Kate Chopin (1850 - 1904)

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Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in a bicultural home, speaking both French and English. In 1870, she married Oscar Chopin and settled in New Orleans, where she gave birth to five sons and a daughter. After she was widowed at age thirty-two, her doctor prescribed writing as a way to cope with the loss of her husband and provide a source of income to support her family. She began publishing short stories, nearly a hundred total, along with two novels. While many of Chopin’s works were well-received, critics also denounced her frank discussion of women’s sexuality, especially in her best-known novel, The Awakening (1899). Chopin died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1904.

Chopin’s fiction is often set in the South, primarily in Louisiana. Her use of dialect and close attention to her Southern setting positions her as one of the major authors of late nineteenth-century American regionalism. Chopin’s work also focuses on the changing gender roles of this era and the possibility of women’s autonomy. She is frequently credited as ushering in a literary feminist movement.