Kate Chopin was born in a well-known family on February 8, 1850. Her father, Thomas O'Flaherty, was an Irish immigrant and her mother, Eliza Faris O'Flaherty was a descendent of one of the most aristocratic Creole families in the St. Louis. Chopin attended a Catholic school and was "exposed to Catholic teachings and a French educational emphasis upon intellectual discipline" (Inge). She married Oscar Chopin in 1870. Oscar owned and operated a cotton plantation and on her honeymoon, she met two women that would influence her writing immensely. Victoria Woodhull was one of those women and she had a reputation for being a "radical-feminist publisher, stockbroker, spiritualist, and future nominee for president" (Inge). She encouraged Chopin to not "fall into the useless degrading life of most married ladies'" (Inge). Chopin too this advice to heart and while she did care for her six children and her husband, she managed to "reconcile the needs of her own being with the expectations of her conventional milieu. She dressed unconventionally and smoked cigarettes long before smoking was an approved practice among women in her class" (Inge). While Chopin generally avoided women's right's movements and organizations because she thought their aims were "unrealistic," (Seyersted), she did adopt the theory that women deserved the same rights as men because they had the "same drives as man" (Seyersted). Chopin's husband died of swamp fever, leaving Chopin to run the household. She started living with her mother, who died shortly after she moved in. Chopin's doctor, Frederick Kolbenheyer, was a "man of broad learning and radical ideas" (Inge), urged Chopin to write. She lacked confidence and it "took several years of encouragement from her friends as well as a trip to Natchinoches Parish before Chopin began writing seriously" (Collar). Her first novel was published when she was 39 years old.
Works Cited
Inge, Tonette. "Kate Chopin." Literary Biography. Pennsylvania State University Article. 1989.
GALE Resource Database. Information Retreived April 3, 2009. http://galenet.galegroup.com
Seyersted, Per. "An excerpt from Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography." Louisiana State
University Press Article. 1969. GALE Resource Database. Information Retreived April 3,
2009.
Parini, Jay. et al. American Writers. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 2003.
Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was born Katherine O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850. She didn't begin her writing career until after 1882, the year in which her husband, Oscar Chopin died (Toth). She spent several years publishing short stories, based on the Creole and Cajun cultures of Louisiana, where she and Oscar had lived. Her first novel, At Fault, was published in 1890. It was her second novel The Awakening
Victorian Storm Kate Chopin is often referred to as a writer who was well ahead of her time both in her observations of human nature, and in her daringness to write about intimate issues when such a topic was not commonly acknowledged or discussed. Her short story, "The Storm," helped reveal the universality of human passion, extending it to the female as well as the male, and it also helped
Edna's behavior has been foreshadowed through a conversation about her past with Mrs. Ratignolle in which Edna tells Adele of her childhood and the actions she took and the choices she made. Edna tells Adele, "I was a little unthinking child in those days, just following a misleading impulse without question" (61). Edna has not come far from her childhood days of defying what society thought should be done with
Desiree's Baby is an 1892 story by Kate Chopin that examines how the Aubigny family falls apart due to assumptions and misunderstandings. In the story, Desiree, an orphan whose parentage is unknown and whom the Valmonde family lovingly raises, marries Armand Aubigny, a man whose father comes from a prominent family. Desiree eventually gets pregnant by and gives birth to Armand's son, who later is the cause for Armand to
personality of Mrs. Mallard in Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour. The author of this paper discusses the reasons that Mrs. Reacted the way she did and then died. In addition the era is discussed in regards to the way women reacted to bad marriages. FREE ANY WAY SHE COULD BE Throughout history, authors have used their works to convey current social mores and ideas. Every now and again, however,
Desiree calls to him, "in a voice that must have stabbed him, if he was human. But he did not notice." When asked what the baby's dark physical features mean Aubigny pulls Desiree's clutching fingers from his arm "and thrust the hand away from him"; it means "...that the child is not white," Aubigny answers, adding that by implication Desiree herself is not purely white either. Rather than embrace the
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now