"The Awakening and Selected Short Stories" is a collection of works by Kate Chopin. The central part of the book belongs to the novella "The Awakening," which caused turbulence among critics in 1899, the year it was first published. The novella tells the story of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier, who turns away from convention and society toward her nature. It is a story of a woman's abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her awakening to desires and passions that threatened to consume her.