Author Profile: Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin

BIO

Kate Chopin (1850-1904) is known for her depictions of culture in New Orleans, Louisiana, and of women's struggles for freedom. Chopin was born Katherine O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1870 she married Oscar Chopin, a Creole cotton trader, and moved with him to New Orleans. After a business failure, the family moved to a plantation near Cloutierville, Louisiana, where her husband died in 1882. In 1884 Chopin returned to St. Louis with her six children. There she maintained a literary salon and began her writing career. For more than a decade following her first published story in 1889, Chopin depicted the manners, customs, speech, and surroundings of Louisiana's Creole and Cajun residents. Two collections of her short fiction were published in the 1890s: BAYOU FOLK (1894) and A NIGHT IN ACADIE (1897). Both works were well-received as examples of "local-color" literature and helped establish Chopin's reputation as a major contributor to Southern regional literature. Chopin also produced a substantial body of poetry, reviews, and criticism. As her later stories, such as "The Story of an Hour," began to emphasize women's need for independence and capacity for passion, editors became less receptive to her work. Chopin published a novel, AT FAULT, in 1890 at her own expense. Several publishers rejected her second novel, and she destroyed the manuscript. THE AWAKENING (1899), the novel now considered her masterpiece, attracted a storm of negative criticism for its lyrical depiction of a woman's developing independence and sensuality. Subsequently, her editors suspended publication of her third collection of stories, A VOCATION AND A VOICE. The collection was not published until 1991. As a result of the negative criticism and social ostracism that followed THE AWAKENING, Chopin produced few additional writings, and over the next half-century her work became obscure. It was rediscovered in the 1960s.

ARTICLE

Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis in 1851.  She married Oscar Chopin in 1870, and moved to New Orleans where he managed a general store.  Over the next nine years they had six children.  When his business failed, the Chopin family moved to Cloutierville, Louisiana.  When he died of swamp fever in 1882, Kate Chopin began writing in order to support herself and her six children.

From the beginning, the subjects of her short stories were unconventional women.  In "Wiser Than a God," the protagonist, Paula Von Stoltz rejects her suitor's offer of marriage because, she says, "it doesn't enter into the purpose of my life."

In one of her most famous stories, "A Point At Issue," Eleanor and Charles decide to marry, but under very unusual circumstances.

"In entering upon their new life they decided to be governed by no precedential methods.  Marriage was to be a form that while fixing legally their relation to each other, was in no wise to touch the individuality of either; that was to be preserved intact.  Each was to remain a free integral of humanity, responsible to no dominating actions of so-called marriage laws.  And the element that was to make possible such a union was trust in each other's love, honor, courtesy, tempered by the reserving clause of readiness to meet the consequences of reciprocal liberty."

Radical thoughts indeed in 1890!

By the time she published THE AWAKENING in 1899, she was a popular and well-established writer.  People around the country who were familiar with her work could hardly wait for it to be published.  When it was, the subject matter was considered so shocking that the book was widely denounced and banned from bookstores and libraries everywhere.

Kate Chopin, herself, was surprised at the viciousness of the reviews and the attacks on both THE AWAKENING and herself as an author.  She stopped writing completely and died a few years later of a stroke.

THE AWAKENING, however, survived, and gives her an important place in the annals of American literature.

--- Reviewed by Judith Handschuh (JHSCRIBA)