Relationship between Chopin's Life and The Awakening
Katherine O'Flahtery Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri February 8,1851. She was the daughter of Thomas and Eliza O'Flaherty, a prominent Irish-born merchant and his wife. Together, Chopin's parents represented freedom and the American dream. Their ambition and spirit helped mold Chopin into a unique character with independence and intelligence. Her father died suddenly when Chopin was four years old. His death was the result of a terrible accident that took the lives of several civic leaders when the key link to the Pacific Railroad was being completed and a bridge collapsed. After Thomas O'Flahtery's death, Katherine's childhood was most profoundly influenced by her mother and grandmother, women of French Creole pioneers. As a child, Chopin spent much of her time with her family's Creole and mulatto slaves, whose dialects she mastered. She studied piano, wrote poetry, and read books by such famous authors as Dickens, Austen, and Goethe. Although Katherine displayed a very independent and responsible personality, she was once nicknamed the littlest rebel for yanking down a Union flag. However, despite her free spirit, Chopin grew to be a leading social belle, admired for her wit and beauty.
As a debutante, Chopin was an undistinguished student at the convent school named the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart. She graduated at age seventeen and spent two years as a young woman of fashionable St. Louis society. It was then that the young Katherine O'Flaherty met Oscar Chopin, a wealthy Creole cotton factor. In the year 1870, Kate married Oscar and, for the next decade, Kate Chopin pursued the demanding social and domestic schedule of a wealthy wife and mother. ...
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...r that surrounded the publication of The Awakening, and its harsh reception is what ultimately stopped her from writing. She felt that because of the vast amount of controversy and criticism she received because of The Awakening, there was no future for her as an author. Chopin devoted the last few years of her life to her family.
Katherine O'Flaherty Chopin died of a cerebral hemorrhage on August 22, 1904 at the age of 53. Many felt that Kate Chopin had been denied the recognition she desperately wanted and richly deserved. As well as The Awakening, other of Chopin's writings are receiving the critical acclaim that they had been neglected. The short stories collected in Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie established Chopin as an important writer of local-color fiction.
Works Cited:
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 1899. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993.
Birth in Kate Chopin's The Awakening Birth, whether of children or desires, plays a strong motif throughout The Awakening. The four components of childbirth, which Edna—the novel’s main character—recalls as she witnesses her friend Madame Ratignolle give birth, represent major themes Chopin emphasizes throughout her novel. These four components are “ecstasy of pain, the heavy odor of chloroform, a stupor which had deadened sensation, and an awakening to find a little new life” (133). In childbirth, the first three components are necessary to achieve the fourth: the awakening to find a new life.
When she was a teenager she kept a diary. A few years later she met her husband Oscar Chopin. They got married and they moved down to Louisiana from Saint Louis. They had six children together; five boys and one girl.
Throughout Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, the main protagonist, experiences multiple awakenings—the process in which Edna becomes aware of her life and the constraints place on it—through her struggles with interior emotional issues regarding her true identity: the confines of marriage vs. her yearning for intense passion and true love. As Edna begins to experience these awakenings she becomes enlightened of who she truly and of what she wants. As a result, Edna breaks away from what society deems acceptable and becomes awakened to the flaws of the many rules and expected behavior that are considered norms of the time. One could argue that Kate Chopin’s purpose in writing about Edna’s inner struggles and enlightenment was to
Kate Chopin's novella, The Awakening. In Kate Chopin's novella, The Awakening, the reader is introduced into. a society that is strictly male-dominated where women fill in the stereotypical role of watching the children, cooking, cleaning and keeping up with appearances. Writers often highlight the values of a certain society by introducing a character who is alienated from their culture by a trait such as gender, race, or creed.
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
Chopin’s life was in a downward spiral until she started publishing her works of literature. After publishing The Awakening, her life progressively began looking up. Kate Chopin’s birth was in St. Louis on February 8, 1851. Five years later, she started school at the Academy of the Sacred Heart. Later on in her schooling, she found a classmate that had the same love for reading and writing as she, but not long after, she had to stop attending school for two years (Adams ix). This was because of the death of her father. Chopin was the only of her three siblings to live a long life. She lived with her widowed mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother (Long). Nine years later, her grandmother passed away. This was only shortly after that passing of her brother (Adams ix). When she finally went back to school, she had picked up her Cajun
Kate Chopin wrote in a period of time where women were standing up for there right. In other words, women’s curiosity grew more and more while she was taking away there liberties, the more they take away the more the curiosity grew. Kate Chopin was born in 1851 in Catherine O’Flaherty, she was a marry woman with six children and later widow. She stared writing novels, which was offensive to men, that’s why she never had a chance to publish them, after later she finally did. Chopin wrote a lot of fictional stories which help change the point or view of women in society. One of the novels called The Awakening written in 1899, a story of adultery and sexuality which was badly criticizes by other readers of how she portrayed women in the novels. No thought later in the time she was recognizing by the feminist scholar lecture. The next story called The Storm, probably publish at the same time as the novel The Awakening, which in reality she did not intended to publish. The novel The Storm talks about a woman that committed adultery which ones occur, no one got hurt at the end.
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
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.
Ewell, Barbara C. "Kate Chopin, 1851- 1904." Docsouth.unc. N.p., 15 May 2014. Web. 15 May 2014. .
Edna seeks occupational freedom in art, but lacks sufficient courage to become a true artist. As Edna awakens to her selfhood and sensuality, she also awakens to art. Originally, Edna “dabbled” with sketching “in an unprofessional way” (Chopin 543). She could only imitate, although poorly (Dyer 89). She attempts to sketch Adèle Ratignolle, but the picture “bore no resemblance” to its subject. After her awakening experience in Grand Isle, Edna begins to view her art as an occupation (Dyer 85). She tells Mademoiselle Reisz that she is “becoming an artist” (Chopin 584). Women traditionally viewed art as a hobby, but to Edna, it was much more important than that. Painting symbolizes Edna’s independence; through art, she breaks free from her society’s mold.
Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri on February 8th of 1851, and died 53 years later on August 22 of 1904. She obtains her fame as a writer because she was concerned with women’s issues such as equality and independence. As many writers, she wrote her short stories through her life experiences. According to Jasdomin Tolentino, who studied at Pace University, confirmed that Chopin fought for her feminist views in the nineteenth century through many of her short stories. Tolentino also claims that the short story, The Story of an Hour, is about her dad who enrolled her into boarding school and is also liberated when he passed away, and she is now able to come home, which relates to my last theme. I believe Chopin is Mrs. Mallard in the story because she is looking through the window trying to grasp her freedom which is nearly in arms reach.
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).
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...