Though patriarchal attitudes dominated the minds of the American people during the nineteenth century, Kate Chopin’s work encouraged women to look at their circumstances from a critical point of view, one in which women were unfairly treated, unable to fully embrace their feminine ideas, and express their own desires. In addressing how her female characters cope in various domestic settings, Chopin show how they can have a voice and exercise agency along with the consequences of their “rebellion” from social norms. Chopin was able to write the short stories as such due to her own unconventional upbringing and late lifestyle.
Before she was known as Kate Chopin, she was born as Katherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri on February 8, 1851 to Thomas and Eliza O’Flaherty. Her mother was of French-Creole descent, while her father was a native of Ireland. Unfortunately, her father was killed in a train accident when she was a little girl and she lived in an untraditional matriarchal household made up of her widowed great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. Chopin would then obtain her formal education at the Academy of the Sacred Heart – St. Louis were “it mixed women’s wisdom, rigorous intellectual challenges, homely chores, and the celebration of women” (Toth, “Unveiling Kate” 15). Chopin was taught to think independently, but to also be acquiescent to men so although Chopin grew up surrounded by strong women, it did not prepare her “to accept completely the limitations on a woman’s autonomy that have traditionally accompanied wifehood.” However, all of her education and experiences only added to the irony of her happy marriage, just like in her stories.
In the nineteenth century, American society promoted the growth of the “C...
... middle of paper ...
...s clear that she is devoted to their relationship.
Works Cited
Davis, Sara deSaussure. “Kate Chopin.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 12: American Realists and Naturalists (1982): 59-71. Literature Resource Center. Gale. 3 Nov. 2013 < http://faculty.ucc.edu/english-chewning/chopin%20davis.htm>
Kemper, Alison. “Social and Historical Contexts: The Nineteenth Century and the Creole South.” Women Artists and Chopin's The Awakening. 1998: 11-15. Print.
Papke, Mary E. “Kate Chopin’s Social Fiction.” Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. 31-88. Print.
Seyersted, Per. Introduction. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Ed. Per Seyersted. Louisiana: Louisiana State Univerisity Press, 1969. 21. Print.
Toth, Emily. Unveiling Kate Chopin. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1999. Print.
Cambridge UP, 1988. Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990. Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening and Selected Short Stories of Kate Chopin. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
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 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
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.
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 implicate 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.
Boren, Lynda S., and Sara DeSaussure Davis, eds. Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1999. Print.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Anthology of American Literature. Volume II: Realism to the Present. Ed. George McMichael. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000. 697-771.
Chopin, Kate, and Kate Chopin. The Story of an Hour. Logan, IA: Perfection Learning, 2001. Print.
The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 5th Ed. -. W.W. Norton & Co., NY. 1998. The. Chopin, Kate.
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).
Chopin, Kate. Complete Novels and Stories. Ed. Sandra M. Gilbert. New York: Library of America, 2002. Print.
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “Kate Chopin.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, Sep2013. Academic Research Database. 1 Nov. 2013