Reconsidering the awakening: The literary sisterhood of Kate Chopin and George Egerton

She fancies she is on the stage of an ancient theatre out in the open air, with hundreds effaces upturned towards her. She is gauze-clad in a cobweb garment of wondrous tissue. . . . She bounds forward and dances, bends her lissom waist, and curves her slender arms, and gives to the soul of each man what it craves, be it good or evil. . . . She can see herself with parted lips and panting, rounded breasts, and a dancing devil in each glowing eye, sway voluptuously to the wild music that rises, now slow, now fast, now deliriously wild, seductive, intoxicating. . . . One quivering, gleaming, daring bound, and she stands with outstretched arms and passion-filled eyes, poised on one slender foot, asking a supreme note to finish her dream of motion. And the men rise to a man and answer her, and cheer, cheer till the echoes from the surrounding hills and tumble wildly down the crags. (20)

In this tale, it is only the wife's discovery of her pregnancy that causes her to end the affair, in a plot twist that anticipates another young woman's turn from seeking an independent life in New Orleans to returning to her husband in Chopin's 1896 story "Athenaise." Moreover, even the revelation of the wife's pregnancy in Egerton's story is presented in a controversial manner, for she rejoices over her impending motherhood with the housemaid, a "fallen woman" who gave birth to an illegitimate child. Likewise, the conclusion of Chopin's story treats the protagonist's eminent maternity in an unconventional way, implying the new sexual attraction Athenaise feels for her husband in the wake of her discovery. Such representations of female sexuality by these two authors, in concert with their controversial portraits of women who abandon the cult of True Womanhood in their pursuit of a fulfilling existence, were what most established Chopin and Egerton as renegades in the literary marketplace of the 1890s.

Furthermore, if one considers Chopin's literary productions beyond The Awakening, one finds other texts that correspond powerfully with the dominant themes in the remaining stories in Keynotes and locate them in the New Woman Fiction genre. Egerton's tale "A Little Gray Glove" levels a critique at the social stigma concerning divorce at this time, as do Chopin's 1894 story "Madame Celestin's Divorce" and her first novel, At Fault (1890). "A Little Gray Glove" recounts the male narrator's interest in a young woman he meets while trout fishing one summer. The two spend several days together, during which she periodically visits a lawyer in London. When he finally inquires if she is "bound" to anyone, she replies that her husband has just finalized their divorce, having accused her of adultery. She knew it was useless to fight the apparently false charge, and she hints at her unhappiness in the marriage:

I did not defend the case; it wasn't likely-ah, if you knew all? He proved his case; given clever counsel, willing witnesses to whom you make it worth while, and no defence, divorce is always attainable in England. But remember: I figure as an adulteress in every English-speaking newspaper. . . . Yet in spite of that I have felt glad. The point for you is that I made no defence to the world; and (with a lifting of her head) I will make no apology, no explanation, no denial to you, now nor never. (111-12)