Kate Chopin

(1851-1904)

Chopin's stories concern the life of French Creoles in Louisiana. Published in national magazines and collected in two volumes called Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), the stories were praised for their accurate portrayal of this French strain in the national culture. Chopin's theme, however, was a much more controversial matter: it was the repression of women in Victorian America.

This theme was most dramatically presented in her novel The Awakening, which appeared in 1899. The novel portrays a dissatisfied New Orleans wife who breaks from the confines of her marriage and, in her quest for freedom, flagrantly defies the Victorian ideals of motherhood and domesticity. Although the concern of Chopin's novel was somewhat similar to Gustave Flaubert's widely praised novel Madame Bovary, published in France in 1856.

The Awakening and many of Chopin's other works were rediscovered a generation after her death. With the help of discerning critics and the women's movement of the 1960's, Kate Chopin is now recognized as a novelist of skill and perception, whose work first appeared half a century before its time.