Kate Chopin was a prominent American author and feminist who lived during the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850, and grew up in a wealthy, slave-holding family. Despite her privileged upbringing, Chopin was deeply affected by the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and these experiences would later inform her writing and activism.
Chopin's father died when she was young, and she was raised by her mother and maternal grandfather. Both of these figures were strong influences on her, and she inherited their love of literature and education. Chopin attended convent school in St. Louis and later traveled to New Orleans, where she married Oscar Chopin, a Creole cotton broker. The couple had six children together, and Oscar's family owned a large plantation in Louisiana.
During the Civil War, Louisiana was a Confederate state, and the Chopin family supported the Confederacy. However, Kate Chopin was deeply troubled by the institution of slavery and the ongoing conflict. She lost several family members to the war, including her husband, who died in 1882. After his death, Chopin was left to manage the family plantation and oversee the care of her children.
This experience of managing a plantation and interacting with the slaves on the property had a profound impact on Chopin's worldview. She became increasingly critical of the institution of slavery and began to speak out against it. In addition to her activism, Chopin began to express her views on the Civil War and Reconstruction through her writing.
Chopin's most famous work, "The Awakening," was published in 1899 and is considered a classic of feminist literature. The novel follows the story of Edna Pontellier, a woman who struggles to find her own identity and independence in the face of societal expectations and the constraints of her marriage. The novel was ahead of its time in its depiction of a woman's desire for autonomy and self-expression, and it was widely criticized upon its release for its frank portrayal of female sexuality.
Despite the controversy surrounding "The Awakening," it is clear that Kate Chopin was deeply influenced by the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. She saw firsthand the devastation and loss caused by the conflict, and she used her writing to challenge the societal norms and expectations that held women back. Chopin's work remains an important part of the literary canon and is a testament to her enduring legacy as a pioneer of feminist thought.
At Fault, Kate Chopin, characters, setting, questions
Louis by parents who were on the upper end of society. Because of his influence, Kate began to study science, decided to abandon her Catholicism, and started to write and publish. In her works, we see the evolution from the fantasies that a person can fuse with another becoming one. Women on the Color Line: Evolving Stereotypes and the Writings of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Kate Chopin Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1989. These women are the product of aesthetic sophistication and Darwinian skepticism. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom. For it is not just the mother, but the fathers fault as well for the color of their child.
American Literature after the Civil War
Louis, only to have her mother die the following year. Oscar ran a general store in Cloutierville until he died in 1882 of malaria. A whiff of dust from the road had blown in and she wiped her cheeks and her eyes with her soft, white handkerchief, a homemade handkerchief, fabricated from one of her old fine muslin petticoats. A benefit of these salons was professional advancement: Publishers and reviewers alike attended Chopin's salons, providing a fertile network for the ambitious Chopin to pursue additional publication opportunities. Like Bayou Folk, her earlier collection, A Night in Acadie was praised by the critics.
[PDF] Study Guide to The Awakening by Kate Chopin by Intelligent Education eBook
Awakenings: The Story of the Kate Chopin Revival Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009. When the whole earth is vibrant with life, does it not seem to you, Octavie, that heaven might for once relent and give us back our dead? Is it realism or romanticism or naturalism? There Edna begins to behave erratically, defying her husband and leading as much as possible an independent existence. Though they are deeply invested in the local, regionalist stories are often narrated by outsiders who differ in class status or place of origin from the locals. As in The Wife of His Youth, after all that time, the man still took his wife back. Between 1871 and 1879 Kate gave birth to five sons and a daughter—in order of birth, Jean Baptiste, Oscar Charles, George Francis, Frederick, Felix Andrew, and Lélia baptized Marie Laïza. The novel also draws upon a large fin de siècle background concerned with a hunger for the exotic and the voluptuous, a yearning for the absolute.
Biography, Kate Chopin, The Awakening, The Storm, stories
It was an alternative for the writers who had idealized family, marriage, female dependence, and were disappointed. Louis, and there he encounters hundreds of visitors who have come to St. She was a revisionist mythmaker who transformed the myths to represent the people of her society. However, when the story becomes about interracial marriages or children, society and culture seem to play a bigger role in what is acceptable. Both women are older, but it is the black still serving or taking care of the white. Literary Writing Chopin's first short story was published in 1889; she began her first novel, At Fault, that year as well. Q: Did Kate Chopin herself speak French as well as English? He stretched himself on his back and looked straight up at the blinking stars.
