ENC 1102, Fall 2010
WELCOME
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Dr. Glanville
Kate Chopin
By Alex Solarino
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Let’s get to know her better..
About her life:
•American author Kate Chopin (1850–1904) wrote two
published novels and about a hundred short stories in the
1890s. Most of her fiction is set in Louisiana.
•Published by some of America's most prestigious
magazines, including Vogue and the Atlantic Monthly.
•Her stories appeared in anthologies from the 1920s.
•Curiosity: Vogue first issue had come out just a few weeks
before, in December 1892. It cost ten cents (about $2.30 in
2009 American dollars).
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Let’s get to know her better..
About her life:
•Catherine (Kate) O'Flaherty was born in St. Louis, Missouri,
on February 8, 1850.
• Her father was Thomas O'Flaherty of County Galway,
Ireland.
• Her mother was Eliza Faris of St. Louis. Kate's family on her
mother's side was of French extraction.
• Kate grew up speaking both French and English.
•She was bilingual and bicultural.
•1868 Kate attended the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred
Heart.
•Mentored by woman--by her mother, her grandmother, great
grandmother, as well as by the Sacred Heart nuns.
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Let’s get to know her better..
About her life:
•On her wedding trip the couple traveled to Cincinnati,
Philadelphia, and New York, and then crossed the Atlantic and
toured Germany, Switzerland, and France.
•Between 1871 and 1879 she gave birth to five sons and a
daughter.
•In New Orleans, where she and her husband lived until 1879,
Chopin was at the center of Southern aristocratic social life.
•1882 her husband Oscar died of malaria, in 1885 her mother
died too.
•She became active in St. Louis literary and cultural circles,
discussing the works of many writers, including Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, Émile Zola, and George Sand.
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Let’s get to know her better..
About her life:
•Kate spent the Civil War in St. Louis, a city where residents
supported both the Union and the Confederacy.
•She was deeply responsive during the period just prior to her
undertaking a literary career to the major new ideas and fiction
of her time, reading fully in Charles Darwin, Herbert
Spencer, and the French naturalists.
•From 1867 to 1870 Kate kept a "commonplace book" in which
she recorded diary entries. Writing for her was a therapy
against depression.
•Chopin's seemingly different writing style did in fact emerge
from an admiration of Guy de Maupassant.
“...I read his stories and marveled at them. Here was life, not
fiction”
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What does she tells us about herself?
Kate Chopin: In Her Own Words
• "Even as a child she had lived her own
small life all within herself. At a very early
period she had apprehended instinctively
the dual life—that outward existence which
conforms, the inward life which questions."
Description of Edna Pontellier in “The
Awakening.”
• "She wanted to reach out her hand in the
darkness and touch him with the sensitive
tips of her fingers upon the face or the lips.
She wanted to draw close to him and
whisper against his cheek—she did not care
what—as she might have done if she had
not been a respectable woman." Description
of Mrs. Baroda in "A Respectable Woman.“
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What does she tells us about herself?
Kate Chopin: In Her Own Words
• "'It means,' he answered lightly, 'that the
child is not white; it means that you are not
white.'" Armand Aubigny in "Désirée's
Baby.“
• "When the girl looked up into her face, with
murmured thanks, Fedora bent down and
pressed a long, penetrating kiss upon her
mouth." Description of Fedora in "Fedora.“
• "I would give up the unessential; I would
give my money, I would give my life for my
children; but I wouldn’t give myself." Edna
Pontellier in “The Awakening.
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Chopin’s Refusal To Condemn Her Protagonist
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Some Of Her Works:
Stories
•Today Kate Chopin is best known for
her sensitive treatment of women's lives.
• But in the 1890s she was praised
mostly for her "local color," her
pictures of Louisiana Creoles and
Acadians.
•All topics part of her Naturalism view.
•Bayou Folk
•A Night In Acadie
•The Storm
•The Story of an Hour
•Désirée's Baby
•A Pair of Silk Stockings
•Athenaise
•At the Cadian Ball
•Lilacs
•A Respectable Woman
•The Unexpected
•The Kiss
•Beyond the Bayou
•Beauty of The Baby
Novels
•At Fault
•The Awakening
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The Symbolic Use Of The Sea In
“The Awakening”:
It opens on Grand Isle in the Gulf of
Mexico where the Pontelliers are
summering, and it closes there. The very
same sentence, about "the voice of the
sea," occurs twice in the book. The first
time, early in the story, is shortly after the
following passage:
Mrs. Pontellier was
beginning to realize her
position in the universe as a
human being, and to
recognize her relations as
an individual to the world
within and about her …
perhaps more wisdom than
the Holy Ghost is usually
pleased to vouchsafe to any
woman.
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A Graphic Short Story Based
on "The Story of an Hour"
"Free, free, free!" Later, when she
discovers that her husband is alive, she
dies out of grief. The doctors believe
that she died from the joy of seeing her
husband.
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•In 1904 Chopin returned home from a fair, she
was very tired. She died the day after, doctors
thought that she had had a cerebral hemorrhage.
Thank You
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•In his 1969 biography, Per Seyersted summarizes
what Kate Chopin accomplished. She "broke new
ground in American literature," he says. "She was
the first woman writer in her country to accept
passion as a legitimate subject for serious,
outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and
authority; She was something of a pioneer in the
amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of
woman’s urge for an existential authenticity.