Kate Chopin

Born Kate O’Flaherty in St. Louis in 1850 Conservative Southern Family. Water front and Southern city. –Place of cultural and political intersections. Strong maternal French lineage. Graduated from the Academy of the Sacred Heart in –Curriculum geared toward modesty and submission.

Becomes a St. Louis debutant and marries Oscar Chopin in Move to New Orleans which was culturally split between French Creoles and the “Americans.” –Creole ancestry: mixture of French, Spanish, and African culture. –Chopin takes in this culture.

Chopin spent her summers at Grand Isle, a resort in the Gulf established by and popular with Creoles. They move to the rural Cloutierville in 1879 before her 30 th birthday. Kate’s sophistication from New Orleans translates to flirtatiousness and independence in the gossip of this community.

Oscar dies in 1882 of malaria. Kate is left with six children, debt, and a struggling family store to run. Has an affair with a local, Albert Sampite. Returns to St. Louis in 1884 to be with her mother and befriends a number of intellectual, liberal thinkers. She starts to write and publish full-time.

Writes poetry, fiction, and short fiction. Her collection Bayou Folk (1894) puts her on the literary map as a local color artist. A Night in Acadie (1897), a daring and boundary-pushing work, reveals her interest in women and their inner desires and gives her favorable critical reviews.

The Awakening, originally titled A Solitary Soul, is published in Chopin and her novel were rebuked by the press for Edna’s behavior. It was called “shocking,” “sickening,” and “poison.” Her public writing career is essentially ended by its publication, and she is taken off the literary map. –What a shame! It is a pioneer novel; it merges 3 traditions of women writers: domestic fiction, local color, and New Women writers.

She remained active in St. Louis society and received much support, contrary to early critical reports, from residents of the city. Kate Chopin died in 1904 of a brain hemorrhage. She is recovered by feminist scholars in the 1970s after 1969 publication of The Complete Works of Kate Chopin.