49 Facts About Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana.

Kate Chopin is considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald, and she is among the most frequently read and recognized writers of Louisiana Creole heritage.

Kate Chopin is best known today for her 1899 novel The Awakening.

Kate Chopin married and moved with her husband to New Orleans.

From 1892 to 1895, Kate Chopin wrote short stories for both children and adults that were published in national magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The Century Magazine, and The Youth's Companion.

Kate Chopin's stories aroused controversy because of her subjects and her approach; they were condemned as immoral by some critics.

Kate Chopin's father, Thomas O'Flaherty, was a successful businessman who had immigrated to the United States from Galway, Ireland.

Some of Kate Chopin's ancestors were among the early European inhabitants of Dauphin Island, Alabama.

Kate Chopin was the third of five children, but her sisters died in infancy and her half-brothers died in their early 20s.

Kate Chopin became an avid reader of fairy tales, poetry, religious allegories, and classic and contemporary novels.

Kate Chopin graduated from Sacred Heart Convent in St Louis in 1868.

In St Louis, Missouri on June 8,1870, she married Oscar Kate Chopin and settled with him in his home town of New Orleans.

Kate Chopin's mother had implored her to move back to St Louis, which she did, with her mother's financial support.

Kate Chopin struggled with depression after the successive loss of her husband, her business, and her mother.

Kate Chopin believed that writing could be a focus for her energy as well as a source of income.

Kate Chopin was discouraged by the lack of acceptance, but she continued to write, primarily writing short stories.

Kate Chopin was interred in Calvary Cemetery in St Louis.

Kate Chopin lived in a variety of locations, based on different economies and societies.

Kate Chopin was brought up by women who were primarily ethnic French.

Kate Chopin's writing style was influenced by her admiration of the contemporary French writer Guy de Maupassant, known for his short stories:.

For instance, in "The Storm", portraits of women were revised by Kate Chopin to obtain consummation in roles other than marriage to evince a passionate nature considered inappropriate by conventional, patriarchal standards of Victorian America.

Kate Chopin went beyond Maupassant's technique and style to give her writing its own flavor.

Kate Chopin had an ability to perceive life and creatively express it.

Kate Chopin concentrated on women's lives and their continual struggles to create an identity of their own within the Southern society of the late nineteenth century.

Kate Chopin knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.

Kate Chopin was nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously.

Kate Chopin took strong interest in her surroundings and wrote about many of her observations.

Kate Chopin appeared to express her belief in the strength of women.

Kate Chopin might have been surprised to know her work has been characterized as feminist in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, just as she had been in her own time to have it described as immoral.

Kate Chopin began her writing career with her first story published in the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

Kate Chopin came of age when slavery was institutionalized in St Louis and the South.

Kate Chopin was not afraid to address such issues, which were often suppressed and intentionally ignored by others.

Kate Chopin was talented at showing various sides of marriages and local people and their lives, making her writing very broad and sweeping in topic, even as she had many common themes in her work.

Cutter exemplifies this idea through the presentation of Kate Chopin's works written after 1894.

Cutter claims that Kate Chopin wanted to "disrupt patriarchal discourse, without being censored by it".

Bayou Folk, a collection of 23 of Kate Chopin's stories, was a success for Kate Chopin in 1894, published by Houghton Mifflin.

Kate Chopin was discouraged by this criticism, and she turned to writing short stories almost exclusively.

Kate Chopin reacted to the negative events happening to her by commenting:.

Kate Chopin has been credited by some as a pioneer of the early feminist movement despite not achieving any literary rewards for her works.

Kate Chopin wrote the majority of her short stories and novels from 1889 to 1904.

Altogether, Kate Chopin wrote about 100 short stories or novels during her time as a fiction writer; her short stories were published in a number of local newspapers including the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

Bayou Folk was well-reviewed, with Kate Chopin's writing about how she had seen 100 press notices about it.

Kate Chopin published two novels: At Fault and The Awakening.

Kate Chopin's novels were not well-received initially, compared to her short stories.

Kate Chopin argued that the protagonist Edna's blatant sensuality was too much for the male gatekeepers.

Kate Chopin's books were all out of print, only her story "Desiree's Baby" was in print in numerous American short story anthologies.

Per Seyersted's rediscovery of Kate Chopin caused her work to be seen as essential feminist and Southern literature from the 19th century.

Parallels between Alcott and Kate Chopin have been drawn to point out how both authors wrote about women who departed from their traditional roles by dreaming of or striving for independence and individual freedoms, described as a dramatization of a woman's struggle for selfhood.

Louisiana Public Broadcasting, under president Beth Courtney, produced Kate Chopin: A Reawakening, a documentary on Chopin's life.