This week we read Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening (1899). Chopin’s short work is about a tall lady who doesn’t want to listen to her husband (hetereosexuality! the best!), but she also doesn’t really want to do anything else either. We talk about bourgeois malaise, women’s suicide, atmospherics, and being a lady f*ckboy.

We read the Norton edition, edited by Margo Culley. While she doesn’t directly mention Chopin, we recommend Jacqueline Rose’s On Not Being Able to Sleep: Psychoanalysis and the Modern World (2003) for her discussions of privacy, intimacy, and psychoanalytic approaches to literature.

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at [email protected]. Find Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.