This classic of the english literature, written by Kate Chopin, is a revolutionary novel for the time she had to live. It was bad seen and was forbiden for more than 50 years. The idea that a woman, a married woman, would laeve her husband and her children, to live with another man,wasnt allowed in her society. Im not saying that nowdays such a thing is allowed, but in those earlies days, this thing wasnt even thought, thats why this book can not have a happy end for Edna, because in no way her dream would have been come true. Personally Y think Robert loved Edna vey much, but he knew, he never could have been with the woman he loved. Her friend Madmoisselle Reisz, told her she needed to be strong to face her feelings and let Robert by side, because he finally would destroy her life. At the end that was what finally happened, Ednas complete life turned around Robert until that point, in the absence of her husband, she left home with the only purpuse of beeing alone until Roberts return. Y think that she was so in love, that she was forced to sink in the sea. Personally I found it an excellent book and it could bea very good advice for further generations.

Though at one time I, too, would have rated "The Awakening" one of the worst reads of a lifetime--for its predictability in the context of a woman oppressed by Victorian society, and the most undeveloped, unsympathetic heroine for whom I was unable to muster the slightest emotional investment--a nagging, relentless undercurrent of something I couldn't quite identify festered long inside me regarding this novel until the story, and author, were at last redeemed upon my third reading, in a literature course that finally ended this internal struggle.

Having much faith in Kate Chopin as a writer, I never felt 'the awakening' was about sex. This was too easy, even for a book set in Victorian Society. Further, it occurred to me that although women were limited beyond the domestic sphere in this era, suicide was not particular to the phenomenology of Victorian women (as it was, say, to Wall Street brokers at the onset of the Great Depression).

"The Awakening," in title and content, is irony. Edna Pontellier's awakening is about who she perceives herself to be, and who she actually is. She dreams of passion and romance and embarks on a summer affair, yet she married Leonce simply to spite her parents, who don't like him. She moves out of the family home to live on her own--with the permission, and resources, of Leonce--hardly independent. She claims to crave intimacy, yet she fails horribly at every intimate relationship in her life: she is detached with her children, indifferent to her husband, leery of her artist friend, and can hardly stand another minute at the bedside of her warm, maternal friend, Mrs. Ratignolle, to assist her in childbirth. (Ratignolle was my favorite character of all, read after read, simply because she was so content with herself.)

The Awakening? The surprise is on Edna, who is not the person she imagines herself to be. The irony? Edna Pontellier is never awakened to this, even at the bitter end. Feminists have adopted this book as their siren song...embarrassing at least! A feminist reading would, predictably, indict Victorian society as oppressive to women. Yawn...So that's new?!! Tell us something we don't know! I can tell you that concept wouldn't be enough to keep a book around for a hundred years.

But the concept that has sustained this novel over a century's time is its irony. And it is superbly subtle. I believe Chopin deliberately set up Victorian society as her backdrop to cleverly mask this irony...'the awakening' is not something good (a daring sexual awakening in a dark era for women): it is something horrible that evolves and is apparent to everyone except the person experiencing it. This reading makes Edna's character worth hating! Chopin herself hated Edna Pontellier and called her a liar through her imagined conversation with her artist friend at the end of the novel.

Chopin also cleverly tips the scales in Edna's favor in the first half of the novel, but a careful read reveals those scales weighed against her in the second half. I give the novel 5 stars because it took me three readings and help from a PhD lit professor to figure out this book. And I'm proud to say that I am, at last, awakened.

Can you imagine the impact this book must have had when it was first published in 1899? So scandalous! And it still has the power to make its readers eyes grow wide.

My only complaints are that the ending was unrealistic. (Of course, it fit the BOOK completely---it just wasn't practical.) I also think the portrayal of Edna as a nonchalant mother (as opposed to a nurturing mother) was unfair. Chopin wanted readers to view Edna as a victim, and when Edna turned around and neglected her own children...that didn't help our sympathy for her. ...Yet surely we readers realized this was a woman who was too oppressed and stifled to know what to do with herself.

Anyway, before I forget, a word of caution: HAVE A DICTIONARY NEARBY!! WHOA! Chopin was obviously VERY intelligent, along with being ahead of her time. Vocab. word after vocab. word, I tell ya.

Overall, the reader feels pity for practically every character. But it's not such a melancholy atmosphere that would make one want to stop reading it; it's merely proof that Chopin can weave a web of believable characters struggling with believable circumstances.

I would voice one more disappointment, though, if it wouldn't serve as a spoiler. ...Um, I think I was hoping that Edna would betray her husband a little more than she did...succumb to temptation a bit more...because I was rooting for her! I was sympathizing with her, and I thought she should get what she has longed for. But no such luck. Her conscience probably prevented something from going too far. Rats.

This is a sophisticated read laced with French phrases and lengthy paragraphs, but worth your while.

According to Claude Lanzmann there are several major errors which do occur in Bairs book, and basically it's gives a rotten and unworthy presentation of de Beauvoirs life and work.

/Leah Greber

Turgid. There is no question this book is based on genuine and scholarly research. But the ordinary but informed reader is better leaving this one to the academicians.

Bair works really hard at making it clear that Sartre and De Beauvoir were two sides of the same coin. Larger than life as always but deeply and painfully human too. Despite the eventual demise of their "professional" relationship, and the eventual move of Sartre to study Flaubert and De Beauvior to her feminist crusade, the two are inextricably linked. Did she really have as much control (specially in the end) over Sartre and his life? We will never know. What Bair does though is succeed in making her human more than all of De Beauvior's work ever could. Despite the fact that De Beauvior and Sartre are larger than life, and they always will be, Bair makes her subject - human, vulnerable and understandable. It is comprehensive and exhaustive journey (despite whatever errors there might be), one worth taking at any junction in the readers Existential journey.

Sammm, or whatever. i need to set you straight about a few things. get in contact with me quick. you miss the point more times than one would think possible.

Richard Ellman gave the the world the casting for what would be known as the perfect biography, James Joyce. Thus, as Beckett recanted when he stated Celine's Journey to the End of the Night was the greastest novel in the English language before pausing and explaining that Joyce is on a level that no one should have to be compared, I must state this is a good effort on Bair's behalf. The pace is well kept until the end, when things seem rushed. It ends with "1973-." I would love to see her go back and finish the text since Beckett's demise. I would not state that this text gives ample evidence of Beckett's insanity. Anyone wired directly to the world's pulse as we Beckett, will indeed suffer the psychosomatic symptoms that he underwent throughout his life, as do most greast artists. Their illnesses, physical and mental, are defense mechanisms to protect themselves from their selves. Beckett is no different and in some cases to be considered elevation upon the "upper teir" with the world's greatest artists. All in all this is a great text, especially how Bair projects Beckett's comments without interpertation, thus insinuating that he should not be trusted at all times. Case in point: he stated that Godot was a fun project that he didn't take seriously. Considering the complexity of the play, if any human were able to throw such materials onto the page without effort . . . see for yourself.

SAMUEL BECKETT: A Biography. By Deirdre Bair. 736 pages. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. ISBN 0-15-179256-9 (hbk).

In 1971, while casting about for a dissertation topic, Deirdre Bair wrote to Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) to ask if she could write his biography. He replied that, while he was not prepared to help her, he wouldn't hinder her either. As things turned out, he did help her to some extent, as did many others, and the result is this well-written, well-researched, and extremely illuminating account which covers the story of Beckett's life up to 1973. Although it has since been superseded by the fuller biography, 'Damned to Fame,' by Beckett's personal friend and official biographer, James Knowlson, which appeared in 1996 and which covers the whole of Beckett's life, Bair's book seems to me to be still well worth reading. The fact that she was not a personal friend had both disadvantages and advantages. Although it meant that certain things were closed off to her, at the same time it left her a certain freedom, the freedom to say things a friend might be disinclined to say.

Briefly Bair sees Beckett's mother as the key factor in his formation - a cold, frigid, and neurotic woman dominated by notions of class and respectability, and determined to mold him into an ideal son who would be respected by Protestant and materialistic upper middle class Dublin society. Beckett rebelled against this treatment from an early age, and the regular campaigns of psychological torture which his mother launched whenever things didn't go her way were to lead to his years of misery, repeated bouts of serious physical illness, and eventually to the full-blown psychosis which is evident in certain of his works. With a more balanced and loving mother, and one sensitive to her son's aesthetic nature, Beckett might have led a normal and happier life, though it is doubtful he would have arrived at the shattering insights into human nature and reality that helped make him one of the greatest writers of the age.

The story of Beckett's life and his extreme sufferings and spiritual anguish, as told by Deirdre Bair, is both horrifying and fascinating, and she does seem to have done her best to present it as objectively as possible, though she does allow her distaste for certain of his views to peek through at times. From her account, which covers far more than his devastating love-hate relationship with his mother, and which I can't even begin to do justice to here, we come away with an enhanced understanding of Beckett that should help anyone to better understand and appreciate his somber and often difficult works.

It's true that as a mere graduate student she could hardly be expected to have a grasp of Beckett's works as extensive as that of a seasoned professor such as Knowlson. It's also true that there appear to be a number of errors and misunderstandings in her work, possibly because of her limited access to materials. But her less unctuous attitude to her subject leads me to feel that we are perhaps getting a more objective portrait of Beckett, though one that in some respects is not as detailed as that provided by Knowlson, and the serious student will want to read them both.

This book left me mixed. I learned more about the truth behind Anais Nin than I ever learned in reading all of the diaries--expurgated and unexpurgated--but I can't understand Bair's out-and-out loathing of Anais Nin. If you don't at least find her fascinating, why not write a biography about someone else? This book was filled with cynical biographer asides such as, "The house was always cold and her clothes were shabby. What a better way to lift her spirits than to throw a dinner party!" Really. I expect more from People Magazine.

Of course anyone who knows a smidgeon about Anais Nin would never call her flawless. She was deeply, deeply flawed. And a responsible biographer should point out the flaws. But I felt like I was on the subway with a gossipy neighbor who wouldn't shut up about everything she didn't like about another woman. Let it rest. What's disappointing is that, from a research perspective, this was the best piece I've read about Anais Nin. Ms. Bair did her homework--hence the three stars.

You won't find better research about Anais Nin than in Ms. Bair's book. If you want to know about Anais Nin, read it. But try to be cognizant of Ms. Bair's apparent jealous little sister attitude.

This biography was well researched and well written. Bair did not drag Ms. Nin through the mud like an article in the National Enquirer. Ms. Nin was a bigamist, had multiple extramarital affairs, a sexual relationship with her father and sought psychiatric counseling on a regular basis. This may be fodder for scandal sheets, but this is how Ms. Nin lived. Bair's biography was a fair and honest appraisal of a very interesting woman. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Nin's life. The book was by far more enlightening than the film Henry and June.

I came across ANAIS NIN: A BIOGRAPHY a few months ago when my interest in Anaïs Nin was in its infancy. My initial reaction was surprise. Anaïs Nin is most famous for her diaries, of which there are now two versions available, and most of her fiction was only an outgrowth of her diaries. It seemed redundant that a biography would be written about a writer whose main product was auto-biography. Then, when I actually started reading ANAIS NIN: A BIOGRAPHY, I was a little offended. Deirdre Bair seemed to be taking all the fun out of a very fascinating woman. I set down Bair's tome and returned to Anaïs.

What initially attracted me to the writing of Anaïs was its poetic quality. I often didn't understand what exactly she was talking about, and I didn't care. I liked the mystery. She has one of the most beautiful writing styles I have ever seen. Does one really need to "understand" poetry in order to appreciate its beauty? As the months went by, however, and I sampled more and more of Nin's writing - even learning that it was the basis for the movie HENRY AND JUNE and that apparently she had had something to do with that notorious book TROPIC OF CANCER (which I had been aware of only because it is mentioned on an episode of SEINFELD) - the convoluted mystery of Anaïs Nin was becoming unbearable and was draining my interest and patience. Now I wanted a more linear, literal understanding of her life. Having realized that Nin herself was virtually incapable of providing such a thing, I humbly returned to ANAIS NIN: A BIOGRAPHY.

Suddenly, I was deeply grateful to Deirdre Bair. Bair provided insight into a world I had not known (Nin died in 1977, when I was only two-years-old), and she helped me make sense of these beautiful but enigmatic diaries. Bair explains that Nin did not keep a diary in the conventional sense. What Anaïs actually did was create in her diaries a continuous novel - part fiction, part non-fiction - with herself as the star. Nin was her own iconographer, reminding me of dance legend Martha Graham who created an entire new system of dance only as a means of making herself the star of every performance (incidentally, Bair writes that Nin's LADDERS OF FIRE was inspired by a Martha Graham performance).

Bair deals graphically with some of the more disturbing aspects of Nin's life, namely, the incestuous relationship with her father. I found the descriptions so unsettling that I had to put the book down, returning a few weeks later. Anaïs is quoted as saying that by some mistake of nature she had been born the daughter of the man who should have rightfully been her husband. However, this description helped me better approach the mystery of Nin's literary life: why so much emphasis on the diary? (Bair claims the over-emphasis on the diary may've been the greatest obstacle to Nin establishing herself as a writer of fiction.)

I had known that Anaïs began her diary at age 11 as a letter to her father after he abandoned the family, but I hadn't known the more painful aspects of their relationship. Deirdre Bair's description helped me understand why Anaïs believed that she should not have been born her father's daughter but an unrelated woman he could later marry. If Anaïs convinced herself that it was a mistake of nature that she was born her father's daughter, then she did not have to confront the fact that her father had on several occasions raped his own daughter when she was just a little girl (again, Bair is very graphic in this description, quoting from Nin's own INCEST). In this view, he most likely was only succumbing to the sexual attraction that would blossom in later life; it wasn't his fault that nature had made the mistake of making Anaïs his daughter. When I put this together with the fact that her diary was begun as a letter to her father, I came to realize why her pages are so filled with details of her sexual exploits and the games she played with men (Bair describes how Nin eventually became a bigamist, married to two men at once). She had made up her mind to no longer be the sexual victim of men; her letters to her father would detail how powerful she had become, that she could no longer be taken advantage of. The diary was her connection to her father, as well as her defense against him.

ANAIS NIN: A BIOGRAPHY is indispensable for anyone interested in a linear understanding of Anaïs Nin's life and work. Bair reveals Nin as a deeply troubled woman, and a deeply human woman. I don't agree that Bair is unsympathetic in her portrayal of Nin. How could I when she only made me love her more?