The Effects of Symbolism in Kate Chopin’s Writings

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Critics know Kate Chopin for her regionalist short stories and her often-radical depiction of sexuality in her work. She was able to write very radically and without any qualms because of the influence of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. All three were widows and independent women, which caused Katherine O’Flaherty, born in 1851, to grow up as a smart and strong woman. Most of the women she wrote about in her stories also shared these characteristics. After she graduated at seventeen, she spent the next two years as the “belle of St. Louis society”. Katherine O’Flaherty married Oscar Chopin in 1870 and “for the next decade, [Kate] Chopin pursued the demanding social and domestic schedule of a southern aristocrat, her recollections of which would later serve as material for her short stories” (Bourgoin). She began her writing career soon after because of many family members and friends encouraging her to write professionally due to the entertaining letters they would often receive from her. However, publishers would not publish some of her work until long after Chopin died in 1904. She had two collections of short stories published in her lifetime: Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie. The setting of both collections was the aristocracy of Louisiana, but A Night in Acadie featured more focus on issues such as female sexuality, personal freedom, and social propriety. Chopin also wrote another collection of short stories, A Vocation and a Voice, but no publisher would publish it in her lifetime because it was extremely radical and explicit in descriptions of sex and marriage. Chopin also wrote a novel, The Awakening, which became her most popular work. The Awakening is a story of a woman whose freedom and sexuality has bee...

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“Chopin, Katherine (1851-1904).” Encyclopedia of World Biography. Ed. Suzanne M. Bourgoin.

2nd ed. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. 17 vols. Discovering Collection. Gale. Gwinnett County

Public Schools. 28 Feb. 2010. Web.

Rosenblum, Joseph. “The Storm.” Masterplots II: Short Story Series. 7. Ed. Charles May.

Pasadena: Salem, 2004. 3899-3900. Print.

Stein, Allen. “The Kaleidoscope of Truth: A New Look at kate Chopin’s ‘The Storm’.”

American Literary Realism, 1870-1910. 36. 51-64 in Short Story Criticism. Vol. 110. Detroit:

Gale, 2008. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 25 Feb. 2010.

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