title: The Awakening, and Selected Stories
author:  Kate Chopin 
description: The Awakening shocked turn-of-the-century readers and reviewers with its treatment of sex and suicide. In a departure from literary convention, Kate Chopin failed to condemn her heroine's desire for an affair with the son of a Louisiana resort owner, whom she meets on vacation. The power of sensuality, the delusion of ecstatic love, and the solitude that accompanies the trappings of middle- and upper-class convention are the themes of this now-classic novel. The book was influenced by French writers ranging from Flaubert to Maupassant, and can be seen as a precursor of the impressionistic, mood-driven novels of Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes. Variously called "vulgar, " "unhealthily introspective, " and "morbid, " the book was neglected for several decades, not least because it was written by a "regional" woman writer. This edition also includes selected stories from Kate Chopin's Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, and an introduction and notes by Nina Baym.
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  # The Kiss
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Kate Chopin
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
  It was still quite light out of doors, but inside with the curtains drawn and
  the smouldering fire sending out a dim, uncertain glow, the room was full of
  deep shadows.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Brantain sat in one of these shadows; it had overtaken him and he did not
  mind. The obscurity lent him courage to keep his eves fastened as ardently as
  he liked upon the girl who sat in the firelight.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She was very handsome, with a certain fine, rich coloring that belongs to the
  healthy brune type. She was quite composed, as she idly stroked the satiny
  coat of the cat that lay curled in her lap, and she occasionally sent a slow
  glance into the shadow where her companion sat. They were talking low, of
  indifferent things which plainly were not the things that occupied their
  thoughts. She knew that he loved her-a frank, blustering fellow withou