BBC Radio 4 Extra

Kate Chopin - The Awakening (Omnibus)

Drama: Classic & Period

Drama: Historical

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Kate Chopin - The Awakening (Omnibus)

Adaptation of the novel that shocked America in 1899.

Pippa Bennett-Warner and Petra Letang star in a steamy adaptation of the Kate Chopin novel that shocked America in 1899.

Holidaying on Grand Isle in 1899, Edna Pontellier feels she is living in a dream, so the attentions of the dashing young Robert Lebrun serve merely to amuse her. 

Kate Chopin 1899 novel dramatised by Janice Okoh

Edna Pontellier ..... Pippa Bennett-Warner 
Leonce Pontellier ..... Guy Paul 
Celestine ..... Petra Letang 
Robert Lebrun ..... PJ Brennan 
Adele Ratignolle ..... Sasha Pick 
Madame LeBrun ..... Adjoa Andoh 

When it was published in 1899, Kate Chopin's novel shocked society and divided critics. Respectable, married Edna Pontellier, 28, is away from her home in New Orleans, holidaying on Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico with her husband and children. Teaching her to swim is the debonair young Robert Lebrun, known for forming an attachment with a different woman every summer. 

Despite warnings from her more conventional friend, Adele, Edna falls incontrovertibly for Robert. When he leaves Louisana for Mexico, Edna realises she's been "awakened" and questions everything: her marriage, her position, the society she lives in. But what is left for her? The novel is regarded by many as the first in a new wave of modern American literature.

Director:  Marion Nancarrow

First broadcast in five parts on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

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