the damp sleeve of her peignoir no longer served to dry them. She was holding the back of

her chair with one hand, her loose sleeve had slipped almost to the shoulder of her uplifted arm. Turning she thrust her face streaming and wet into the bend of her arm, and she went on crying there, not caring any longer to dry her face, her eyes, her arms. She could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences of the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life. They seemed never before to have weighed so much against the abundance of her husband's kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit and self-understood. An indescribable oppression which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness filled her whole being with a vague anguish. That's the first sort of hint that we have that something

is not all well in their marriage. And I just love that description because who hasn't had their husband come home a little pissed from being out and stumbled into your bedroom? I don't wish to stumble into a private grief, Rachel. So please. It's a very affecting piece, Rachel. Thank you. Yeah, it's a very affecting piece, Rachel. Thank you. A tiny bit further on, he's back in New Orleans and he sends some sweets and bonbons and things for them all,

which Edna is sharing around. And it just says, and the ladies, selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew of none better. Well, what do you all think of him, I wonder, as a character? How do you read him?

L'Anse. Yeah. What's interesting is I think he's married an American, he's a Creole man who's married an American woman, which can be read as him trying to become more Americanized. You know, he's a businessman. He's very concerned about appearances. I don't think he's a bad person.

I think he just is completely puzzled by his wife. He feels a little bit like he might be a little bit based on oscar her husband yeah exactly who was also a businessman and was also creole background and um he was also french and had a sort of laissez-faire approach to the fact that she did things that kate Chopin did things her own way. He does, in the end, he does kind of let her move out of the house, but he has to cover it up, doesn't he? Kind of by saying, oh, we're going to move to, we're doing it up. We're moving to a bigger house.

That's why she's living on her own in the pigeon house, in this little house she rents. Tim, what do you think of him? own in the pigeon house in this little house she rents. Tim what do you think of him? Well he would often be thought to represent a certain sort of stodginess and convention and authoritarianism I suppose against her but I think he's nervous you know I think he feels her moving beyond him and a lot of this criticism of her about the children and asking her to, you know, we must keep up appearances. You can't move into that little house because, you know, we have to be seen as prosperous. And, you know, I think he's in a weak position and he knows it and he tries to

use other means to cover it up. And I think it's most telling. There's a scene later on when she, I mean, the centerpiece of the novel is this night when she hears this music and she goes swimming and she swims for the first time and she comes back and she stays on this hammock all night and she won't budge no matter how desperately he entreats her to come to bed. And she just says, I'm not going. I mean, nothing you will say will change my mind. And he meekly submits to that. And he kind of comes out and he sits on the porch, smoking cigars and drinking glasses of wine, waiting for her because she's really in charge by this time, because she's discovered something that he can't and he's doomed. I mean, there's no way back.

Once she wakes up like that, it's an awakening partly from the life she's made with him, and he's gone. I mean, there's nothing he can do probably to win her back because he's not capable of doing that. So I think he's a very nervous man. I mean, he's a bit like Karenin. He insists on social proprieties, but mainly because he doesn't know how else to talk to her. I think the comparison with Anna Karenina is very interesting because it came to mind when I was reading it. And I was thinking, OK, so this is reminding me of that novel, but what is the difference? And I wanted to ask you all, this is one of the questions I have written here,

to what extent is Edna Pontellier an individual and to what extent is she an everywoman? I don't read Anna Karenina and think Anna is an everywoman. I believe that she is an individual. Tolstoy has written an individual human being who happens to be a woman whose situation within the patriarchy in Russia in that time leads to, no spoilers, unfortunate results.

But I wonder what the comparison, therefore, is with Edna in The Awakening. You know, to what extent is Kate Chopin intending to create, put herself forward as a surrogate for women within patriarchy? And to what extent is she intending to create a pseudo individual? Rachel, what do you think? What's interesting, Kate, her experience of that vague oppression that she can't quite name is something that I think most women who are married

at some point or in a long-term relationship will have felt. So, of course, she's an individual, but she's also feeling things which are universal. I love one of the relationships in the novel, are universal. I love one of the relationships in the novel, which I like very much, is her relationship with Madame Ratignolle, who is a sort of ideal mother. She's the creole wife of a pharmacist, and she's described as beautiful and plump and she's literally everything that a mother should be. And Edna at the beginning sort of half envies her, not really envies, but sort of thinks of her as a beautiful and graceful and perfect person. And then a little later in the book, after her awakening, she begins to feel pity for her, that she's never felt what she calls the delirium of life, the other sort of side of things. She can never lift above the dull contentment of

sort of domestic harmony. And so I think, yes, Edna is an individual, but she is also very importantly a woman who's suffering from the same kind of vague oppression that many women feel. I agree. Is the author's intention to create an individual or a symptom? You compare her to Anna Karenina. You know, that was written by a man, and as sympathetic as he is to Anna Karenina, you know, that was written by a man and as sympathetic as he is to Anna Karenina, he also punishes her by throwing her under the railway car. Spotless. And, you know, Madame Bovary also meets her doom, you know.

I mean, we know the ending of this book also, but I think it's done in a very different way. And I would say that Kate Chopin, she said she wasn't a feminist. She wasn't even a suffragette. She wasn't doing this as a program. She never had that in mind. I don't think she was trying to make an every woman fighting against the patriarchy. I don't think that was her intention. I think she probably herself felt herself, woke upe, where they're talking about children and what the importance of children. And she says to Adele Ratignolle, who is like one of these mother women, as she calls them, for who, you know, their job is to adore their children and to fuss around their children and their entire identity is to look after their husbands and their children. children and to fuss around their children and their entire identity is to look after their husbands and their children. And she's not like that. And later in the book, she says, she says, well, I would give, I would give my money to my children. I would give my life for my children, but I won't give my essence. And I thought that was, you know, that was a radical thing to say. It's a very unpopular thing to say. I'm assuming she felt like that. It's so real,

the expression of that. And so, so specific and so particular. I think she she felt like that. It's so real, the expression of that, and so specific and so particular. I think she is very much a character, and I don't think she's in the service of an ideology, I would say. There's a really interesting thing that her biographer, Emily Toth, says that when she first kind of read it like a lot of people she thought it was you know a very sad story of a failed romance that ended in suicide after years of sort of researching and writing the definitive biography of of kate chopin published in 1990 i think and getting to the kind of age that Kate Chopin was when she wrote the book. She started to think about it very differently. She says, in my own middle age, I started looking

back at The Awakening and finding a very different story. Now Edna's seeking romance seems to me a silly quest, especially because the man she's pursuing is obviously to me today gay now i think the book is really an anti-romance in which none of the men have a clue while edna a motherless child figures everything out during chats with her girlfriends after all it's with adele the mother woman that edna shares the subtle bond which we call sympathy which we might as well call love as for the ending i have to concede that edna goes out for a long swim but now i'm much more aware than we never see her drown. I think she just keeps on stroking.

She then goes, I finally got it right, I think. Her scandalous romance, I believe now, was an unimportant fling in the real drama of her life, which is Chopin's life. The growth of a smart, realistic, woman-centered writer. So it's almost like there is a kind of, this book is the book that enables her to express all of the stuff that she has thought about, but can't express any other way other than through art. She can't, you know, you can't just write that. You can't write that down. This book is not a manifesto. I think that's a much better answer than mine, John.

That's a much better answer. Don't John. That's a much better answer. Don't give in to the patriarchy right now. Yeah, exactly. I'd like to ask you a question, all of you a question. Maybe I'll start with Rachel on this one. There seems to me, to me in The Awakening, a really interesting contrast between the languorous setting of New Orleans and its environs, sunburnt, you know, heat, and the forward propulsion in the narrative.

It's almost set up like a crime novel, this book. These short little chapters which offer pieces of evidence about the inevitable conclusion. You know, it's the sense that you know something bad is coming and you're being given short examples of locations or suspects or acts that lead to that conclusion. Not her demise, but her awakening. And I wondered how Kate Chopin gets away with that. It's a really good trick to pull off. How can a book be languid yet driven remorselessly forward? Gosh, that's a really good question, Andy. I think it's partly to do with the character of Edna herself. All the physical descriptions of her, of this sort of statuesque, she's handsome

rather than beautiful. She's fit, she's lean. Once she's learned to swim, she can swim. She herself, as a physical being, as well as an intellectual being, is set against the languorousness and all that. And I think there's a really brilliant description of Alsae Arabin, who is the man who she actually commits adultery with. Obviously, Kate Chopin writing this, but it's very close point of view from his thoughts. He's detected what is described as the latent sensuality of Edna, which unfolds under his delicate sense of her nature's requirements. I love that, her nature's requirements.

And this is unfolding. The description of the unfolding is like a torpid, torrid, sensitive blossom. Now, the torpid, torrid, sensitive blossom is very sort of opening magnolias in torrid heat and all that kind of thing. But that's a misunderstanding, really, of who Edna is Very sort of, you know, opening magnolias in, you know, Torrid Heat and all that kind of thing. But that's a misunderstanding, really, of who Edna is and what her awakening actually is. Her awakening is, you know, as everyone's rightly pointed out,

the sex isn't really the point. It's a symptom and it's a means, but it's not the point. Do you agree with that, Tim? Yeah, I do. I mean, it's funny that description of a flower. She wrote a story called The Storm, which is about an act of adultery in which everyone winds up happy. It's quite a clever little story. And she describes the act itself.

I mean, not every part of the anatomy is included, but it's much more explicit than she could have got away with. And she never offered it for publication in her lifetime. It was published later. But the flower is very present as a representative of this sensuality and this openness and this receptivity that happens in the sexual life. But no, I think she's waking up spiritually, aesthetically, her perceptions, body is part of it. They're all part of a general awakening, I think. And,

you know, I think mostly people concentrated on the sexual aspect, even people still do now, you know, that, that, that that's the center of it somehow, but it's only part of it, I would say. I mean, when she hears Mademoiselle Reese play, that's as much of an awakening as having sex with Al Urban, you know, I think. having sex without urban, you know, I think. I'm going to read very brief chapter six in its entirety, because it's relevant to what we're talking about now,

relevant to the awakening and itself and what we think might be meant by that term within the framework of this book. Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert. She should in the first place have declined and in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory impulses which impelled her. A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her, the light which, showing the way, forbids it. At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which

had overcome her the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears. In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realise her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognise her relations as an individual to the world within her and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of 28. Perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman. But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning. How many souls perish in its tumult. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamouring, murmuring,

inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. That's lovely. Well, also, of course, the seduction of the sea is one that she cannot resist by the end of the book. That same sea which liberates her, does it liberate her again or does it close her down?

Discuss. liberate her again or does it close her down? You know, disgust. Well, I think it's interesting that this awakening is described as a kind of, it's a sensation. I mean, she doesn't really analyze it. She doesn't say where it came from. It's a sensation that she experienced.

And I think, you know, a lot of novelists would have tried to analyze it and tried to say where it comes from and what in her background made her, what opened the door. It's just, it's a sensation. And paired with were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect southern day. She liked them to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashion to dream in, and she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested. There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why, when it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead, when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly towards inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood. And I think it's interesting that she doesn't try to psychoanalyze this woman or do anything like that.

This is an intriguing thing. I mean, you don't normally see writers resisting, you know, analysis and just giving something so important purely as a sensation. Yeah. And that kind of enigmatic quality, though, runs right through to the end of the book, because I mean, as you say, Andy, in the end, the embrace of the sea is too strong for her, but it isn't clear, really clear. I mean, as you say, Andy, in the end, the embrace of the sea is too strong for her, but it isn't clear, really clear. I mean, it's ambiguous, the ending, right? I read it as ambiguous.

I mean, we assume that she's gone off swimming and doesn't come back, but we don't kind of know that. It's almost like a transfiguration at the end, that she's moved into some sort of symbolic... Maybe that's kind of going back to your question about what does she represent? Is it kind of that sort of return to the womb? Is it an emotional act or a dutiful one?

Yeah. Is she recognising her compromised position in society and the effect on her family? Or is she reacting? I don't think there's a single answer to this. That's one of the wonderful things about the novel, right? It contains all these interpretations. You know, is she acting spontaneously?

Or is spontaneity not possible within the framework that Kate Chopin is describing? Yes and no. But that's wonderful. That's what literature is, right? It exists in three dimensions, not one. As long now, certainly for the last 30 years that this book has been kind of active, maybe longer, 40 years, it's been actively discussed, the novel's ending is ambiguous. John Goodman has a really good take on it from Treme. She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction and freed her soul of responsibility. Okay, Ben. I'm just

trying to put this book into perspective. Is The Awakening the first women's lib novel or something? I wouldn't... Now, to label it as such would be to ghettoize a great work. Well, what happens to Edna was... I thought it was really depressing. Oh, no. No. This isn't a feminist manifesto. This book is not about Edna's emancipation from male authority.

And the ending of the book is not the end. It is a transition, a rejection of disappointment and failure. The farther Edna walks away from the constraints of society and convention, the more free she becomes. She's not moving toward the darkness. She's embracing spiritual liberation. I'm going to let y'all go early today. Go out and read. It's a glorious day. well that's a very good place to leave uh edna swimming out towards the horizon and offer our thanks to tim and to rachel for setting the novel free from literary preconceptions and restoring perhaps some of its original wildness to nicky birch for making us sound like we're all at the same dinner party. And to Unbound for the boxes of bonbons and luscious fjondies.

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It's called LotListed. Think of it as our very own New Orleans salon tucked away in a jasmine-filled courtyard where we three repair to smoke cigars, drink strong cocktails, and entertain one another with stories taken from the books, films, and music we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.

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Nancy B. Pearson, Mafanwi Lloyd-Jones. Thank you. Thank you so much for your generosity and to all our patrons. Huge thanks for enabling us to continue to do this. We love it. We enjoy it. And we're pleased you love it and enjoy it too. So thank you. Rachel, what do you think? Is there something, is there some message to humanity or the cosmos that you would like to put on the Apollo space mission out into the Voyager? Sorry, the Voyager space mission out into the universe to say, to tell people about The Awakening by Kate Chopin that we didn't cover in the discussion? The only other thing I would like to say is just read this book because it is bloody wonderful. Another thing I would like to say is just read this book because it is bloody wonderful and it repays rereading

and it's just one of the best things ever. I think we all strongly agree with that sentiment, don't we? I mean, I... We do. Thank you, Tim. Thanks, Tim, for choosing it, yeah. And thanks, Rachel, for illuminating it and discussing it with us. It's been great.

We'll see you in a fortnight or so for our Christmas episode, which I think it will be with you on Christmas morning itself. As is traditional. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Rachel. Thanks, John and Nikki. See you next time, everyone. See you in a fortnight.

Bye, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.