Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin (1850-1904), American writer, known for her depictions of culture in New Orleans, Louisiana, and of women's struggles for freedom. Chopin was born Katherine O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1870 she married Oscar Chopin, a Creole cotton trader, and moved with him to New Orleans. After a business failure, the family moved to a plantation near Cloutierville, Louisiana, where her husband died in 1882. In 1884 Chopin returned to St. Louis with her six children. There she maintained a literary salon and began her writing career.

For more than a decade following her first published story in 1889, Chopin depicted the manners, customs, speech, and surroundings of Louisiana's Creole and Cajun residents. Two collections of her short fiction were published in the 1890s: Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Both works were well-received as examples of “local-color” literature and helped establish Chopin's reputation as a major contributor to Southern regional literature. Chopin also produced a substantial body of poetry, reviews, and criticism. As her later stories, such as “The Story of an Hour,” began to emphasize women's need for independence and capacity for passion, editors became less receptive to her work.

Chopin published a novel, At Fault, in 1890 at her own expense. Several publishers rejected her second novel, and she destroyed the manuscript. The Awakening (1899), the novel now considered her masterpiece, attracted a storm of negative criticism for its lyrical depiction of a woman's developing independence and sensuality. Subsequently, her editors suspended publication of her third collection of stories, A Vocation and a Voice. The collection was not published until 1991. As a result of the negative criticism and social ostracism that followed The Awakening, Chopin produced few additional writings, and over the next half-century her work became obscure. It was rediscovered in the 1960s.