Morgan Roney
Doctor Laura Buchholz
April 14, 2015
ENG 112L
Final Paper
This paper will examine the life of Kate Chopin along with her writing style and theme in The Story of an Hour and The Awakening. Chopin has a unique writing style that shows throughout all of her works. Her works carry similar themes that include: women in search of independence, negative views of marriage, and self-assertion. While reading Chopin’s work, the reader will conclude that Chopin’s writing is very inspiring because she incorporates obstacles that she faced throughout her life. With this technique used, it is easier for the reader to connect with Chopin on a personal level while reading her works.
To begin, Kate Chopin was born on February 8, 1850 with the
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Chopin began her education at a Catholic School called the Sacred Heart Academy. Her school was “…devoted to creating good wives and mothers, while also teaching independent thinking” (Jones). Kate Chopin experienced many more tough times with the loss of her great grandmother, her brother, her first teacher, and her best friend moving away. Because she grew up during the time of the Civil War, Chopin spent much of her time at home (Jones). She experienced violence at first hand when her home was raided by German soldiers, and it is believed that she was sexually abused in the process. After she was believed to be sexually abused, Chopin began to isolate herself from everything. She spent a lot of her time reading, writing, and thinking in the attic by herself (“Kate”). After experiencing such rough times, Chopin went back to Sacred Heart Academy where she was encouraged by her English teacher to begin writing. After graduating she met Oscar Chopin, “…a businessperson of cosmopolitan background” (Jones). At the age of 20, they got married and in their first ten years of marriage Chopin birthed six children. With the death of her husband in 1884, Chopin was left to take care of the family financially. After going into a huge amount of debt, Chopin moved to St. Louis with her mother and turned to her passion of writing as a way to make money (Toth 101). In 1885, Chopin dealt with the loss of her mother
Commonly explored throughout her works, the idea of marriage inhibiting a woman’s freedom is the driving force behind Kate Chopin’s contextual objections to propriety. In particular, The Awakening and “The Story of an Hour” explore the lives of women seeking marital liberation and individuality. Mrs. Chopin, who was raised in a matriarchal household, expresses her opposition to the nineteenth century patriarchal society while using her personal experiences to exemplify her feminist views.
Kate was one of three children born to her parents and the only one to live to mature years. In 1855, tragedy struck the O’Flaherty family when her father, now a director of the Pacific Railroad, was killed in a train wreck; thereafter, Kate lived in a house of many widows — her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother Charleville. In 1860, she entered the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic institution where French history, language, and culture were stressed — as they were, also, in her own household. Such an early absorption in French culture would eventually influence Chopin’s own writing, an adaptation in some ways of French forms to American themes.
Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis on February 8, 1850. She had grown up within a home with mostly women, due to her father who had died when she was five. Chopin had always been fascinated with books and had spent most of her free time in an attic, reading. Since Chopin was a confederate, she had been arrested for tearing down a union flag that had been hung from her house. However, she had been awarded the name of St. Louis’s “Little Rebel” - which had shown her feature attitude as an adult. After Chopin had finished school, she met a man named Oscar Chopin, whom she married during the month of June, 1870. Between 1871 and 1879, Chopin had delivered six children and had been raising them at the time. After some time, Oscar had died due to
Kate Chopin was a influential author that introduced powerful female characters to the american literacy world. She was most known for her brilliant book The Awakening. However at that time it received many negative reviews, causing the downfall of Kate’s writing career. Now the book is such a influential story that it is being taught in classrooms throughout the world. This essay will discuss Kate Chopin’s writing career and the impact her writing has on society.
It is important to consider the world and society at the time Chopin began to write and publish her short stories and books. To really gain an appreciation and understanding for her works, one must consider the circumstances surrounding the author. The different expectations of the roles of men and women and the segregating line between the races. Chopin’s work would be
Kate Chopin’s strong female influences provided her with her love for storytelling along with her curiosity, and her feelings on women’s stereotypical roles inspired her to write. Compared to others in her generation she was very forward-thinking with a lot of her views. Kate Chopin was born into the generation of change by them accepting change and questioning typical roles (“Women’s Issues in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening” 13). The changing views of that time period paired with the fact that she was raised by three strong women set the foundations for her views. As “Women’s Issues in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening” says her most notable female influence her great-grandmother who introduced her to stories creating Chopin’s love for books. Kate’s great-grandmother shared her
Because of her childhood of being raised in an all-woman household it helped mold her feministic personality and view on life with love, faith, strength, kindness, independence, and generosity (Toth, Emily). As Kate became older she met Oscar Chopin a business man who she fell in love with and later at the age of 20 years old were married. Kate’s behaviors, like smoking cigarettes and walking through the city unaccompanied frequently shocked her conservative in laws and this streak of independence however did not bother her husband. Kate later gave birth to five sons and a daughter. Motherhood quickly played into her life as well as societal restraints on women and as she lived personal experiences with this, she began to write books about women’s daily life and fictional writing on how it could be in a women’s way. In 1879, Oscar Chopin’s money lending business was in deep trouble due to financial instability. The family moved to Coulterville, Louisiana where Oscar ran a general store. Kate Chopin’s sophisticated behavior and dress style inspired gossip in the closely knit town. Her husband, worn down by financial worries, died in 1882 with malaria, leaving Kate with an outstanding debt of $12,000 and six children to raise alone. Despite everything that Kate was going through she decided to manage Oscar’s businesses
“Love and passion, marriage and independence, freedom and restraint.” These are the themes that are represented and worked with throughout Kate Chopin’s works. Kate Chopin, who was born on February 8, 1851, in St. Louis, was an American acclaimed writer of short stories and novels. She was also a poet, essayist, and a memoirist. Chopin grew up around many women; intellectual women that is. Chopin said herself that she was neither a feminist nor a suffragist; she was simply a woman who took other women intensely seriously. Chopin believed women had the ability to be strong, individual, and free-spirited. She herself reached out, in
American creator Kate Chopin was conceived Catherine O'Flaherty on July 12, 1850, in St. Louis, Missouri. She was one of three youngsters born to Irishman Thomas O'Flaherty and a French-American mother, Eliza Faris. She has composed two published novels and over a hundred short stories. The majority of her stories are situated in the place where she grew up of Louisiana and concentrate on the lives of ladies. The period she experienced childhood in was a contemporary society where ladies were subjected to acting in a certain way. Ladies were to get married, have youngsters, and carry on with a customary life. Chopin did not experience childhood in a conventional family unit, maybe setting the premise for her perspective of society. She was
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is a story written in the late 19th century about a woman
When Kate was 11 years old, her great-grandmother died. Kate studied French and English literature while attending a Catholic high school and became a pianist. She became involved in the community and in women’s suffrage, but she never was politically active. When Kate was nineteen, she married a businessman, Oskar Chopin. Kate had six children.
Kate Chopin’s impressive literary piece, The Story of an Hour, encompasses the story of an hour of life, an hour of freedom. We must seize the day and live our lives to the fullest without any constraints. This very rich and complete short story carries a lot of meaning and touches a readers feelings as well as mind. Throughout this piece much symbolism is brought about, which only helps us to understand the meaning and success of Kate Chopin’s work. Kate allows her reader to think and allows us to understand the meaning of her story with the different uses of symbols such as heart troubles, the armchair, the open window, springtime, and the calm face and goddess of victory. We eventually realize little by little that Mrs. Mallard
At the end of 19th century, American society presented an ideology of patriarchy. Feminists struggle for the equality and discrimination against female. As feminist movement started, lots of female writers were explored. One of the most famous writers is Kate Chopin. Her works mostly present a theme of women pursue freedom and equality. “The Story Of An Hour” and “The Awakening” are her representative works. In these two works, Kate Chopin reveals how women lived under the oppression of male-dominated society, especially for women who got married. They were not financially independent and their freedom and rights were deprived. Therefore female were forced to be an “angle in the home”. Both challenge the preconception that women can only be a housekeeper and marriage is the only way out.
After reading “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin the reader can see that the text reveals a major theme about freedom with the use of a few characters, a basic setting, and plot. This text was written to address the crisis of the restricted lives women were forced to live during that time period. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is discussing how they were being careful to break the news of Louis husband’s death because she had a heart problem. In the middle of the text, we learn how the news was accepted. Finally, in the end of the text, the author adds an interesting plot twists that brings the meaning of the story together. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” is the best story because it developed the theme of the loss of freedom can be detrimental through her use of plot, setting, and character.
Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, on February 8, 1850, to an affluent family. Chopin’s life had a great deal of trauma, losing her father in a railroad accident and her beloved grandmother dying shortly after impacted her life. Kate spent the Civil War in St. Louis, a city where residents supported both the Union and the Confederacy and where her family had slaves in the house. Chopin married at an early age of nineteen to a wealthy French man in 1870 and the two settled in New Orleans. Kate Chopin’s writing career began with her life and experiences in St. Louis, New Orleans; she wrote short stories, novels and so on. “At Fault” was Chopin’s very first novel, a book about a religious widow in love with a divorced man, which was not typical in the nineteenth century. Kate Chopin was a daring writer, she wrote many controversial stories and books about women freedom, sex, and extramarital affairs. For example, Chopin wrote short