We will obviously have to do something about the 'quadroon nurse' who is looking after the children. Skirts will need to be shortened, and bathing costumes radically abbreviated.

The guests relax in the deep shade of graceful old water-oaks and stroll through their long, lazy days carrying parasols, which we'll have to replace with sunscreen. The setting of Grand Isle, a summer resort on the steamy coast of Louisiana, stands up across the decades as a perfect backdrop to a story of personal discovery and sexual intrigue.

He looks up from his newspaper barely long enough to chide his wife for going swimming in the ridiculous heat and getting sunburned. In the story's opening scene, her husband Mr Pontellier rocks in a chair on the porch, perusing the stock market reports. It's hard for us now to picture an 'Edna' as anything but a silver-haired matron, 80 if she's a day, stalwart bosom like a ship's prow … Let's erase that mental picture before it sinks in.Įddye, then, is an energetic twentysomething, blond, brown-eyed, with two little boys, a husband and a captivating restlessness. Her name in the book, Edna, was common in its time but fell precipitously out of favour after 1941. In the case of The Awakening, our screenwriter's first task would be to rename the pretty young heroine: maybe she'll be called Eden, or Eddye. I sometimes appraise the relevance of a classic, and amuse myself in the process, by imagining the updates required in order to adapt this book to film for a modern audience. With her distinctive voice, penchant for getting in sticky situations, and blind confidence in her dream of becoming a famous novelist, Isabel Bookbinder is a heroine that you can't help but root for.T he Awakening was published in 1899, on the cusp of a century that has already come and gone. But when she inadvertently exposes a political sex scandal and her name becomes known for all the wrong reasons, her glamorous double life starts to spin out of control. She even has a fabulous mentor - a bestselling but increasingly eccentric author who takes her to glamorous book parties and introduces her to the dreamy literary agent Joe Madison. She's already perfected Her Look (cashmere track suit, lots of mascara), is working on her toned size eight figure, and gets up at dawn to work on her novel (well, sort of). She has a disinterested boyfriend, a mother who loves clothes that match, and a father who always expects her to do better.Īlthough Isabel may spend most of her time measuring newspaper column inches, she's well on her way to becoming a bestselling author. Isabel Bookbinder is a twenty-seven-year-old assistant at the Saturday Mercury newspaper in London.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin