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Authors
Kate Chopin (1850-1904)
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The Complete Works of Kate Chopin (1969) was edited in two volumes by Per Seyersted, who also wrote the excellent Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography (1969). The Library of America volume Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Stories: At Fault / Bayou Folk / A Night in Acadie / The Awakening / Uncollected Stories (2002) has appeared, edited by Sandra K. Gilbert. Emily Toth’s landmark Unveiling Kate Chopin (1999) incorporates material from Chopin’s recently discovered diaries and manuscripts and is now the standard biography. Per Seyersted and Emily Toth edited A Kate Chopin Miscellany (1980), and a collection of unpublished short fiction, poems, letters, etc.; their Kate Chopin’s Private Papers appeared in 1998. Barbara C. Ewell’s Kate Chopin (1986) and Kate Chopin: A Literary Life, by Nancy Walker (2001) are good introductions to the life and work. Emily Toth’s critical biography Kate Chopin (1990) has established her as perhaps the leading Chopin scholar. Bernard J. Kosloski’s Kate Chopin: A Study of the Short Fiction (1996) is a fine survey of this large subject. Koloski also edited the pedagogical collection, Approaches to Teaching Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” (1988), and a welcome edition of Chopin’s two most important collections of short stories in Kate Chopin: “Bayou Folk” and “A Night in Acadie” (1999). Lynda S. Boren and Sara deSaussure Davis edited a fresh collection of essays (with a foreword by Cathy N. Davidson), Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou (1992). Wendy Martin edited New Essays on The Awakening (1988), and Nancy A. Walker edited Kate Chopin: The Awakening, Complete Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts (1993). Joyce Dyer wrote a closely argued monograph The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings (1993; 2nd ed., 2000); Donald Kesey edited Contexts for Criticism (1994); and Margo Culley edited the second edition of the Norton Critical Edition of The Awakening with biographical and historical contexts and criticism (1994). Kate Chopin’s Short Fiction: A Critical Companion by Robert C. Evans (2001) is useful, as is the comparative study Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction (2005) by Janet Beer. Susan Disheroon Green, David Caudle, and Emily Toth teamed up to produce Kate Chopin: An Annotated Bibliography of Critical Works (1999); it provides not only annotation but discursive essays by the editors on Chopin’s life, work, and reputation.
Katherine O'Flaherty Chopin was thirty-five years old and the mother of six children when the death of her husband and her mother left her to support her family alone. Drawing both on her experiences growing up in a St. Louis family of strong-willed women and on her experiences living among the Creole populations of the New Orleans region, Chopin fashioned herself into a writer in the tradition of France's Guy de Maupassant. Her stories of rural life in Louisiana, collected in Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), brought her national acclaim as a local-color writer. Her novel The Awakening (1899) received hostile reviews on its publication because of the sexual freedom of the female protagonist, but today is regarded as Chopin's most significant contribution to American literature.
Questions for Discussion and Writing
The Awakening, which has become a central work in American fiction by and about women, is a complex narrative: it can change in shape and effect depending on what we bring to it and what literary values or historical facts we see (or wish to see) reflected in it. Chopin wrote the novel in an era of "Regionalism," of "Local Colorism," of "Literary Naturalism" -- and her story can be read as specifically about the world of Grand Isle at the end of the nineteenth century, or as empowered (or hindered) by naturalistic tropes, or as transcending any of the contingencies of place, time, or literary mode.
1. Considerable attention in The Awakening is given to describing the landscape, weather, and social climate of Grand Isle -- the terrain, the heat, and the heritage and temperament of the people around Edna, who is from Kentucky, not Louisiana. What are the advantages and disadvantages of making Edna's plight specific in this way?
2. Describe Edna's love affair with Robert. What thoughts and sentiments bring it about? What ends it? As she drowns, Edna thinks to herself, "He did not know; he did not understand. He would never understand." What wouldn't he understand? How would you describe the "love" that apparently contributes to Edna's final swim into the Gulf of Mexico?
3. A standard strategy in American literary naturalism is to deny the protagonist full self-awareness. In other words, to develop a fable of human frailty and powerlessness before vast social and natural forces, naturalistic writers often avoid allowing their characters to see themselves clearly for who and what they really are. What about Edna? How thoroughly does she understand her situation? Does she see it as universal to women, or specific to herself? What are the strengths and complications of having the main character see her predicament as Edna eventually does?
