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The Awakening

CAROLYN L. MATHEWS (ESSAY DATE 3 SEPTEMBER 2002)

SOURCE: Mathews, Carolyn L. "Fashioning the Hybrid Women in Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Mosaic 35, no. 3 (3 September 2002): 127-49.

In the following excerpt, Mathews examines the meaning of the clothing imagery in The Awakening and contends that Chopin "uses dress as a means of representing female subjectivity."

During the years surrounding the turn into the twentieth century, discourse on dress proliferated, resulting in what fashion historian Joan Severa calls "a universal understanding of style" (454). Americans of the period purchased more clothing per capita than ever before, and manuals like Dorothy Quigley's What Dress Makes of Us or Mary Haweis's The Art of Dress appeared alongside books on dress reform like J. H. Kellogg's The Evils...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Kate Chopin (Novel Date 1899)
   2. The Nation (Review Date 3 August 1899)
4. General Commentary
   1. Sandra M. Gilbert And Susan Gubar (Essay Date 1989)
   2. Rebecca Dickson (Essay Date Spring-Summer 1999)
5. Title Commentary
   1. The Awakening
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Kate Chopin
2. Feminism