The Awakening by Kate Chopin is one of those classics that has some redeeming values and does not age well with time. It opens in the late 1800s in Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular with the wealthy inhabitants of nearby New Orleans. The principal character is Edna Pontellier, who is vacationing there with her husband.

Edna spends most of her time with her friend Adèle Ratignolle, who teaches a few things about elegance and charm and freedom of expression. This opens Edna to discarding her prudish and repressed ways. While the “awakening” is about self-discovery, Edna's newfound independence and sexuality sometimes come across as indulgent and selfish.

As Edna becomes increasingly impetus, she eventually pushes everyone away — her husband, her family, her love, her lover, her friend — believing them all trapped by the confines of a society that only she herself seems to have shed off. While the story does a fine job exploring the consequence of independence and the implications of self-expression, it's difficult to see Edna's actions as little more than trivial while looking at them through a modern lens. The result is that reader has to continually remind themselves that Edna's actions may have been considered bold at the time (although not noble), given the formality of upper urban society during the Victorian era (late 1800s).

For as short as the book was, it felt long because I could only manage a few short chapters at a time before putting it down. Reading it in little bursts might make it better, but even then, I think the book is as trapped in the same society that enslaved this somewhat entitled (but not free) heroine.