Biography
of Kate Chopin
by Neal Wyatt
by Neal Wyatt
Kate
Chopin was born Kate O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850 to Eliza and
Thomas O'Flaherty. She was the third of five children, but her sisters died in
infancy and her brothers (from her father's first marriage) in their early
twenties. She was the only child to live past the age of twenty-five.
In
1855, at five and a half, she was sent to The Sacred Heart Academy, a Catholic
boarding school in St. Louis. Her father was killed two months later when a
train on which he was riding crossed a bridge that collapsed. For the next two
years she lived at home with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother,
all of them widows. Her great-grandmother, Victoria Verdon Charleville oversaw
her education and taught her French, music, and the gossip on St. Louis women
of the past. Kate O'Flaherty grew up surrounded by smart, independent, single
women. They were also savvy and came from a long line of ground breaking women
Victoria's own mother had been the first woman in St. Louis to obtain legal
separation from her husband, after which she raised her five children and ran a
shipping business on the Mississippi. Until Kate was sixteen, no married
couples lived in her home, although it was full of brothers, uncles, cousins,
and borders.
She
returned to the Sacred Heart Academy, where the nuns were known for their
intelligence, and was top of her class. She won medals, was elected into the
elite Children of Mary Society, and delivered the commencement address. After
graduation she was a popular, if cynical, debutante. She wrote in her diary
advice on flirting, "just keep asking 'What do you think?'" (Toth,
62).
She
grew up during the Civil War and this caused her to be separated from the one
friend she had made at the Sacred Heart Academy, Kitty Garesche. Her family
were slave holders and supported the South. St. Louis was a pro-North city, and
the Gareshe's were forced to move. After the war, Kitty returned and she and
Chopin were friends until Kitty entered Sacred Heart as a nun. There is no
other evidence that Chopin had any other close female friendships.
Kate's grandmother died three days before Christmas in 1863, the same year Kitty was banished. Kate's half-brother, George, died in the war of typhoid fever on Mardi Gras Day. Her father had died on All Saints day, eight years previously, and these unhappy incidents combined to create a strong skepticism of religion in Chopin.
In
1870, at the age of twenty, she married Oscar Chopin, twenty-five, and the son
of a wealthy cotton-growing family in Louisiana. He was French catholic in
background, as was Kate. By all accounts he adored his wife, admired her
independence and intelligence, and "allowed" her unheard of freedom.
After their marriage they lived in New Orleans where she had 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 over the running of his general
store and plantation for over a year.
In
1884 she sold up and moved back to St. Louis to live with her mother. Sadly,
Eliza died the next year, leaving Kate alone with her children again. To
support herself and her young family, she began to write. She was immediately
successful and wrote short stories about people she had known in Louisiana. The
Awakening was inspired by a true story of a New Orleans woman who was
infamous in the French Quarter.
Her
first novel, At Fault, was published in 1890, followed by two
collections of her short stories, Bayou Folk in 1894 and A Night in
Acadia in 1897. The Awakening was published in 1899, and by then she
was well known as both a local colorist and a woman writer, and had published
over one hundred stories, essays, and sketches in literary magazines.
As
a writer, Kate Chopin wrote very rapidly and without much revision. She usually
worked in her home
surrounded by her children. The content and message of The Awakening caused an
uproar and Chopin was denied admission into the St. Louis Fine Art Club based
on its publication. She was terribly hurt by the reaction to the book and in
the remaining five years of her life she wrote only a few short stories, and
only a small number of those were published. Like Edna, she paid the price for
defying societal rules, and as Lazar Ziff explains, she "learned that her
society would not tolerate her questionings. Her tortured silence as the new
century arrived was a loss to American letters of the order of the untimely
deaths of Crane and Norris. She was alive when the twentieth century began, but
she had been struck mute by a society fearful in the face of an uncertain
dawn" (Ziff, 305).
While
reading The Awakening remember that it is a kunstleroman, "a
tale of a young woman who struggles to realize herself - and her artistic
ability" (Huf, 69) and remember that
Chopin, as well as Edna, was on a quest for artistic acceptance. That quest
ended in an abrupt and frustrated manner when she died of a cerebral hemorrhage
on August 22 1904.
(Much
of the above information was gathered from Kate
Chopin by Emily Toth, Verging on
the Abyss by Mary Papke, and Kate
Chopin: A Critical Biography by Per Seyersted. Below is a
chronology of her life and work taken from Dyer's The
Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings, xii-xv)
Chronology
1850
Born on February 8 to Eliza Faris O'Flaherty, a well connected St. Louisiana
with French roots, and Captain Thomas O'Flaherty, a businessman from Ireland.
1855
Enters St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart. Father is killed in train
accident.
1861
Confirmed in the Catholic Church by Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick.
1863
Grandmother dies in January; half-brother George dies of typhoid fever.
1867
Begins keeping a commonplace book of poems, essays,sketches, criticism, etc.
1868
Graduates from Sacred Heart Academy.
1869-1870
Attends debutante parties, learns to smoke, and writes her first story,
"Emancipation: A Life Fable," a short story about freedom and restriction.
1870
Marries Oscar Chopin; keeps journal of European honeymoon; moves to New
Orleans; Oscar's father dies in November.
1871-1878
Has five sons, Jean, Oscar Charles, George, Frederick, and Felix. Oscar Charles
becomes a professional cartoonist for the San Francisco Examiner and his
daughter Kate, becomes a talented artist.
1879
Oscar closes his business in New Orleans and they move to Cloutierville where
he runs several small plantations and a general store.
1882
Oscar dies of malaria, leaving Kate with a heavy debt and six young boys.
1883-1884
Kate tries to run Oscar's businesses and finally decides to move home to her
mother's.
1885
Her mother dies. The attending doctor, Dr. Kolbenheyer, who is the model for
Dr. Mandelet in The Awakening, continues to visit Chopin and encourage her
writing.
1888
Begins reading Maupassant and writes "Euphrase."
1889
Publishes her first poem, "If It Might Be," in America. Writes four
stories and publishes each of them.
1890-1892
Joins the Wednesday Club, founded by Charlotte Stearns Eliot, T.S Eliot's
mother, but resigns two years later. Satire of club women appears in several of
her stories, and in The Awakening in the depiction of Mrs. Highcamp's
daughter.
1891
Writes "Mrs. Mobry's Reason" and "A Shameful Affair," which
are published in the New Orleans Times-Democrat in 1893. Publishes more
stories in Youth's Companion and Harper's Young People.
1894
Writes "A Respectable Woman" (Vogue) in January, introducing
the character of Gouvernail, who reappears in The Awakening. Houghton
Mifflin publishes Bayou Folk in March, and Chopin becomes nationaly
known as a short story writer.
1897
A Night in Acadia, a second volume of short stories is published by Way
and Williams of Chicago.
1897-1898
Writes The Awakening.
1899
The Awakening published by Herbert S. Stone and Company on April 22.
1900
Herbert S. Stone and Company reverses its decision to publish a third
collection of short stories (it would not be published until Emily Toth's
edition came out in 1991). Chopin writes four stories, only one of which is
published.
1901
Writes and publishes only one story, "The Wood-Choppers."
1902
Publishes her last story, "Polly."
1904
Dies from a cerebral hemorrhage on August 22, after collapsing at the World's
Fair, two days before.
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