Kate Chopin: A Controversial Feminist
Kate Chopin was one of the greatest and earliest feminist writers in history, whose works have inspired some and drawn much criticism from others. Chopin, through her writings, had shown her struggle for freedom and individuality.
Katherine (O’Flaherty) Chopin was born February 8, 1851 to a wealthy Irish Catholic Family in St. Louis, Missouri (“Kate Chopin” 1). Her father, Thomas O’Flaherty, was a founder of the Pacific Railroad, who unfortunately died when a train fell off a collapsed bridge on its inaugural trip in 1855. Only a few years later, Kate’s older brother George was captured by Union soldiers during the Civil War in 1863. He then died in captivity from typhoid fever. The loss of both of Kate’s male role models created the powerful relationships she had with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Eliza Faris O’Flaherty, Kate’s mother, was a member of a French-Creole community and an active participant in that community. After her husband’s death, Eliza became more religious and closer to her daughter. Kate had also developed strong ties with her great-grandmother, who taught her how to speak French and play the piano.
Kate received most of her education in St. Louis at the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart (2). Soon after her father and brother’s deaths, Kate’s great-grandmother had also passed away. Kate took the loss very badly and absorbed herself in literature. After her graduation in 1868, Kate spent the next few years living a privileged lifestyle in the St. Louis high society. She enjoyed life as an independent woman and was criticized for walking unaccompanied through the city and for her smoking habit. Kate met Oscar Chopin, a Louisiana cotton factor, in the late 1880’s. After a yearlong engagement she finally married him on June 9, 1870. When Oscar’s cotton factoring business failed in 1879, he decided to move up north to his family’s plantations. It was there that Kate became introduced to the Creole community that became an important focus of her writing. In 1882, Oscar contracted swamp fever and died a year later from complications of the disease. He left Kate with six children.
Kate had five boys and a girl: Jean, Oscar, George, Frederick, Felix, and Lelia. After O...
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...threatened by lack of individuality and the lack of opportunity for change. Leder mentioned that what was different about Edna besides her femininity, was that her true identity was not discovered at the beginning of the story. Eventually as she awakened to her true self, she could not accept either culture and swam to her death, described by Leder as, ”submerging…in the biological reality she has rejected” (104).
After a fifteen year literary career marked by success, plagued by scorn and failure, two novels and over one hundred short stories, Kate Chopin died on August 22, 1904 from a cerebral hemorrhage (“Kate Chopin” 2). She was fifty-three at the time of her death.
Kate Chopin’s stories, although controversial, are still widely read today. She was a source of inspiration for many feminist literary critics. She started the trend that many future feminist writers will follow. Her works, no matter how praised or condemned, will always be a reminder of the struggle for women’s rights and liberties. Her life can still be told by her stories and it is by those stories that she is immortalized, and a symbol of freedom for women forever.
His rapidly progressing disease made it impossible to continue giving lessons. In the summer of 1849 the eldest sister of the composer came from Warsaw to take care of her ill brother. On October 17, 1849, Chopin died of pulmonary tuberculosis in his Parisian flat. Though he was buried in Paris, his heart was removed from his body and was placed in an urn installed in a pillar of the Holy Cross church in Krakowskie Przedmiscie
The National Institute of Mental Health: Eating Disorders: Facts About Eating Disorders and the Search for Solutions. Pub No. 01-4901. Accessed Feb. 2002.
Kate Chopin was born on February 8, 1851, into a wealthy Catholic family in St. Louis Missouri. As a little girl, her father died a few years later in 1855 and was raised at home with her other sisters and mother, strong willed and prominent women who believed in self sufficiency. Soon, on June 9, 1870, Chopin married a man named Oscar. She graduated from St. Louis convent school. In the meanwhile, Kate was soon busy by the occupations of a being a mother and wife to the prestigious business man, Oscar whom she married. Throughout this escapade of life, Kate was forced to relocate often due to her husband’s change of business. Although, it was difficult to build upon these circumstances, Kate managed a small farm and plantation farm to keep things running. Even through these circumstances, Kate pulled through only to discover that all these locals would soon be her inspirations and se...
Wyatt, Neal "Biography of Kate Chopin" English 384: Women Writers. Ed. Ann M. Woodlief Copyright: 1998, Virginia Commonwealth University. (26 Jan. 1999) http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/katebio.htm
Kate grew up in a world where women were seen as very little importance. She wrote to change that. Kate wrote with passion and a sense of realism. She proved to the world around her that women were just as equal to men. Conclusively, Kate Chopin is known to be the first feminist writer and a woman ahead of her time. Even though during her time she was looked down upon for the things she wrote, she is celebrated and acclaimed by people around the world today. Kate's writings provided her with the means to live how she wanted-both mentally and physically-rather than play the role society expected of her. Kate Chopin proved to women they had a right to express themselves however they wanted to. This is why Kate is known today as one of the most important women in 19th century American fiction.
Kate Chopin was born February 8, 1850 in St. Louis. She was raised by a single woman; this impacted her views in the family at an early age. She began her own family at a young age; Kate had a different method compare too many women in her time. As time progressed, she developed a bad habit of dressing inappropriately. Soon she started to publish stories about the experiences and stories of her interests such as women’s individuality and miserable
With an author ahead of her time, Kate Chopin challenged the ideas of how women should be seen socially. Chopin frankly portrays women as emotional, intelligent and sexual beings. While it might seem that Chopin offers positive examples of female characters, in actuality they are complicated, messy and ultimately negative. All of her main female character seem to experience self-awareness, something very important at that time period because while women had feelings and thoughts, they weren't recognized by society, these feelings of independence and discovery are often temporary, still bound to social limitations. In some cases, it requires the Chopin brings attention to women's internal struggles with themselves and who they are told to be in a society that dismisses female autonomy, she doesn't do anything to solve or change them. It often appears that there is a choice between being independent or being married because identity is often lost in marriage and characters are unable to find a balance, making the characters hopeless.
This author was born Katherine (Kate) O’Flaherty Chopin in February of 1850 to a father of Irish descent and a Creole (French settlers of the southern United States, esp. Louisiana) mother (Guilds 293). Chopin was a bicultural mixture of strength. Due to measures beyond her control, she grows up in a life surrounded by strong willed women. These ladies were passionate women Chopin loved and respected; her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. They each added their individual spice of life to a brew of pure womanhood. Thus, seasoning a woman that would become one of the most influential, controversial female authors in American history. Kate Chopin created genuine works exposing the innermost conflicts women of the late 1800’s were experiencing. The heroines of her fictional stories were strong, yet confused, women searching for a meaning behind the spirit that penetrated their very souls.
Kate Chopin was one of the most influential nineteenth century American fiction writers. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri on either one of three dates: February 8, 1851, February 8, 1850, or July 12, 1850, depending on the source. She once said that she was born in 1851, but her baptismal certificate states February 8, 1850 as her birthday (Inge, 2). There is also an indiscretion regarding the spelling of her name. Her full name is Katherine O’Flaherty Chopin, but one source spells her first name with a ‘C’ (Katherine, 1). Her father, Thomas O’Flaherty, was an Irish immigrant who became a successful merchant in St. Louis. Her mother, Eliza Faris O’Flaherty, came from a wealthy aristocratic Creole family (Inge, 2). Kate Chopin was a student at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis. Here she learned the Catholic teachings and great intellectual discipline. She graduated from this French school in 1868 (Inge, 2). On June 9th in 1870, she married Oscar Chopin. Together the couple had six children: Jean (1871), Oscar (1873), George (1874), Frederick (1876), Felix (1878), and Lelia (1879) (Inge, 3).
Kate Chopin was a feminist American short story and novelist. She is known as an advocate of feminist authors of the 20th century. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Brontes influenced her writing. She grew up in a household full of women; including her mother, great-grandmother and the female maids her mother owned. Kate spent a lot of time up in her attack reading.
Kenneth Eble states, “…She undertook to give the unsparing truth about women’s submerged life” (2). Speaking solely about Kate Chopin, this quote puts emphasis upon Chopin’s disputes with her society. She used her writing as a technique to indirectly explicate her life by the means of narrating her stories through the characters she created. Kate Chopin was one of the modern writers of her time, one who wrote novels concentrating on the common social matters related to women. Her time period consisted of other female authors that focused on the same central theme during the era: exposing the unfairness of the patriarchal society, and women’s search for selfhood, and their search for identity. In Chopin’s novel The Awakening, she incorporates the themes mentioned above to illustrate the veracity of life as she understood it. A literary work approached by the feminist critique seeks to raise awareness of the importance and higher qualities of women. Women in literature may uncover their strengths or find their independence, raising their own self recognition. Several critics deem Chopin as one of the leading feminists of her age because she was willing to publish stories that dealt with women becoming self-governing, who stood up for themselves and novels that explored the difficulties that they faced during the time. Chopin scrutinized sole problems and was not frightened to suggest that women desired something that they were not normally permitted to have: independence. Chopin’s decision to focus on and emphasize the imbalances between the sexes is heavily influenced by her upbringing, her feelings towards society, and the era she subsisted in.
Boren, Lynda S., and Sara DeSaussure Davis, eds. Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1999. Print.
Kate Chopin was a woman and a writer far ahead of her time. She was a realistic fiction writer and one of the leaders and inspirational people in feminism. Her life was tragic and full of irregular events. In fact, this unusual life had an enormous effect on her writings and career. She depicted the lifestyle of her time in her works. In most of her stories, people would find an expansion of her life’s events. In her two stories “The Storm” and “The Story of One Hour” and some of her other works she denoted a lot of her life’s events. Kate Chopin is one of those writers who were influenced by their life and surrounded environment in their fiction writing, and this was very clear in most of her works.
Kate Chopin was a woman whose feminist viewpoints were far ahead of her time, which of course garnered her more than her share of criticism. In a time when women were expected to behave "properly" and sexual desire was considered to be something only experienced by men, Chopin spoke with exceptional openness about human sexuality. She lambasted society for its perpetual close-mindedness in a time when righteousness was considered to be an attribute, and she helped to generate more enlightened attitudes among both the women and men of her time.
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “Kate Chopin.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, Sep2013. Academic Research Database. 1 Nov. 2013