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Recommended: Critics of kate chopin
Kate Chopin’s literary career began to flourish after her husband’s death and her deep intimate thoughts of her social and marital status were revealed in her fictitious works. Her imagination that she had put into her works was perceived to be her own intimate thoughts that she longed to live during her marriage. She had a “pursuit of solitude, independence, and an identity apart from her children—and apart from the men who always admired her.” (Chopin 114) Her beginning literary career quickly prospered yet came to an abrupt ending once her book The Awakening was criticized for its feminist delivery, adultery, immorality, and its attempt to advocate for the repressed women of the 19th century.
Today Kate Chopin’s works do not receive such condemnation and are highly conceived as great literary works. Due to Kate Chopin’s life evolving in the 19th century, when women’s place was thought to be in the home, raising children, and putting all their dedication into their husband’s wishes and lifestyle, her work did not receive the desired attention that only came after her death in 1904. She revealed to the world that “a person lives in a community, but the community also lives in the person.” (Krstovic 11) Nancy Walker states in her book Kate Chopin A Literary Life,
“Fortunately for Kate Chopin, the regional sketches with which she began her publishing career were in great demand in the final decades of the century; on the other hand, late-century Victorian notions of feminine propriety had a devastating effect on the novel [The Awakening] that should have been the capstone of her career.” (Walker 6)
The negative attention that it did receive caused Chopin to end her dreams as a literary writer.
Catherine (Kate) O’Flaherty wa...
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...ues it assigns to women, not to fully human beings.” (Bloom vii)
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold, ed. Kate Chopin. Comp. Chelsea House Publishers. New York: Chelsea House,
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Chopin, Kate. The Awakening: an Authoritative Text, Biographical and Historical Contexts,
Criticism. Ed. Margo Culley. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.
Krstovic, Jelena. Short Story Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction
Writers. Vol. 110. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 2008. 1-88.
Roberts, Edgar V. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature: an Introduction to Reading and Writing.
New York: Longman, 2009. 331-32.
Skaggs, Peggy. Kate Chopin. Boston: Twayne, 1985.
Walker, Nancy A. Kate Chopin: A Literary Life. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave,
2001.
Witalec, Janet. Twentieth-century Literary Criticism. Vol. 127. Detroit, MI: Gale Research,
2003. 1-237.
When Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" was published at the end of the 19th Century, many reviewers took issue with what they perceived to be the author's defiance of Victorian proprieties, but it is this very defiance with which has been responsible for the revival in the interest of the novel today. This factor is borne out by Chopin's own words throughout her Preface -- where she indicates that women were not recipients of equal treatment. (Chopin, Preface ) Edna takes her own life at the book's end, not because of remorse over having committed adultery but because she can no longer struggle against the social conventions which deny her fulfillment as a person and as a woman. Like Kate Chopin herself, Edna is an artist and a woman of sensitivity who believes that her identity as a woman involves more than being a wife and mother. It is this very type of independent thinking which was viewed as heretical in a society which sought to deny women any meaningful participation.
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin seems to fit neatly into twentieth century ideals. Chopin addresses psychological issues that must have been difficult for people of the late nineteenth century to grasp. Just as Edna died a premature death, Chopin's book died too. The rejection of this book, at the time, ironically demonstrates the pressure many women must have felt to conform to society. Chopin shows the reader, through Edna Pontellier, that society restricts women the right to individuality. This restriction by society can be seen in the clothing Victorian women wore during the time.
Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) who would not allow anyone to possess her, is an example of how the cult of domesticity, prevalent in the nineteenth century, oppressed women as passionless mothers who worship their husbands. While Edna isolates herself from her husband, Leonce, she also isolates herself from her children and, thus, from motherhood. However, Chopin utilizes the motherhood metaphor to illustrate Edna’s own rebirth as she awakens throughout the novel. Exploring Chopin’s tale through feminist literary theory and the cult of domesticity, the metaphor of motherhood through Edna’s own maternity as well as her metaphorical rebirth becomes apparent.
Kate Chopin wrote for a reason and with a sense of passion and desire. She lived the way she wanted to and wrote what she felt, thought, and wanted to say. Kate wrote for many years and her popularity was extreme until critical disapproval of her novel, The Awakening, a story that portrayed women’s desires of independence and control of their own sexuality. Most men condemned this story, while women applauded her for it. Kate wrote with a sense of realism and naturalism and she created a voice that is unique and unmatched. The voice gave a view of the female role in society and contributed to the beginning of the later feminist movements. In 1915, Fred Lewis Pattee wrote, "some of Chopin's work is equal to the best that has been produced in France or even in America. She displayed what may be described as a native aptitude for narration amounting almost to genius" (qtd. in Amazon.com “About the Author”). Kate Chopin was a 19th century American author who cared about women and their rights. She was a bold writer who had a huge impact on how the world should treat women.
In “Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book,” Elaine Showalter makes a compelling argument that “Edna Pontellier’s ‘unfocused yearning’ for an autonomous life is akin to Kate Chopin’s yearning to write works that go beyond female plots and feminine endings” (204). Urging her reader to read The Awakening “in the context of literary tradition,” Showalter demonstrates the ways in which Chopin’s novel both builds upon and departs from the tradition of American women’s writing up to that point. Showalter begins with the antebellum novelists’ themes of women’s roles as mothers—especially the importance of the mother-daughter relationship—and women’s attachments with one another and then moves to the local colorists of the post-Civil War who claimed male and female models but who wrote that motherhood was not a suitable partner for the true artist. According to these women writers, a woman had to choose to be either an artist or a wife and mother; one negatively affected the other. The literary history then delves...
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Heritage of American Literature. Ed. James E. Miller. Vol. 2. Austin: Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1991. 487. Print.
Elizabeth Fox Genovese of Emory University shared in a PBS interview that “She [Kate Chopin] was very important as one of the earliest examples of modernism in the United States or, if you wish, the cutting edge of modernism in American literature” (PBS – Interviews). Kate Chopin published At Fault, her first novel, in 1890 and The Awakening, her last novel, in 1898 (Guilds 924). During these years Chopin wrote numerous other works and most, like At Fault and The Awakening, centered around upper-middle class Creole or French women involved in womanly uncertainties; such as, extramarital affairs, acceptable behavior in society for females, duties as a wife, responsibilities as a mother, and religious beliefs. Chopin was an extraordinary woman, and no indication was made, during the investigation of this research paper, reflecting her having regrets regarding her position as a wife or mother. This document is an attempt at comparing the issues the main characters experienced and presenting Chopin’s unique skill in writing about the culture she observed during her years of living in Louisiana. The tragedy of this author’s existence is that during her life the literary world did not recognize such exceptional skill.
Authors like Chopin helped people realize what was going on during the 1800s. They were able to incorporate the thoughts of women, and what duties society expected them to fulfill during the era. Although these authors were criticized because of what they wrote, they were honest with their opinions and outlooks. According to the Los Angeles Sunday Times, Chopin “…wanted to preach the doctrine of the right of the individual to have what he wants, no matter whether or not it may be good for him” (4). The Los Angeles Sunday Times acknowledges that Chopin’s focus was to convey the rights of women no matter how consequential it might be. Kate Chopin’s upbringing, views on society, and the era she lived in are all incorporated in her novel The Awakening, which expresses the inequalities between male and female.
In Frances Porcher’s response to “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin published in May 1899, she felt as though the book is slightly pathetic. While she believes that one can get absorbed by the principles of the book, she writes that the story makes one feel like “it leaves one sick of human nature and so one feels cui bono!” Furthermore, in Porcher’s analysis, the book “is not a pleasant picture of soul-dissection.” The distress of Edna does not allow one to joyfully engage in the plight that is exhibited. In addition to ugly cross-section, the book makes readers feel, “for the moment, with a little sick feeling, if all women are like the one” that is studied in the book. While it is disheartening to read that women might feel this way about the
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening should be seen as depicting the discontentment that comes from self-gratification rather than the glorification of delighting in one’s fantasies. Chopin describes the central idea of one who is seeking to please her personal needs and desires and, in the process, neglects to notice how her actions affect others. The protagonist, Edna, is not able to find peace or happiness in the accepted daily life that a woman of her era and social status should have. The fulfilling of her desires could essentially cause social ostracism for her, her husband, and her children, yet she is unable to find repose in living the typical social Victorian life. The final resolve of her “awakening” to her desires, her ultimate suicide, is not an honorable position that women should strive toward as a romantic ideal because her desires were hopeless in her situation. Through Edna’s striving for personal satisfaction, she loses the joys that daily life has to offer.
The 19th and 20th centuries were a time period of change. The world saw many changes from gender roles to racial treatment. Many books written during these time periods reflect these changes. Some caused mass outrage while others helped to bring about change. In the book The Awakening by Kate Chopin, gender roles can be seen throughout the novel. Some of the characters follow society’s “rules” on what a gender is suppose to do while others challenge it. Feminist Lens can be used to help infer and interpret the gender roles that the characters follow or rebel against. Madame Ratignolle and Leonce Pontellier follow eaches respective gender, while Alcee Arobin follows and rebels the male gender expectations during the time period.
Spangler, George M. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening: A Partial Dissent." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 3 (1970): 249-55.
Chopin, fatherless at four, was certainly a product of her Creole heritage, and was strongly influenced by her mother and her maternal grandmother. Perhaps it is because she grew up in a female dominated environment that she was not a stereotypical product of her times and so could not conform to socially acceptable themes in her writing. Chopin even went so far as to assume the managerial role of her husband's business after he died in 1883. This behavior, in addition to her fascination with scientific principles, her upbringing, and her penchant for feminist characters would seem to indicate that individuality, freedom, and joy were as important to Chopin as they are to the characters in her stories. Yet it appears to be as difficult for critics to agree on Chopin's view of her own life as it is for them to accept the heroines of her stories. Per Seyersted believes that Chopin enjoyed living alone as an independent writer, but other critics have argued that Chopin was happily married and bore little resemblance to the characters in her stories (150-164).
Bryfonski, Dedria, ed. Women's Issues in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven, 2012. Print.
Marquand, Jane Le. "Kate Chopin as Feminist: Subverting the French Androcentric Influence." University of Otago. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.