Kate Chopin Biography

American author Kate Chopin (1850–1904) wrote about a hundred short stories and two novels in the 1890s. Most of her fiction is set in Louisiana and most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women.

Her short stories were well received in her own time and were published by some of America's most prestigious magazines—Vogue, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Young People, Youth's Companion, and the Century. A few stories were syndicated by the American Press Association. Her stories appeared also in her two published anthologies, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), both of which received good reviews from critics across the country. About a third of her stories are children's stories—those published in or submitted to children's magazines or those similar in subject or theme to those that were. By the late 1890s Kate Chopin was well known among American readers of magazine fiction.

Her early novel At Fault (1890) had not been much noticed by the public, but The Awakening (1899) was widely condemned. Critics called it morbid, vulgar, and disagreeable. Willa Cather, who would become a well known twentieth-century American author, labeled it trite and sordid. Some modern scholars have written that the novel was banned at Chopin's hometown library in St. Louis, but this claim has not been able to be verified, although in 1902, the Evanston, Illinois, Public Library removed The Awakening from its open shelves. Chopin's third anthology of stories, to have been called A Vocation and a Voice, was for unknown reasons cancelled by the publisher and did not appear as a separate volume until 1991.

Chopin's fiction was mostly forgotten after her death in 1904, but in the 1920s her short stories began to appear in anthologies, and slowly people again came to read her. In the 1930s a Chopin biography appeared which spoke well of her short fiction but dismissed The Awakening as unfortunate. However, by the 1950s scholars and others recognized that the novel is an insightful and moving work of fiction. Such readers set in motion a Kate Chopin revival, one of the more remarkable literary revivals in the United States.

After 1969, when a biography sympathetic to The Awakening was published, along with an edition of her complete works, Kate Chopin became known throughout the world. She has attracted great attention from scholars and students, and her work has been translated into other languages, including French, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Korean, and Czech. She is today understood as a classic writer who speaks eloquently to contemporary concerns. The Awakening, "The Storm," "The Story of an Hour," "Désirée's Baby," and other stories appear in countless editions and are embraced by people for their sensitive, graceful, poetic depictions of women's lives.

Chopin's fiction reflects aspects of her life.

Catherine (Kate) O'Flaherty was born in St. Louis on February 8, 1850, the second child of Thomas O'Flaherty of County Galway, Ireland, and Eliza Faris of St. Louis. Kate's family on her mother's side was of French extraction, and Kate grew up speaking both French and English at home. She was not only bilingual but bicultural, and the influence of French life and literature on her thinking is noticeable throughout her fiction.

From 1855 to 1868 Kate attended the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart, with one year at the Academy of the Visitation. In 1855, her father died in a railroad accident, and in 1863 her beloved French-speaking great grandmother died. She spent the Civil War in St. Louis, a city where residents supported both the Union and the Confederacy. Kate's family had slaves in the house when she was a child, and her half brother, a Confederate soldier, was captured by Union forces during the Civil War and died of typhoid fever.

From 1867 to 1870 Kate kept a commonplace book of essays, poems, diary entries, and copied extracts, and in 1869 she wrote "Emancipation: A Life Fable," her first story.

In 1870 Kate married Oscar Chopin of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, whose French father had taken the family to Europe during the Civil War. On her wedding trip she visited Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York, and toured Germany, Switzerland, and France. She then moved to New Orleans, where Oscar established a business.

Between 1871 and 1879 she gave birth to five sons and a daughter.

In 1879 the couple moved to Cloutierville, in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, after Oscar closed his business because of hard times and bought a general store in Cloutierville. In 1882 Oscar died of malaria.

Chopin's recent biographer, Emily Toth, has established that in 1883 and 1884 Kate had an affair with a local planter but in 1884 moved with her family back to St. Louis where she found better schools for her children and a richer cultural life for herself. Shortly after, in 1885, her mother died. Dr. Frederick Kolbenheyer, her obstetrician and a family friend, encouraged her to write. She never remarried.

Influenced by Guy de Maupassant and other writers, French and American, Chopin began to compose fiction, and in 1889 one of her stories appeared in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. In 1890 her first novel, At Fault, was published privately. She completed a second novel, to have been called Young Dr. Gosse and Théo, but her attempt to find a publisher failed and she later destroyed the manuscript. She became active in St. Louis literary and cultural circles.

In 1891 she wrote "A No-Account Creole," "Beyond the Bayou," and "After the Winter." Five of her stories appeared in regional and national magazines, including Youth's Companion and Harper's Young People.

In 1892 she finished "Ripe Figs," "Ma'ame Pélagie," and "Désirée’s Baby." "At the 'Cadian Ball" appeared in Two Tales, and eight of her other stories were published. In 1893 she wrote "In and Out of Old Natchitoches," "Madame Célestin's Divorce," "A Matter of Prejudice," "La Belle Zoraïde," and "A Lady of Bayou St. John." "Désirée's Baby" appeared in Vogue. Twelve other stories were published. Chopin traveled to New York and Boston to seek a publisher for a novel and an anthology of stories.

In 1894 Chopin wrote "Lilacs," "The Kiss," and "Her Letters." She began a diary, "Impressions," which she continued for two years. "The Story of an Hour" and "A Respectable Woman" appeared in Vogue, "Tante Cat'rinette" in the Atlantic Monthly, and "A No-Account Creole" and two other stories in the Century. Three other stories were published. Houghton Mifflin published Bayou Folk, an anthology of twenty-three of Chopin's stories. Chopin traveled to a conference of the Western Association of Writers in Indiana.

In 1895 Chopin wrote "Athénaïse" and "The Falling in Love of Fedora," and twelve of her stories were published. In 1896 she wrote "A Night in Acadie," "A Pair of Silk Stockings," "Nég Créol," and "A Vocation and a Voice." "Athénaïse" was published in the Atlantic Monthly. Five other stories were published. In 1897 she wrote "A Morning Walk," and nine stories were published. Way and Williams (of Chicago) published A Night in Acadie, an anthology of twenty-one Chopin’s stories. Her grandmother, Athénaïse Charleville Faris, died.

In 1897 and 1898 she wrote The Awakening and in 1898 the short story, "The Storm," which, because of its sexual content, she did not send out to publishers. Probably no mainstream American publisher would have printed the story. In 1899 one of her stories appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. "In the Confidence of a Story-Writer," an essay, was published by the Atlantic Monthly. Herbert S. Stone published The Awakening.

In 1900 Chopin wrote "Charlie." Two of her stories were published in Vogue. Herbert S. Stone canceled her contract for A Vocation and a Voice, a third anthology of her stories. In 1902 "A Vocation and a Voice," the title story of Chopin's proposed volume, was published in the St. Louis Mirror. Her last published story appeared in Youth's Companion.

In 1904 Kate Chopin died in St. Louis of a brain hemorrhage on August 22.

About Kate Chopin biographies:

The most recent and most influential biography of Kate Chopin is Emily Toth's Unveiling Kate Chopin (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999). Emily Toth earlier published a longer biography, Kate Chopin (New York: Morrow, 1990).

An also important biography is Per Seyersted's Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969).

Out of print today but influential before Per Seyersted's 1969 biography is Daniel Rankin's Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932.)

Biographical question: Can you help with the identity of Mrs. F. M. Estere of 4434 Laclede Avenue of St. Louis and her possible connection with Kate Chopin? If you have any information about Mrs. F. M. Estere, would you please email us?