from "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin

An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generated in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day. (skip) She was just having a good cry all to herself.

Mrs. Pontellier was always generous with the contents of such a box; she was quite used to receiving them when away from home. The pates and fruit were brought to the dining room; the bonbons were passed around. 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.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. (skip)
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!

Their absence was a sort of relief, though she did not admit this, even to herself. It seemed to free her of a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her.

Robert's going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing.

or ever expected to feel.

It was not a condition of life which fitted her, she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui. (skip) a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium.

She began to do as she lived and to feel as she liked.

He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.

There 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 then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned 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 worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead, when life worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood.

And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.
(skip)
The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.

The Colonel was perhaps unaware that he had coerced his own wife into her grave.

now that her time was completely her own to do with as she liked.

but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.

She wanted something to happen - something, anything; she did not know what.

The house, the money that provides for it, are not mine. Isn't that enough reason?

like the feeling of freedom and independence.

Conditions would some way adjust themselves, she felt, but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.

The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.

There was her husband's reproach looking at her from the external things around her which he had provided for her external existence. (skip) because it was not love which had held this cup of life to her lips.

but I have got into a habit of expressing myself.

I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not.

oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions to all one's life.

the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul.



- It was a pure chance that I was drawn to this book. I found that the author had the same birthday with me. And she had many common thoughts and feelings with me also.
The Awakening felt like the writings of my inner conversation articulated by Kate Chopin. I couldn't appreciate more for her courage and talent in writing this brave novel at the time she lived. I was very sad for the protagonist's implied death by taking plunge for freedom and independence. As she wrote in the lines in her book, "it is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth."

Sandra Cisneros "The House on Mango Street"

I did it by doing the things I was afraid of doing so that I would no longer be afraid.

In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.

You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky.

diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.

I want to be
like the waves on the sea,
like the clouds in the wind,
but I'm me.
One day I'll jump
out of my skin
I'll shake the sky
like a hundred violins.

You must keep writing. It will keep you free,

When there is nothing left look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be.

One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from.


- I was looking for the different book by other South American writer I had read so many times when I was a kid. Also Zeze was the main character. And when I saw this book, I wasn't sure if I read it or not when I was young. But it seemed interesting to me to read through with a light heart.
I loved some lines the writer put in poetic ways. But the bitterness of life imbued in them. The color of her writing seemed pastel but subdued with light gray. Lines about the sad layers of net of underprivileged people's lives with truth and sincerity, still put in a beautifully touching way.