The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899.

Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South.

It is one of the earliest American novels that focuses on women's issues without condescension.

Kate Chopin (1850 - 1904) was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana.

She is now considered by some scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald.