Kate Chopin

Darline Dodard

ENG 333-531

Midterm Paper

Kate Chopin’s literary talent would have never been so strongly founded if it was not for the circumstances surrounding her life and upbringing. Her father died when she was only four years old, which left her mother and grandmother to raise, and shape her desires and ideologies. Having been raised primarily by strong willed feminine role models, Chopin developed a taste for more of an unconventional role for women in society. In her hometown of St. Louis, she became known as the town’s “Littlest Rebel.” She was widowed and left with six children to bring up on her own.

Chopin also learned about strong and independent women from her passion for literature. She studied a number of female authors, including Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Mme. De Stael, whose stories about women’s freedom in both love and artistic expression Kate especially loved. Author Guy de Maupassant’s nontraditional, realistic short stories and novellas also captured Chopin as a young reader.

Of all things, death led Kate Chopin to write. The death of her brother, her beloved grandmother, her husband, and lastly, her mother left her with an overwhelming sadness and six children to raise, prompting her move to write. With such earnest prompts, Chopin took up writing at age thirty-eight. The publication of the love poem "If It Might Be" in January 1889 marked Chopin's first appearance in print.

Kate Chopin, a female author in the Victorian Era, wrote a large number of short stories and poems. She is most famous for her controversial novel The Awakening in which the main character struggles between society's obligations and her own desires. At the time The Awakening was published, Chopin had written more than one hundred short stories, many of which had appeared in magazines such as Vogue. She was something of a literary “lioness" in St. Louis and had numerous intellectual admirers. Within weeks after publication of The Awakening, this social landscape that had appeared so serenely comfortable became anything but serene and anything but comfortable.

Many of Kate Chopin’s writings wave a backward glance to her childhood. Kate's grandmother, Madame Charleville, spent much time telling Kate stories that stirred her interest about people's lives, minds, and morals. Madame Charleville's favorite saying was, "One may know a great deal about people without judging them. God does that" (Oscar 17). Young Kate must have paid a great deal of attention. Three decades later, when she came to do her own storytelling, she would continue to leave judgment entirely to God.

Kate Chopin’s first novel, At Fault, also refers to sentiments of her childhood, which was not without limitations and prejudices. Her parents, the O'Flahertys were slave holders and rebel supporters. When the Civil War broke out, Kate's brother George joined the Confederate Army. Kate's sentiments followed after the protection of her brother, and she became the "littlest rebel" in St. Louis (Thornton 2). Because of Kate's feelings about the Union, it shouldn't be too surprising that some of those sentiments survived into her adulthood. In much of her work, beginning with At Fault and continuing through such stories as "For Marse Chouchoute," and "The Benitous Slave," the black characters are portrayed as simple, childlike, and mindlessly devoted to their masters (Thornton 6). Even in "Desiree's Baby" (perhaps Chopin's best-known short work), racial injustice is a necessary background against which Chopin stages her deadly dramatic irony.

Between 1889 and 1894, many of Kate's famous works were written and published.