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