Kate Chopin
Kate Chopin is a brilliant writer. Her
writing career is during the late
1800’s. She lives in a time where women
are sexually suppressed and their
opinions are not valued. Her writing holds
more in common with our time than the
time just after the Civil War. Although
her life was full of death, she still
lived as happy a life as she could by
writing in such a bold and daring way.
Kate Chopin was born as Catherine
O’Flaherty. She was born July 12, 1850. She
is the daughter of Thomas and
Eliza O’Flaherty. Kate’s father, Thomas
O’Flaherty, was born in Ireland
in 1805. He came to the United States in 1823.
In 1825 he became a
merchant in St. Louis. In 1855 he died suddenly in a train
wreck when she was
only four. His sudden death pushed all his family into new
relationships with
each other and the world. Thomas’ first wife, Catherine de
Reilhe,
married Thomas in 1839. She was a French-Creole girl, who died after
giving
birth to their son, George. In 1844, Thomas married Eliza Faris. They
had
three children together: Jane, who died at childbirth; Thomas Jr.;
and
Catherine, who we know as Kate Chopin. After the father’s death,
Eliza had to
cope with being a widow. Kate’s childhood consisted of a widowed
mother, and a
widowed great-grandmother. As a child, Kate experienced many
deaths. She became
emotionally close to her half brother George O’Flaherty.
George was a
Confederate solider during the Civil War and died from
typhoid fever after being
released from prison in 1862. After her father and
brother’s death, Kate
seemed to have collapsed. She became faintly ill, and
it took her two to three
years to recover the traumatizing events of her
childhood. These events changed
her permanently which made her very wary.
Kate’s great-grandmother, Madame
Charleville, taught her French. In fact,
that was the only thing she would speak
around Kate. Madame Charleville would
tell Kate stories about the French. Giving
Kate a history lesson about
how the French founded the city along the banks of
the Mississippi. Some of
these stories were false, but Kate didn’t know the
difference. They were
just, "being no more than the scandals of another day"
(Magill 205). In the
end, Kate received an altogether unconventional education
from her
great-grandmother. Kate began a more conventional education at
the
Madames of the Sacred Heart Convent in 1860. There, the nuns taught
her
discipline and a respectable academic curriculum. Kate also along with
English,
learned French literature as well. Kate began to play the piano at
an early age.
"Kitty Garesche recalls Kate being an accomplished pianist
with an exceptional
musical memory" (Baechler 68). Kate began her music with
her great-grandmother
supervising her piano playing. The great-grandmother
would sit patiently with
Kate as she practiced her scales. She done this
to teach her the importance of
discipline and technique. During her schooling
with the Madames of the Sacred
Heart, the nuns encouraged Kate to
continue with her piano playing. "By the
time she reached adolescence, Kate
O’Flaherty was an accomplished musician"
(Unger 205). "In June 1868, Kate
graduated from the St. Louis Academy of the
Sacred Heart. She then
plunged into the fashionable life, and for two years she
was...’One of he
acknowledged belles of St. Louis’" (Skaggs 2). After
Kate’s graduation,
she emerged from the dark period of her brother’s death,
Kate became a
popular young woman. In 1869 she began to smoke, which is highly
unusual for
a woman in those days. "For two years Kate lived a life of an
attractive girl
in the ‘high society’ (of French Origin) in which her mother
moved" (Kunitz
150). She was greatly fascinated by all the varieties of people
she met in
New Orleans."She met aristocratic Creoles, unpretentious Cajuns
(or
Acadian: French pioneers who in 1755 had chosen to leave Nova Scotia
rather than
live under the British), Redbones (part Indian, part white),
‘Free
Mulattoes’ (so called because they had never been slaves), blacks,
and a
cosmopolitan assortment of Germans, Italians, Irish, and Americans"
(Baechler
68). Kate would sometimes roam the city unaccompanied. She had
a liking to take
a streetcar or just simply walk on foot. There in New
Orleans she met 25 year
old Oscar Chopin. She fell in love with this
businessman and in 1870 they were
married. She was 19 years old then and the
couple were a perfect match and
continued a fairytale marriage from then on.
Oscar Chopin descended from a
French-Creole family. He lived on his
father’s plantation as a cotton factor.
Oscar was different from most
white southerners at that time. He treated
everyone as an equal, including
his father’s slaves. He even once rebelled by
tying himself to his father’s
slaves when his father bought the McAlpin
plantation (which was said to be
the model for Harriet Beeches Stowe’s Legree
plantation). His father was a
cruel, heartless man who even drove his wife away
for some period of time
when Oscar was just a child. Oscar ran away from the
cruelty to relatives
when he was old enough. Oscar treated Kate with dignity,
equality and as a
valued intelligent friend as well as a loving wife. Oscar’s
relatives would
criticise him for allowing Kate to forget her "duty" (Unger
206). "But
Oscar and Kate merely laughed together over this display of
consternation"
(Unger 206). Oscar and Kate would often speak French together
even though
they lived on the American side of town. Oscar was a cotton factor
with
established family connections. He handled everything from finance to
buying
farm equipment. The business was good and stable for a while but excess
rain
during 1878-1879 ruined the cotton fields. This caused great losses
and
caused Oscar and Kate to move with their six young children to
Cloutierville. In
this village, Kate used the setting for many of her stories
in later years.
While in Cloutierville, Oscar opened a general store
where he made enough money
to keep Kate and his family comfortable and in
style. Kate was frequently
pregnant through the early years of their
marriage. By the age of 28 she had
five sons which she would take to St.
Louis. She took many trips to great places
with her children to escape the
yellow fever epidemic. Her sixth child was her
first daughter, which she was
overjoyed to have. "Kate recollects the birth of
her son Jean: ‘The sensation
with which I touched my lips and my fingertips to
his soft flesh only comes
once to a mother. It must be the pure animal
sensation; nothing spiritual
could be so real-so poignant’"(Unger 206).
Oscar and Kate's marriage life
was wonderful. But, yet again, tragedy struck the
young Creole. In 1882,
Oscar came down with a terrible attack of swamp fever.
Within days Oscar
was dead. Kate was 31 years old when faced with the role of
widow and
businesswoman. She carried out the duties of her husband’s general
store as
well as raising six children. She sold most of their belongings and
went to
live with her mother in St. Louis. She only stayed with her mother a
brief
moment when Kate was faced with another death. In June 1885, her mother
had
died. Chopin was "literally prostrate with grief" (Unger 207). "In
later
years, Chopin's daughter would sum up the effect upon her mother’s
character:
When I speak of my mother’s keen sense of humor and of her habit of
looking
on the amusing side of everything. I don’t want to give the impression
of her
being joyous, for she was on the contrary rather a sad nature... I think
the
tragic death of her father early in her life, of her much beloved
brothers,
the loss of her young husband and her mother, left a stamp of
sadness on her
which was never lost(Unger 207). Chopin began writing fiction
very seriously in
1889. No one knows exactly why she took up her pen, but
several influences
probably contributed. First, she had always been a
voracious reader; second, she
needed to provide for her large family; third,
her many friends with literary
interests, especially Dr. Fredrick
Kolbenheyer, encouraged her; and finally, she
had through almost 39 years
living learned some things she wanted to say (Skaggs
4). She wrote her
first story "Wiser than a God," in 1889. She had written
three other stories
by the end of 1889. She published her first novel, At Fault,
in 1890 at her
own expense. She made good progress until she wrote, The
Awakening, her
second novel on April 2, 1899. It was ahead of its time by
suggesting a
sinful sexual maturity in a young married woman. It was given a
very harsh
critical reputation and thus banned for many years. "Certainly her
friend Dr.
Kolenheyer influenced her significantly, apparently she was active
in
cultural organizations and maintained something of a salon during the
1890’s;
yet the St. Louis Fine Arts Club ostracized her after the publication
of The
Awakening" (Skaggs 4). Chopin was 39 years old when she published
her first
story. "Her unusual degree of personal maturity before beginning to
write may
explain the speed with which she found her focus. Few writers have
moved so far
so rapidly as she did between writing At Fault in 1889-1890 and
The Awakening in
1897-1898" (Skaggs 4). Kate Chopin was a beautiful young
woman. She has a
charming girlish figure, and at the time she was writing,
the premature gray of
her black hair contrasted her brilliant brown eyes. She
has a fair complexion to
her small plump figure which caused her friends to
compare her to a beautiful
French marquise. She is an avid listener and
is a quiet and stimulating woman.
"As for her method of composition the
effortless ease of her style make
plausible the account of how she wrote a
story as soon as the theme occurred to
her, recopied it, and sent it off with
practically no revision" (Johnson 91).
A well read and loved "Story of an
Hour," is about a woman with heart
trouble. She hears of the death of her
husband but doesn’t die over this.
Instead she dies at the sight of him
being alive. This short story was published
in 1894. The Criticism of "The
Story of an Hour", it begins with the
complexities of marriage. (April
1894-as elsewhere, the date indicated the date
of composition as determined
by Per Seyersted in Works), one of her most
powerful efforts, offers a
provocative glimpse of the complexities in marriage.
Running to a scant
three pages, it tells of Mrs. Mallard’s reaction to the
sudden and unexpected
news that her husband has been killed in a railroad
disaster. "When the
doctors came they said she had died of heart disease-of
joy that kills." The
story concludes upon just that note. There is no
omniscient voice to explain
or moralize Mrs. Mallard’s hysteric joy. It merely
stands, stark and
matter-of-fact (Unger 212-213). First published in 1969,
Kate’s vivid
story, "The Storm," is about a married woman who suddenly
commits adultery.
"She responds not with shame but with joy at her sexual
awakening and
continued her love for her husband" (Magill 390). In this 5-part
short story,
the narrative structure allows Chopin to present varying
perspectives on a
single situation as a means of suggesting that
"reality" is, at best,
relative. The situation is simple enough:
Calixta’s husband, Bobinot, and
her son, Bibi, are in town when a storm hits;
alone at home, Calixta is about
to shut the windows and doors against the storm
when her former lover, Alcee
Laballiere, rides into the yard seeking shelter.
While the storm rages,
Calixta and Alcee renew their passionate feelings for one
another; their
desire finally leads them into making love. When the storm
abates, Alcee
departs and Calixta welcomes her family back home. The story
concludes, "So
the storm passed and everyone was happy.(Magill 391) Like all
Chopin’s
best fiction, "The Storm" does not offer pat moral truisms,
indeed, the
shocking element of this story’s conclusion is that the
retribution one might
expect for the act of adultery never comes. In section
two, the crucial love
scene is played out against ironic allusions to Christian
symbolism: the
assumption, and immaculate dove, a lily, and the passion. Chopin
offers a
moral tale in which a woman’s experience is not condemned but
celebrated and
in which she uses that experience not to abandon her family but
to accept
them with a renewed sense of commitment. Unlike The Awakening,
"The
Storm" allows a woman to gain personal fulfillment and to remain
happily
married. As in most naturalistic fiction, morality-like reality-is
relative (Magill
391). The Awakening is about the repressive world of
19th century America. This
is where a young woman leads a regular,
conventional life of an upper-class wife
and mother. When she turns 28, she
finds herself confused about life in general.
She is so suffocated that
she is willing to do anything, including defying
Louisiana Creole morals,
to gain spiritual independence. She awakens herself but
never finds
acceptable means of spiritual fulfillment. Her awakening even
continues to
her death. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening has become one of the
classics of
feminist literature because of it’s theme of sexual awakening and
a woman’s
right to freedom of choice in matters of love (Magill 159). Chopin
was ahead
of her time. Her novel, The Awakening met with critical abuse and
public
denunciation. A reviewer writing for the magazine "Public Opinion"
in
1899 stated that he was "Well satisfied" with Edna’s suicide because
she
deserved to die for her immoral behavior. Chopin never wrote another
novel and
gradually gave up writing altogether (Magill 159). After her
devastating
critical reputation from The Awakening, Chopin’s writing career
was virtually
over. The Awakening went out of print until 1969 when Per
Seyersted issued in
two volumes, The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. It was
only five years after her
publication of The Awakening that Kate Chopin died.
She died of a stroke cause
by a brain hemorrhage. After her death on August
20th, 1904, her work was
forgotten and all but impossible to obtain. She
lived a life of death, love,
success and failure. In the end she lived an
all-in-all achieving life.