Kate Chopin Short Stories
"There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature." From "The Story of an Hour," one of Kate Chopin's best-known short stories.
When Kate Chopin's short stories were written and published
Kate Chopin composed her hundred or so stories between 1889 and her death in 1904. Most were published in her lifetime in national and regional magazines and newspapers, including Vogue, Youth's Companion, the Century, the Atlantic Monthly, and others. A few of the stories were syndicated nationally. Twenty-three of them were included in her anthology, Bayou Folk, published by Houghton Mifflin in Boston in 1894, and twenty-one others in A Night in Acadie, published by Way and Williams in Chicago in 1897. A third anthology, to have been titled A Vocation and a Voice, was canceled by Chopin's publisher without explanation and did not appear as a separate volume until 1991.
Today all of Kate Chopin's stories are in print and are easily available in published anthologies. Among her most famous stories—those most often read and discussed in classrooms and book clubs—are several that have pages devoted to them on this site: "The Storm," "The Story of an Hour," "Désirée's Baby," "A Respectable Woman," "Lilacs," "A Pair of Silk Stockings," "Athénaïse," and "At the 'Cadian Ball."
Kate Chopin's stories on line and in print
A few of the stories are included with The Awakening and Chopin's early novel At Fault on the Project Gutenberg site. The stories in Chopin's anthologies, Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, along with some other stories are available on Donna Campbell's site, here. Many of Kate Chopin's stories are not yet on line.
In print you can find almost all the stories in The Complete Works of Kate Chopin and in the Library of American Literature Kate Chopin volume. Kate Chopin's Private Papers publishes a few that scholars discovered in recent years. The Penguin Classics edition of Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie includes the stories Chopin published in those anthologies, and the Penguin Classics edition of A Vocation and a Voice includes stories Chopin had hoped to publish in a third anthology. Some stories are available in paperback and hardcover editions of The Awakening and some in countless general short story anthologies and high school and college textbooks. For publication information about these books, see the section "For students and scholars" near the bottom of this page.
Characters, time, and place in the stories
Most of the stories are set in the late nineteenth century in Louisiana, often rural Louisiana. Most of the characters, like most of the people living in Louisiana at the time, are Creoles, Acadians, "Americans" (as the Creoles and Acadians call outsiders), African Americans, Native Americans, and people of mixed race. Except for some of the Creoles, most of the characters are terribly poor, because the area has yet to recover from the devastation of the Civil War.
Frequently asked questions about the stories
Q: Why are there so many French expressions in some of Chopin's stories? If I don't understand French, how do I know what those expressions mean?
A: Many of the characters in Chopin's stories speak French, Spanish, Creole, or all three, in addition to English. Many people with French and Spanish roots live in Louisiana, and some of them speak more than one language. Like Mark Twain and other writers of her time, Chopin was determined to be accurate in the way she recorded the speech of the people she focused on in her work. Some editions of the short stories (like the Penguin Classics editions of Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie and A Vocation and a Voice) include translations of French expressions, and Chopin usually subtly glosses such expressions in the text. Missing the meaning of a French expression is not likely to lead to a mistake in understanding a story.
Q: Did Kate Chopin herself speak French as well as English?
A: Yes. Her mother’s family was of French stock, and Kate grew up bilingual.
Q: Was Kate Chopin’s work forgotten until her literary revival in the 1970s?
A: With a few exceptions here and there, The Awakening was. But some of Chopin's short stories were not forgotten. Several of those stories appeared in anthologies from the 1920s on, and several important scholars were writing about her fiction for decades before it caught fire with the appearance of her Complete Works in 1969.
You can read more questions and answers about Kate Chopin and her work, and you can email us your questions.
For students and scholars
Accurate texts of the stories
The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Edited by Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.
Kate Chopin’s Private Papers. Edited by Emily Toth, Per Seyersted, and Cheyenne Bonnell. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie. Edited by Bernard Koloski. New York: Penguin, 1999.
A Vocation and a Voice. Edited by Emily Toth. New York: Penguin, 1991.
Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Short Stories. Edited by Sandra Gilbert. New York: Library of American Literature, 2002.
Selected books that discuss Chopin's short stories
Arima, Hiroko. Beyond and Alone!: The Theme of Isolation in Selected Short Fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2006.
Beer, Janet. Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Stein, Allen F. Women and Autonomy in Kate Chopin's Short Fiction New York: Peter Lang, 2005.
Shaker, Bonnie James. Coloring Locals: Racial Formation in Kate Chopin's Youth's Companion Stories Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2003.
Walker, Nancy A. Kate Chopin: A Literary Life Basingstoke, England: Palgrave, 2001.
Koloski, Bernard. "Introduction" Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie by Kate Chopin New York: Penguin, 1999.
Toth, Emily. Unveiling Kate Chopin Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999.
Koloski, Bernard. Kate Chopin: A Study of the Short Fiction New York: Twayne, 1996.
Petry, Alice Hall (ed.), Critical Essays on Kate Chopin New York: G. K. Hall, 1996.
Elfenbein, Anna Shannon. Women on the Color Line: Evolving Stereotypes and the Writings of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Kate Chopin Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1994.
Boren, Lynda S. and Sara deSaussure Davis (eds.), Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1992.
Perspectives on KateChopin: Proceedings from the Kate Chopin International Conference, April 6, 7, 8, 1989 Natchitoches, LA: Northwestern State UP, 1992.
Toth, Emily. "Introduction" A Vocation and a Voice New York: Penguin, 1991.
Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton New York: Greenwood, 1990.
Toth, Emily. Kate Chopin. New York: Morrow, 1990.
Elfenbein , Anna Shannon. Women on the Color Line: Evolving Stereotypes and the Writings of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Kate Chopin Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1989.
Taylor, Helen. Gender, Race, and Region in the Writings of Grace King, Ruth McEnery Stuart, and Kate Chopin Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.
Bonner, Thomas Jr., The Kate Chopin Companion New York: Greenwood, 1988.
Bloom, Harold (ed.), Kate Chopin New York: Chelsea, 1987.
Ewell, Barbara C. Kate Chopin New York: Ungar, 1986.
Skaggs, Peggy. Kate Chopin Boston: Twayne, 1985.
Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969.
Rankin, Daniel, Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1932.
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