Kate Chopin (1850–1904) was an American writer of stories and novels set in Louisiana among the Creoles and Cajuns. Her novel The Awakening (1899), about a married woman who seeks freedom and independence, was condemned at the time and almost forgotten, before being rediscovered in the 1960s as an early feminist masterpiece.
Works
The Story of an Hour, The Awakening
St. Louis
Katherine O'Flaherty was born in 1850 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of an Irish immigrant businessman and a mother of French Creole descent. Her father died in a railway accident when she was five, and she was raised in a household of strong women, her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
She was educated at a Catholic convent school and spoke French and English. In 1870 she married Oscar Chopin, a Louisiana cotton trader of French origin, and moved with him to New Orleans.
Louisiana
The Chopins had six children. When Oscar's business failed they moved to Cloutierville, a small village in the Natchitoches region, where he ran a store. After his sudden death from malaria in 1882, Kate ran the business and the plantation for a time.
In 1884 she returned to St. Louis with her children. Encouraged by her doctor, she began to write to support her family and recover from her grief, publishing stories about the people of Louisiana in national magazines, collected in Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897).
The Awakening
The Awakening, published in 1899, tells of Edna Pontellier, a wife and mother who, during a summer at Grand Isle, awakens to her own desires and to the wish to live for herself. Many critics called it morbid and vulgar, and the book sold poorly.
Hurt by the reaction, Chopin wrote little afterwards; her third collection of stories was refused by her publisher. She died in St. Louis in 1904 after a brain haemorrhage. Her reputation was revived in the 1960s, notably by the Norwegian scholar Per Seyersted.
Anecdotes
A cigarette-smoking widow
In Cloutierville, the young widow Kate Chopin shocked her neighbours by smoking cigarettes, riding alone through the village and wearing fashionable clothes. Local tradition also credited her with a romance with a married planter after her husband's death.
A story first called a dream
The Story of an Hour was first published in Vogue in 1894 under the title The Dream of an Hour. It is now one of the most widely taught short stories in American schools.
Frequently asked questions
What is The Awakening about?
Edna Pontellier, a married woman in Louisiana, who discovers her desire for independence, love and art, and refuses the role society expects of her.
Why was The Awakening controversial?
Its frank treatment of a woman's desires and her rejection of marriage and motherhood shocked many critics in 1899.
What are Kate Chopin's best-known stories?
The Story of an Hour, Désirée's Baby and The Storm, as well as the collections Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie.