Kate Chopin
1851-1904
Life
Identity
- Father is an Irish immigrant.
- Mother is a Creole, a descendant of the original French in southern
United States.
- lived in St. Louis, New Orleans, and Louisiana plantation
- mother of six children
- widow
Chronology
- 1851: born in St. Louis, Missouri
- 1855: father dies in a rail accident
- 1868: graduates from Sacred Heart Academy in St. Louis, Missouri
- 1869: visits New Orleans for three weeks
- 1870: marries Louisiana businessman Oscar Chopin, travels on honeymoon
to Europe, and moves to New Orleans, Louisiana
- 1874: visits Grand Isle off coast of Louisiana
- 1882: husband dies of swamp fever, and Kate returns to St. Louis
- has an affair with a married man, Albert Sampite, who will serve as
the model for Alcee Arobin in The Awakening
- 1889: "If It Might Be"
- 1890: At Fault (published privately)
- 1893: "Desiree's Baby"
- 1894: Bayou Folk
- 1896: "Athenaise: A Story of Temperament"
- 1897: A Night in Acadie
- 1899: The Awakening
- 1904: dies of cerebral hemorrhage
Issues and themes
Canon
- 1969: Per Seyersted publishes first biography and complete works
- 1980s: interest in Chopin widens
- 1990: Emily Toth publishes standard biography and Vocation and a
Voice, which Chopin intended to publish but did not
- Bayou Folk shows her talent as a local colorist who expertly
draws people and places of Louisiana, but later work probes psychological
issues and takes her work beyond local color (Rubin)
Composition
- wrote very quickly
- said that she valued "unconscious selection" and preferred
crudities over artificialities
Cultural issues
- Chopin's father was Irish, and her mother was a Creole
- Some of her stories, particularly"Desiree's Baby," treat
the mixture of cultures in Louisiana
- Creoles: descendants of original French in southern United States;
tend to belong to upper class
- Cajuns: descendants of Acadians, whom the British expelled from area
of Canada during French and Indian War; settle in prairies, bayous; many
are peasants
Psychology
- creates psychological complex characters in The Awakening
- Like Poe, Chopin sees the mind as a sea, whose depths she explores
in The Awakening.
Women's issues
- depicts the psychological and social struggles of women in "Desiree's
Baby," "Athenaise: A Story of Temperament," and The Awakening
- The Awakening can be read as a bildingsroman (novel of development)
for a young, married woman
Bibliography
Life
- "Chronology." The Awakening: A Solitary Soul. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
Issues and themes
- Rubin, Louis. "Kate Chopin." The Literary South. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. 402.
Works
- Chopin, Kate. "Athenaise: A Story of a Temperament." Stories
of the Old South. Ed. Ben Forkner and Patrick Samway. New York: Penguin,
1989. 71-97.
- ---. The Awakening: A Solitary Soul. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1992.
- ---. "Desiree's Baby." The Literary South. Ed. Louis
Rubin, Jr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. 403-407.Kate
Chopin