| Kate Chopin, a pioneer of feminist writers in America, finished her masterpiece and last novel The Awakening in 1899. The novel attracted the whole nation?s attention over one night and generated great controversy as soon as it was published. The theme of the novel touched upon the most sensitive problems and went far beyond people?s concept of value at that time, therefore, the immediate response to this great novel was overwhelmingly negative.This thesis is composed of three chapters besides introduction and conclusion. Some criticisms about the novel and the frame of this thesis are introduced in the introduction. In Chapter One, the New Historicism theory will be introduced in detail in the first place. In the following, the thesis will concentrate on the problems of political condition, social economy and social consciousness to analyze the reasons of the novel?s creation. In Chapter Two, by analyzing the living conditions of Chopin and Edna, the thesis tries to find out some similarities between them, and then the paper will explain why The Awakening created by Chopin is a historical necessity. Chapter Three concentrates on analyzing the influence of this novel, and explains its impacts on the American society and American family in detail.The real meaning of researching about this novel is that it can be considered as a kind of introspection of humanity in the process of social development, meanwhile, the study may also bring people back to the author?s times to ponder her spiritual miseries, which are unimaginable and unbearable to the women who live in the modern society. In fact, the author?s idea was the same as the fire burning under the hard ice. Once the firelight melt the surrounding ice, the fire will burn the old pattern of social forms into ashes. Through the researches about the novel?s historical background and its social effects, the thesis intends to help people to step into Chopin?s life once again, and to feel miseries existed in that period.
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