Background of the author
Class Discussion Questions on "The Art of Fiction" and The Awakening:
1. "I may venture to say that the air of reality (solidity of specification) seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel—the merit on which all its other merits (including the conscious moral purpose of which Mr. Besant speaks) helplessly and submissively depend."
Does The Awakening have this virtue? Does it, by the way, also have a conscious moral purpose that is "dependent" on its "air of reality"?
2. "A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression. But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say."
Does Chopin seem free "to feel and say"? What do you make of her impressions?
3. "Of course it is of execution that we are talking—that being the only point of a novel that is open to contention. . . . We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donnée: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it."
Does Chopin do well with her subject?
