Where does a writer find their spark of inspiration? Writing a novel or story starts with a vision. Many authors collect ideas from their own personal life to shape their works. Family, environments, devastating experiences, and the way you are raised can all spark an idea. Chopin’s background which includes her family, her environments, and her many experiences with death in her lifetime all had an impact on her writing and shaped her into the successful writer she is famous for being.
Chopin’s non-traditional family paved the way for her outlook on life. Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis Missouri on February 8, 1851. Her father’s name is Thomas O’Flaherty. He was originally from Ireland but had found his way to New York and Illinois and then eventually made his home in St. Louis. Thomas O’Flaherty lived in St. Louis where he gained wealth as the owner of a commission house. Thomas married Eliza Faris, Eliza O’Flatery, whose family was from French-Creole origins. Kate Chopin was the third of five children in her family, but her sisters died as babies and her brothers not much older. At age five, Kate Chopin devastatingly lost her father who was killed in a train accident. Therefore, Kate Chopin lived and was raised by relatives in a household of all females. She stayed with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother that all had lived long enough to see their husbands pass away. While staying with her family, Kate Chopin was educated by her great grandmother, Victoria Verdon Charleville, who was responsible for her education. She not only influenced her mental and artistic growth, but also guided her to tell stories created with her imagination and influenced her love of gossiping. Her great grandmother greatly influenced...
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...er, Nancy. "Kate Chopin." Research Guide To Biography & Criticism 1.(1985): 236-238. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
This article gives biographical information on author Kate Chopin. She was born on July 12, 1850 in St. Louis, Missouri, to a French Creole mother and an Irish father. In her short career, Chopin published two novels and two collections of short stories; a number of stories remained unpublished at her death and some of them are included in the book The Complete Works.
Wyatt, Neal. "Biography of Kate Chopin." Biography of Kate Chopin. N.p., 1995. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. .
This article includes an outline of Chopin’s life and a very good summary of her life broken up into small phases. That was helpful because it was easier to see possible connections between her life and work.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening and Selected Short Stories of Kate Chopin. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. A Norton Critical Edition: Kate Chopin: The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. 3-109.
Davis, Sara de Saussure. "Kate Chopin." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 12 pp. 59-71. Literature Resource Center. Gale Group Databases. Central Lib. Fort Worth, TX. 11 Feb. 2003
Aull Ph.D., Felice. "Kate Chopin: The Awakening." Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. 34th ed. (April 1999). Online. New York University. Internet. 10 April 1999. Available: http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/topview.html
Let us start with Chopin herself. Without going into too much detail Kate Chopin was, for all practical purposes raised by her maternal great-grandmother. She was raised as a Catholic, took daily music lessons and was told somewhat adult stories by her great-grandmother spinning the local gossip regarding the founders of St. Louis that seemed to greatly influence the writings of Kate.
Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis in 1851. Her mother Eliza O’Flaherty and father Thomas O’Flaherty were Slave-owning Catholics. (Wilson, Kathleen. The Story of an Hour. Ssfs. 2. Detroit, Michigan: Gale, 1997. 263. Print.) (Wilson 263) At the age of four she had lost her father in a train wreck. She was raised by her French-Creole mother and Great-Grandma. She had begun school at the age of five at Academy of Sacred Heart. After her father died she was taught at home. Later she returned to school and graduated at the age of 17. She got married at the age of twenty years to Oscar Chopin, twenty-five years old and a son of a wealthy cotton-growing family in Louisiana. He was also a French catholic like Kate. Chopin went as...
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 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
Kate Chopin was an American author and short story writer. She is considered among the most vital ladies in nineteenth-century American fiction. She was born on Feb. 8, 1851, in St. Louis, Missouri, and died there on Aug.
Kate Chopin was born Kate O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850 to secure and socially prominent parent, Eliza O'Flaherty, of French-Creole descent, and Thomas O'Flaherty, an Irish immigrant and successful commission merchant. Kate attended the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart from 1855 until she graduated on 1868. In 1855, her father was died in a railroad accident. She lived at home with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, all of them were widows. Her great-grandmother, Victoria Verdon oversaw her education and taught her French, music, and the gossip on St. Louis women of the past. Kate O'Flaherty grew up surrounded by smart, independent, single women. Victoria's own mother had been the first woman in St. Louis to obtain legal separation from her husband. She was influenced by her upbringing among these women. This showed up later in her fiction. For example, in her first short story “Wiser than a god” she characterized a strong and independent woman. This woman had an exceptional musical talent. She preferre...
Born Katherine O’Flaherty on February 8, 1851, in St. Louis, Chopin was the daughter of a prominent Irish merchant and an aristocratic French-Creole mother. Chopin’s roots in, and familiarity with, two distinctly different cultures were important on both a personal and creative level throughout her life. As a member of a slave-owning family and an elite social circle, Chopin was exposed to people of diverse color and background, many of whom provided the basis for her later writings.
In 1888, after suffering grief from the deaths of her father, mother and her husband, Chopin turned to creative writing as an outlet. She was not particularly well known as a writer during her life. She began writing seriously at the age of 39, when she would have already experienced many maturing life situations. She found her central focus rapidly, and wrote stories whose intriguing characters and settings often disguised the seriousness of their themes. Not greatly involved in the politics of her time, she was nonetheless influenced by such classic masters as Maupassan...
Seyersted, Per. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin . Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “Kate Chopin.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, Sep2013. Academic Research Database. 1 Nov. 2013