Abstract

Many of the pieces focus on Chopin's classic novel, The Awakening. Essays by Deborah E. Barker, Dorothy H. Jacobs, and Martha Fodaski Black examine aspects of confinement and liberation in Chopin's portrayal of the novel's protagonist, Edna Pontellier. Drawing on Chopin's connections to Greek tragedy, Baudelaire, Ibsen, and Shaw, these essays offer intriguing glimpses of Chopin's literary and political sophistication. Essays by John Carlos Rowe and Doris Davis focus on Chopin's awareness of the role of women, particularly those in the leisured class, in the economic structure of American society. Barbara C. Ewell, Katherine Joslin, and Lynda S. Boren, in individual essays, discuss the influence of the romantic tradition on Chopin's work. The book's final essays consider some of Chopin's lesser-known fiction. Sara deSaussure Davis deciphers the mythical structure of the story collection A Vocation and a Voice, Anne M.