Kate Chopin

Her Story

Kate Chopin

• Born: Feb 8, 1850 in St. Louise, Missouri

• Original name Kate o’Flaherty

• She was third of five children born to Eliza and Thomas O’Flaherty.

• Dies in St. Louise, Missouri on Aug 22, 1904

Her education

• In 1855 at 5 ½ she was sent to The Sacred Heart Academy (a Catholic Boarding School in St. Louis)

• Following an accident that killed her father she was sent home and her great-grandmother taught her.

• She was well versed in French, music, and the gossip on St. Louis women of the past.

• She returned to Sacred Heart Academy when she was eight years old.

Kate back story

• She was raised by strong women.

• Women who used their intelligence to stake a position in society both legally and socially without a man.

• It was not until Kate turned 16 that their were any married couples in her home.

• This is despite the fact she had lots of brothers, sisters, cousins and boarders in their home.

• She had many loved ones die on certain religious holidays which made her skeptical of religion (Wyatt).

Kate and Children in 1877

Kate and Marriage

• In 1870, at the age of 22, she married Oscar Chopin, twenty-five, and the son of a wealthy cotton-growing family in Lousiana.

• He was French Catholic in background as well as Kate.

• By all accounts he adored his wife, admired her independence intelligence, and “allowed” her unheard freedom.

• After their marriage they lived in New Orleans (Wyatt).

Kate and Marriage Cont…

• She birthed Five boys and two girls all before she was twenty-eight.

• Oscar was not an able business man, and they were forced to move to his old home in a small Louisiana parish.

• Oscar died of swamp fever there in 1882 and Kate took to running his general store and plantation for over a year (Wyatt).

Kate Chopin’s writing

Some facts about her writing.• Among her more than 100

short stories are "Désirée's Baby" and "Madame Celestin's Divorce.”

• The Awakening (1899), a realistic novel about the sexual and artistic awakening of a young mother who abandons her family, was initially condemned for its sexual frankness but was later acclaimed.

One of her more famous writing is “The Story of an Hour”

Kate Chopin’s writing

• Her first novel, At Fault, was published in 1890, followed by two collections of her short stories, Bayou Folk in 1894.

• The Awakening was published in 1899, and by then she was well known.

• As a writer, Kate Chopin wrote very rapidly and without much revision.

• She usually worked in her home surrounded by her children (Kennedy).

The Awakening

• The Awakening caused an uproar and Chopin was denied admission into the St. Louise Fine Art Club based on its publication.

• She was terribly hurt by the recation to the book and in the remaining five years of her life she wrote only a few short stories.

Kate Chopin interesting facts

• She was the 3rd of 5 children, but her sisters dies in infancy and her brothers (from her fathers 1st marriage) in their early twenties.

• She was the only child to live past the age of twenty-five.

• Her father was killed two months after she was sent to boarding school (@ 5 ½ years old) when a train on which he was riding crossed a bridge that collapsed (Wyatt).

More interesting facts

• Kate’s great-grandmother, Victoria Verdon Charleville (who educated her) was a smart independent woman. She has been the first woman in St. Louise to obtain legal separation from her husband , and raise her five children

(Wyatt).• Summarize verbally

Awakening…and how Story of an Hour are similar.

Works Cited

• Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature : an introduction to fiction, poetry, and drama. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005. Print.

• Wyatt, Neal. "Biography of Kate Chopin." Biography of Kate Chopin. Virginia Commonwealth University, 1995. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.