The republication of Kate Chopin's The Awakening in Per Seyersted's The Complete Works of Kate Chopin in 1969 after decades of comparative neglect established The Awakening as a major work, one that quickly became canonical in feminist literary studies. The same cannot be said, however, for the other novel in the volume: At Fault, Chopin's first novel and the only one besides The Awakening that she ever published. Printed in 1890 at Chopin's expense, At Fault is the story of a young widow who successfully runs a plantation but rejects the man she loves because of false idealism. Although it received some positive reviews when it first appeared, At Fault has inspired less critical comment, and much less favourable treatment, than its more controversial successor. Early critics saw the novel as a tale of social change, as Alice Hall Petry writes in her introduction to Critical Essays on Kate Chopin: “the novel is intended to probe disparate individuals' responses to a world of rapid (especially technological) change in the post-Reconstruction era. As the machine of the railroad ruptures their garden of a Louisiana forest, everyone in the novel is forced to reconsider his or her values regarding economics, social class, race, gender, and even marriage.” The emphasis on social change is also prominent in Peggy Skaggs's exploration of women's roles in the novel and in Barbara Ewell's study of its competing claims of individualism and social responsibility.