Kate Chopin

1
Kate Chopin

• 1850-1904

2

• Born Kate OFlaherty 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
  1868.
• Curriculum geared toward modesty and submission.

3

• Becomes a St. Louis debutant and marries Oscar
  Chopin in 1870.
• 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.

4

• 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 30th birthday.
• Kates sophistication from New Orleans translates
  to flirtatiousness and independence in the gossip
  of this community.

5

• 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.

6

• 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.

7

• The Awakening, originally titled A Solitary Soul,
  is published in 1899.
• Chopin and her novel were rebuked by the press
  for Ednas 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.

8

• 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.