Kate Chopin (born Katherine O'Flaherty on February 8, 1851 – August 22, 1904) was an American author of short stories and novels, mostly of a Louisiana Creole background. She is now considered to have been a forerunner of feminist authors of the 20th century.
From 1889 to 1902, she wrote short stories for both children and adults which were published in such magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, the Century, and Harper's Youth's Companion. Her major works were two short story collections, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her important short stories included "Desiree's Baby", a tale of miscegenation in antebellum Louisiana; "The Story of an Hour" and "The Storm."
Chopin also wrote two novels: At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), which is set in New Orleans and Grand Isle. The people in her stories are usually inhabitants of Louisiana. Many of her works are set about Natchitoches in north central Louisiana. In time, literary critics determined that Chopin addressed the concerns of women in all places and for all times in her literature.
Chopin was born Kate O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Thomas O'Flaherty, was a successful businessman who had immigrated from Galway, Ireland. Her mother, Eliza Faris, was a well-connected member of the French community in St. Louis. Her maternal grandmother, Athena'ise Charleville, was of French Canadian descent. Some of her ancestors were among the first European inhabitants of Dauphin Island, Alabama.
After her father's death, Chopin developed a close relationship with both her mother and her great-grandmother. She also became an avid reader of fairy tales, poetry, and religious allegories, as well as classic and contemporary novels. Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens were among her favourite authors.
In 1865, she returned to Sacred Heart Academy, and began keeping a commonplace book. She graduated from Sacred Heart Academy in 1868, but did not achieve any particular distinction — except as a master storyteller.
Difficult years
In 1870, at the age of 19, she married Oscar Chopin and settled in New Orleans. Oscar Chopin was born into a well-to do cotton-growing family in Louisiana. Chopin had had all her children by the age of 28, which consisted of five boys and one girl.(Jean, Oscar Charles, George, Fredrick, Felix, and Lelia) Shortly after that, the family had to relocate to Oscar Chopin's old home in a small Louisiana county due to his poor business decisions. In 1879 Oscar Chopin's cotton brokerage failed, and the family moved to Cloutierville, Louisiana, south of Natchitoches, to manage several small plantations and a general store. They became active in the community, and Chopin absorbed much material for her future writing, especially regarding the Creole culture of the area. Their home at 243 Highway 495 (built by Alexis Cloutier in the early part of the century) is now a national historic landmark and the home of the Bayou Folk Museum.
When Oscar Chopin died in 1882 of swamp fever (like her half-brother two decades earlier), he left Chopin $12,000 in debt (approximately $229,360 in 2005 dollars). Chopin attempted to manage the plantation and store alone but with little success. According to Emily Toth, "<f>or awhile the widow Kate ran his <Oscar's> business and flirted outrageously with local men". She engaged in a relationship with a married farmer.
Although Chopin gave an honest effort to keep her late husband's plantation and general store alive, two years later she sold her Louisiana life away. Her mother implored her to move back to St. Louis, and Chopin and the children gradually settled into life in St. Louis, where finances were no longer a concern. The following year, Chopin's mother died.
As to be expected, Chopin found herself in a state of depression after the loss of both her husband and mother. Her obstetrician and family friend, Dr. Frederick Kolbenheyer, felt that writing would be a sort of therapeutic healing process for Kate during her hard times because he said, "He understood that writing could be a focus for her extraordinary energy, as well as a source of income". She was quite successful and found many of her publications inside literary magazines. Some of her writings, though, such as The Awakening (1899), were far too ahead of their times and therefore not socially embraced. Shattered by the lack of acceptance, Chopin seemed to be virtually nonexistent after almost 12 years in the public eye of the literary world. Kate Chopin then died in 1904 from a cerebral hemorrhage.
The writing years
By the late 1890s, Chopin was writing short stories, articles, and translations of which appeared in periodicals, including The Saint Louis Dispatch. She became known as a regional local colour writer, but her literary qualities were overlooked.
In 1899, her second novel, The Awakening, was published, and was criticised based on moral as well as literary standards. Her best-known work, it is the story of a dissatisfied wife. Out of print for several decades, it is now widely available and critically acclaimed for its writing quality and importance as an early feminist work.
Chopin, deeply discouraged by the criticism, turned to short story writing. In 1900 she wrote The Gentleman from New Orleans, and that same year was listed in the first edition of Marquis Who's Who. However, she never made much money from her writing and depended on investments in both Louisiana and St. Louis to sustain her.
While visiting the St. Louis World's Fair on August 20, 1904 Chopin was felled by a brain haemorrhage and died two days later, at the age of fifty-four. She was interred in the Calvary cemetery in St. Louis.
Chopin has been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
Literary themes
Kate Chopin experienced differentiated lifestyles throughout her time, which lent to her wide realm of societal understanding and analysis. Her childhood consisted of an upbringing by women with ancestry descending from both Irish and French family. Chopin also found herself within the Cajun and Creole part of the nation after she joined her husband in Louisiana. As a result, many of her stories and sketches were about her life in Louisiana in addition to the incorporation of her less than typical portrayals of women as their own individuals with wants and needs. Kate's seemingly unique writing style did in fact emerge from an admiration of Guy de Maupassant, who was a French short story writer.
“...I read his stories and marvelled at them. Here was life, not fiction; for where were the plots, the old fashioned mechanism and stage trapping that in a vague, unthinkable way I had fancied were essential to the art of story making. Here was a man who had escaped from tradition and authority, who had entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being an with his own eyes; and who, in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw...”
Kate Chopin went beyond Maupassant's technique and style and gave her writing a flavour of its own. She had an ability to perceive life and put it down on paper creatively. She put much concentration and emphasis on women's lives and their continual struggles to create an identity of their own within the boundaries of the male-ruled patriarchy. In The Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard allows herself time to reflect upon learning of her husband's death. Instead of dreading the lonely years ahead of her, she stumbles upon another realisation all together. "She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome"
Not many writers during mid to late 19th century were bold enough to address subjects that Kate willingly took on. Although David Chopin, Kate's grandson, claims "Kate was neither a feminist nor a suffragist, she said so. She was nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously. She never doubted women's ability to be strong". Despite this fact, there is no question regarding where Kate's sympathies lay.
Through her stories, Kate wrote her own autobiography and documented her surroundings; Kate lived in a time when her surroundings included the abolitionist movements and the emergence of feminism. Her ideas and descriptions were not true word for word, yet there was an element of non-fiction lingering throughout each story. Kate took strong interest in her surroundings and put many of her observations to words. Jane Le Marquand saw Chopin's writings as a new feminist voice. "Chopin undermines patriarchy by endowing the ‘other’, the woman, with an individual identity and a sense of self, a sense of self to which the letters she leaves behind give voice. The 'official' version of her life, that constructed by the men around her, is challenged and overthrown by the woman of the story" Kate was utilising her creative writing skills to relay a non-fiction point of view regarding her belief in the strength of women. The idea of creative non-fiction becomes relevant in this case. In order for a story to be autobiographical, or even biographical, there has to be a non-fictional element, which more often than not exaggerates the truth to spark and hold interest for the readers.
Desiree's Baby focuses in on Kate's experience with the Creoles of Louisiana. The idea of slavery and the atmosphere of plantation life was a reality in Louisiana. The possibility of one having a mixed background was not unheard of. Mulattos, as those with both black and white backgrounds, were a common race in the Southern part of the nation. The issue of racism that the story brings up was a reality in 19th century America. The dark reality of racism shows its ugly head in this story because Chopin was not afraid to address such issues that were often suppressed and intentionally ignored in order to avoid reality, as Armand does when he refuses to believe that he is of black descent. The definition of great fiction is that which has the only true subject of "human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the view with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it".
? Foy, R.R. "Chopin's Desiree's Baby". Explicator" 49 (1991): 222-224.
? Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening. "Interview: David Chopin, Kate's Grandson". <http: www.pbs.org katechopin interview.html> 14 March 2008.
? "Kate O'Flaherty Chopin", A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. I (1988), p. 176
? Le Marquand, Jane. "Kate Chopin as Feminist: Subverting the French Androcentric Influence". Deep South 2 (1996).
? Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, 1985.
? Toth, Emily. Reviews the essay 'The Shadows of the First Biographer: The Case of Kate Chopin', 26 Southern Review, 1990.
The Awakening is a short novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. It is widely considered to be a proto-feminist precursor to American modernism.
Edna Pontellier, the wife of a successful New Orleans businessman and the mother of two, vacations with her family at a seaside resort in Grand Isle, Louisiana. She spends much of her time with Robert Lebrun, a romantic young man who has decided to attach himself to Edna for the summer. After many intimate conversations, boating excursions, and moonlit walks, they both realize that they are developing romantic feelings for each other. Edna then realizes that there is much within herself that has remained dormant throughout her adult life.
When vacation ends and the Pontelliers return to New Orleans, Edna frees herself from the trappings of her old life, including her social position, her role as a mother, and her role as a wife. A major part of this freeing in Edna's life is accomplished through her affair with Alcée Arobin. Moving out of her husband's house, she establishes herself in a cottage and hopes that Robert Lebrun will return soon from an extended business trip in Mexico.
Upon Robert's return, Edna discovers that he is unable to come to grips with her newfound freedom. Indeed, he seems hopelessly bound by the traditional values of the French Creole community.
Edna thereupon returns to the seaside resort in the off-season. She makes arrangements for her lunch before heading off to the beach, and carries along a towel for drying off. Unable to resist the lure of the water, she strips nude and swims out as far as she can and, having exhausted herself, it seems, drowns. Most readers interpret this final passage as suicide - the final shedding of constraints foisted upon her by society.
? Women as property. The Awakening is set in a time period and culture which regards women as the property of their spouses. This is exemplified at every turn, from Léonce Pontellier's straightforward comments, to the discussion of the topic by the narrator.
? Hopelessness and the power to act. As property, the protagonist is left powerless, feeding a sense of despondency and hopelessness. This state of being is eventually nullified by a desperate act of defiance. Death nullifies the physical body's emotional states.
? The call of art. Superficially, art entertains, exposes one to beauty, and provides escape. Experienced more deeply, however, art calls the individual to migrate into its realm; it is "the call of the wild." Edna's evolving response to Mademoiselle Reisz's music as her own emotional awakening illustrates this along with her developing desire to become an artist in her own mind.
? Isolation versus solitude. In The Awakening, society uses isolation as punishment for non-conformity, but the isolated individual can nullify isolation by embracing solitude. Isolation is externally imposed; solitude is internally embraced.
? The demands of society versus the needs of individuals. Society, in order to cohere, must impose certain expectations upon its members who are motivated to comply through economic and social rewards. Some individuals may find fulfillment in meeting society's expectations (e.g., Adele Ratignolle), but some, like Edna Pontellier, cannot. Society often sees this as rebellion, failure, and a general character flaw, as well as a threat to its own survival, and so refuses to accommodate such behavior.
? The purity of sexual and artistic desire. In Edna, independent sexual and artistic desire become the highest good. Traditional values, especially those imposed upon women, are swept aside.
? The need to be taken seriously. Léonce Pontellier dismisses Edna's aspirations as frivolous and is confident of his own power to force her to conform. To Edna, this is painful, frustrating, and unacceptable. Her need to be taken seriously transcends her obligations to those who will not take her seriously. Robert Lebrun, while initially seeming to not take Edna seriously which also disappoints her, ultimately shows himself to take her very seriously, although in a way Edna believes he misunderstands.
? Escape from control. For Edna, escape from control by others transcends the value of safety.
? Motherhood versus self-determination. Edna is concerned about the way she wants to be determined by herself and the moral standards in which a mother is expected by society to care for her family. It is a psychological tension in her "moral conscience."
? Birds and wildlife. Throughout the book, birds are placed in various scenes, representing the freedom women are denied. At the end of the novel there is a bird with a crippled wing, but free from a cage, unlike the other birds throughout the story. This is symbolic of Edna's fragility following her newly found independent status.
? Sleep and rest. Along with the obvious reference contained in the title The Awakening, the protagonist is portrayed as sleeping or just coming out of a nap. This allusion points to a modern Sleeping Beauty in which Pontellier awakens from her life of dullness, triggered by Robert Lebrun's attraction to her.
Immediately after its publication, reviewers frequently denounced the "unwholesome" content of this book, while simultaneously acknowledging that the writing style was outstanding. It was also condemned due to its sexual openness. The harsh reaction to the book probably was the determining factor in the publisher's decision to stop publication after only a single printing.
After its "rediscovery" in 1969, the book has been often praised for its treatment of women's issues, and for its magnificent lyrical style.
Feminist re-readings of the novel have criticized its treatment of race and class. Edna fails to relate her own social confinement to the subordinate status of the faceless black servants in the novel.
Many critics claim that the constant chapter breaks take away from the book and cause the scenes to be forgettable.
"The Story of an Hour" (1894) is a widely anthologized short story by American writer Kate Chopin. Critic Daniel Deneau says it is "Surely <her> best-known piece of short fiction." It was originally published in the December 6, 1894 issue of Vogue magazine under its original title, "The Dream of an Hour". It describes a woman's reaction to the news of her husband's sudden death and to the subsequent news that he is, in fact, alive. The body of the text has 20 paragraphs, 1009 words, and 4531 characters. The story exemplifies Chopin's beliefs regarding women's roles in marriage and feminine identity.
In "The Teeth of Desire: The Awakening and The Descent of Man," critic Bert Bender summarizes the theme of the story:
In "The Story of an Hour," on the other hand, Mrs. Mallard feels the ecstasy of being liberated from what seems an agreeable marriage after the apparent accidental death of her husband. But then she comes to question the meaning of love. (463)
^ Deneau, Daniel P. "Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour.'" The Explicator 61.4 (Summer 2003): 210-14.
^ The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin, characters, setting ^ Golden, Catherine. Charlotte Perkins Gillman's The Yellow Wall-Paper: A Sourcebook and Critical Edition. Routledge, 2004. 37. ISBN: 0415263581
^ Bender, Bert. "The Teeth of Desire: The Awakening and the Descent of Man." American Literature 63.3 (Sep., 1991): 459-473.
