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BACKGROUND
- born in St. Louis, Missouri (Kate O’Flaherty)
- Creole background
- Mother:
- Eliza Faris O’Flaherty
- prominent member of French-Creole community
- exclusive social circles (high society)
- Father:
- Irish immigrant
- merchant (various businesses)
- founder of Pacific Railroad
- died on inaugural voyage
- bridge collapsed into Gasconade River
- --> Kate lived with mother, grandmother,
great-grandmother
- all active, pious Catholics
- Great-Grandmother:
- strict Catholic
- helped raise Kate
- strong-willed
- taught Kate piano, French
- skilled storyteller
- told her stories of French settlers (and notorious
infidels) in St. Louis
- KATE: dealt w/death & disappointment
via literature
- 1862:
- great-grandmother died; half-brother (typhoid,
Confederate Civil War prisoner) died
- 1868:
- was graduated from Catholic school
- (after secluding herself in attic for 2 years after her
great-grandmother’s & brother’s deaths)
- KATE: high society
(Mid-western belle)
- KATE: rebels against
Catholicism’s subjugation of women to men
- Oscar Chopin:
- Louisiana, in St. Louis as banker;
- 1870: married (Kate = 20)
- honeymooned in Europe
- shortened by Franco-Prussian War
- returned to St. Louis, then Louisiana…settled in
American district (not Creole district)
- Oscar’s father =
- Creole, plantation owner,
- against son’s move to American quarter, not plantation
business
- tyrant, abusive towards slaves, son (see “Desiree’s
Baby”)
- 6 children (5 sons)
- cotton business (prospered then failed)
- * Kate = ICONOCLAST:
- piano, arts, opera,
- smoked cigarettes, walked unaccompanied
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BACKGROUND
- RACISM:
- pre-Civil War (slave auctions)
- post-Civil War (terrorism)
- racial tensions/confrontations (White League vs.
Republicans)
- yellow fever:
- 1879: business collapsed -->
- moved family to north Louisiana plantations (his father)
- moved from New Orleans to Cloutierville (NW LA) so
husband could take over family cotton plantation & open
general store
- 1883: Oscar Chopin died (swamp
fever)
- moved back to St. Louis
- 1884:
- KC moved back to St. Louis
- Kate’s mother died
- 1885:
- mother dead, husband dead
- KC = 35
- alone
- raised children
- supported herself through literature
- 1890s
- 2 novels
- 1890 At Fault
- 1899 The Awakening
- 150 stories & sketches
- 1894 Bayou Folk (collection)
- 1897 A Night in Acadie (collection)
- poetry, reviews, criticism
- Kate = 35, widowed, alone, to raise 6 children
- (in late 19th-C society!!)
- --> literature
- LITERARY CAREER:
(decade+)
- to support her family
- always turned to literature to deal with life/death
- influenced by the works of
Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant
- writing practice:
- wrote w/kids running around,
- wrote but 1-2 days per week, w/children in he room,
little time for writing
- wrote on impulse (in her words , she was “at the
mercy of unconscious selection” -->
- (+) freshness, sincerity, immediacy
- (-) stories = anecdotal, loose, thin
- 2 novels, 150 stories & sketches, body of poetry,
reviews, criticism
- THE AWAKENING
(1899):
- traces the psychological & sexual “awakening” (coming
of age) of Edna Pontellier, young woman
- “the new woman” =
demands social, economic, political equality = common topic
in literature
- BUT EP = “unrepentant sensualist” (Norton)
- --> shocking, “vulgar,” “sordid”
- --> Kate = socially ostracized
- poor critical reception of The Awakening
- b/c frank sexuality; affair
- --> wrote but 1 more story, then retired from writing
- 1904:
- cerebral hemorrhage
- collapsed after World’s Fair in St. Louis
- dead 2 days later (8/22)
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THEMES
- ** the plight of women in
the American South during the Victorian Era
**
- Biography (deaths) --> Themes:
- “search for
self-understanding”
- female sexuality
- power of passion
- passion = religious devotion
- oppression of women and
hypocrisy by the Catholic Church
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THEMES
- MARRIAGE
(-)
- marriage = a male-dominated union
- restrictive to women
- detailed women’s conflicted feelings towards
their duties as wife, mother
- self-hood, identity
- stifling, restrictive, loss of identity
- the woman has to sacrifice her dreams/aspirations in
marriage
- who she was before marriage cannot = who she is in
marriage
- repression (aspirations, passion)
- abuse (verbal, physical)
- oppression
- eventually explicitly denounced conventional marriage
- too restrictive for women
- dissatisfied women in unhappy marriages
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STYLE
- “wrote on impulse […]
‘completely at the mercy of unconscious selection’”
(Norton)
- little revision
- freshness & sincerity (+)
- but anecdotal & thin (-)
- REGIONALIST:
- Louisiana rural life (Bayou Folk, 1894)
- local color
- Catholic Creoles
- old-fashioned European customs
- polyglot
- witty speech
- lush, semitropical landscape (Norton)
- picturesque landscapes of area
- (esp. Natchitoches Parish)
- dialects
- (regionalism, colorist
- re-creator of Louisiana life, esp. bayou)
- evocative, eye for detail,
great landscapes
- insight into human behavior
(-)
-
- racism (slavery)
- sexism (women)
- frank sexuality, female sexuality
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STYLE
- INTROSPECTION:
- brutal honesty, deepest thoughts, desires
- (diary-esque)
- WOMEN =
central characters
- MARRIAGE
= (-)
- patriarchal
- stifling, esp. for women
- characterization (concise, succinct)
- the “NEW WOMAN”
- KC’s The Awakening (1899)
- Edna Pontellier
- her psychological & sexual coming of age
- unrepentant sensualist
- demanding social, economic, political equality
- SURPRISING ENDINGS:
- twists
- surprise revelations
- text = clues
- “oh, that’s right” moment (see EM Forster quote)
- compels a 2nd reading to find the clues
- makes sense – ends the only way it could have
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NOTES
"The Story of an Hour"
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NOTES
"Desiree's Baby"
"The Storm"
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LINKS
LINKS |