American author Kate Chopin (1850–1904) wrote two novels and about a hundred short stories 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, including Vogue and the Atlantic Monthly. Her early novel At Fault (1890) was not much noticed by the public, but The Awakening (1899) was widely condemned. Critics called it morbid, vulgar, and disagreeable (continue)

Question: How do you pronounce "Chopin"?

Answer: In the French way, like that of the composer, Frédéric Chopin—in English, something like SHOW-pan.

Q: When was Kate Chopin born? Some internet sites say 1851 and others 1850.

A: Her tombstone says 1851, but thirty years ago a French scholar revealed that the United States census and her baptismal certificate (no birth certificate exists) show that Chopin was born on February 8, 1850. The Library of Congress has recently (in September, 2009) accepted the corrected date, but some printed sources and web sites still give her birth date as 1851.

Q: Was Kate born a Chopin or is that her married name?

A: She was born Catherine O'Flaherty.

Q: Was Kate Chopin's husband related, however distantly, to Frédéric Chopin the composer?

A: Apparently not. Kate Chopin has had three biographers, but none of them has discovered a family connection, and a French scholar in Paris has not found a link.

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 (continue)

2009

Awakenings: The Story of the Kate Chopin Revival, edited by Bernard Koloski. Recollections and critical insights by Robert D. Arner, Thomas Bonner, Jr., Lynda S. Boren, Anna Shannon Elfenbein, Barbara C. Ewell, Bernard Koloski, Susan Lohafer, Mary E. Papke, Barbara H. Solomon, Marlene Springer, Helen Taylor, and Emily Toth. 232 pages. Louisiana State University Press, 2009. $35.

Characters and Plots in the Fiction of Kate Chopin, by Robert L. Gale. 191 pages. McFarland, 2009. $75.

2008

Kate Chopin in the Twenty-first Century: New Critical Essays, edited by Heather Ostman. Essays by Donna Kornhaber and David Kornhaber, Jane F. Thraikill, Heidi Johnsen, Garnet Ayers Batinovich, Lisa A. Kirby, Meredith Frederich, Rebecca Nisetich, and Li-Wen Chang. 162 pages. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. $44.99.

The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin, edited by Janet Beer. Essays by Emily Toth, Donna Campbell, Pamela Knights, Susan Castillo, Katherine Joslin, Ann Heilmann, Michael Worton, Elizabeth Nolan, Avril Horner, Helen Taylor, and Bernard Koloski. 184 pages. Cambridge University Press, 2008. $29.99.

Kate Chopin's The Awakening, edited by Harold Bloom. Essays by Dorothy Dix, Percival Pollard, Cyrille Arnavon, Kenneth Eble, Stanley Kauffmann, Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Lawrence Thornton, Sandra M. Gilbert, Rosemary F. Franklin, Barbara H. Solomon, Elizabeth Ammons, Margo Culley, Kathryn Lee Seidel, Margit Stange, and Emily Toth. 96 pages. Chelsea House, 2008. $30.

And At Fault is now on line

Kate Chopin's early novel At Fault is available on line at the Project Gutenberg site. You can download it or you can read it on line. It's searchable by word or phrase or chapter number, and it's an accurate, trustworthy text.

Kate Chopin's famous short story "Désirée's Baby" appeared in Vogue in January 1893. It was the earliest of nineteen Kate Chopin stories that the magazine published.

Vogue's first issue had come out just a few weeks before, in December 1892. It cost ten cents (about $2.30 in 2009 American dollars). The cover:

Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," "A Respectable Woman," and "A Pair of Silk Stockings" also appeared in Vogue.

Kate Chopin's picture appeared in the December, 1894, issue. Emily Toth explains in Unveiling Kate Chopin that Chopin is presented "in an etherial contemplative pose, wearing a small black headdress. Vogue's caption praised both her brains and beauty:

'MRS. KATE CHOPIN—A beautiful woman, whose portrait fails to convey a tithe of the charm of her expressively lovely face, has been an honored contributor to Vogue almost from its first number. . . . Mrs. Chopin is daring in her choice of themes, but exquisitely refined in the treatment of them, and her literary style is a model of terse and finished diction.'"

Jeff Guin at the National Center for Preservation Technology & Training in Natchitoches, Louisiana, has produced a heritage netcast on recovering items from the remains of the Kate Chopin House which burned in October, 2008. The YouTube video describes work being done at the site of the fire.

Photo by Jean Carter, courtesy Cane River National Heritage Area

Here is the original story:

Fire destroyed the Kate Chopin House (the Bayou Folk Museum) at 243 La. Highway 495 in Cloutierville, Louisiana, early on October 1, 2008. Details, photos, and messages from the Heritage Ranger, a Kate Chopin scholar, and Kate Chopin's great granddaughters.

Aparecido D. Rossi (São Paulo State University, Brazil, and the University of California at Riverside) has sent us information about Carmem Lúcia Foltran's 2005 translation of Chopin's At Fault (ISBN: 85-992-7902-5). Carmem Foltran is an academic Brazilian translator of literature in English. She is also responsible for the second translation of The Awakening into Brazilian Portuguese, published in 2002.

Editora Horizonte is a brand-new Brazilian publishing house founded in 2005 by Eliane Alves de Oliveira. The translation of At Fault is its second published book (the first one was Cosima, by Nobel Prize winner Grazia Deledda). The cover, Aparecido Rossia tells us, is "a black and white composition designed by Renato Mendonça using the well-known picture of Kate Chopin and her first four children."

The Vaughn Dance Company in Los Angeles premiered on November 7, 2008, an original modern dance production, Reaching Out for the Unlimited, based on Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening. It featured the music of Grammy-winning composer/guitarist Andrew York.

According to the announcement, "Vaughn Dance Company's adaptation of The Awakening traces the heroine's emotional journey, exploring her relationships with friends, lovers, and the sea. Andrew York's music brings alive the emotional arc of this story with a score that includes new, unpublished pieces and a live performance by York. Making its mark with sensual shapes and undulating movement, Jennifer Vaughn's choreography is a palpable embodiment of music that captivates broader audiences and dance aficionados alike."

Jennifer Vaughn told us in an email message that her production "traces Edna's emotional journey, focusing on her complex relationships—with friends, lovers, and with the sea. The company's ten members embody these roles, including different 'Ednas' who change as she discovers new parts of herself. The dancers also become the beckoning sea, the entity which both cradles and emboldens Edna but also sweeps her away."

She continued, "I chose very simple staging and costuming—very plain and timeless. And for logistical reasons, we chose not to address Edna's relationship with her children. I believe that audience members who know the story will recognize much of it, but I've tried to design the production in such a way that those who do not know the story will still be able to get something out of it."

"Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions." Description of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening.

"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." Description of Mrs. Mallard in "The Story of an Hour."

"There was the hum of bees and the musky odor of pinks filled the air." The closing sentence of The Awakening.

" 'It means,' he answered lightly, 'that the child is not white; it means that you are not white.' " Armand Aubigny in "Désirée's Baby."

"She was not going through any acute mental process or reasoning with herself, nor was she striving to explain to her satisfaction the motive of her action. She was not thinking at all. She seemed for the time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function and to have abandoned herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility." Description of Mrs. Sommers in "A Pair of Silk Stockings."

"I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself." Edna Pontellier in The Awakening.

"That she was married made no particle of difference to Gouvernail. He could not conceive or dream of it making a difference. When the time came that she wanted him,—as he hoped and believed it would come,—he felt he would have a right to her. So long as she did not want him, he had no right to her,—no more than her husband had." From "Athénaïse."

"She wanted to reach out her hand in the darkness and touch him with the sensitive tips of her fingers upon the face or the lips. She wanted to draw close to him and whisper against his cheek—she did not care what—as she might have done if she had not been a respectable woman." Description of Mrs. Baroda in "A Respectable Woman."

"As she glanced up at him the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire." Description of Calixta in "The Storm."

"When the girl looked up into her face, with murmured thanks, Fedora bent down and pressed a long, penetrating kiss upon her mouth." Description of Fedora in "Fedora."

"If ever asked to give her opinion of divorce, she might have replied that the question being one which did not immediately concern her, its remoteness had removed it from the range of her inquiry. . . . With the prejudices of her Catholic education coloring her sentiment, she instinctively shrank when the theme confronted her as one having even a remote reference to her own clean existence." Description of Thérèse Lafirme in At Fault, Kate Chopin's early novel.

"He would keep clear of the maelstroms of sordid work and senseless pleasure in which the average American businessman may be said alternately to exist, and which reduce him, naturally, to a rather ragged condition of soul." Description of Wallace Offdean in "A No-Account Creole," one of Chopin's earliest short stories.

"I dance with people I despise; amuse myself with men whose only talent lies in their feet, gain the disapprobation of people I honor and respect; return home at day break with my brain in a state which was never intended for it; and arise in the middle of the next day feeling infinitely more, in spirit and flesh like a Liliputian, than a woman with body and soul." Entry (when she was eighteen) in her Commonplace Book, 1868-1869.

Question: I am a reporter in Washington DC and have recently written an abbreviated adaptation of Kate Chopin's short story "Athénaïse" for one of our weekly features on American culture. I am concerned about how one correctly pronounces Athénaïse. In French, I would think it would be Ah-TEN-ah-ease...but I do not know how it would be given a Cajun pronunciation. So I have searched for Chopin specialists online and thought you might be able to guide me. [You can hear how this word is pronounced in the "Special English" broadcast for the Voice of America.]

Answer: Two Kate Chopin scholars, Emily Toth (Louisiana State University) and Thomas Bonner, Jr. (Xavier University of Louisiana) discuss the question.

Emily: As to how Kate O'Flaherty (Chopin’s name at birth) would've heard "Athénaïse" pronounced: I doubt if there's anyone who would know. I'm not sure it matters a whole lot, really. She would've been hearing the name her whole life (her grandmother Athénaïse died when Kate was in her mid-forties), no doubt spoken by relatives and friends in Natchitoches Parish, New Orleans, and St. Louis. Even today some names are pronounced differently in those three places.

Joan Marie Lally did a dissertation maybe 25–30 years ago on the different dialects in Chopin's work, and that's the only source I know of about pronunciations. But we don't even know how Chopin would've pronounced Reisz or Ratignolle--so really, it's all hopeless!

P. S. Further example of hopelessness: Chopin's daughter was called Lélia (French, George Sand pronunciation) but also "Lil."

Tom: Tom Klingler, Department of French at Tulane University, has done much work on Creole French in Louisiana. He has two books, including a dictionary on the subject, and with a grant has been developing tutorials. Amanda Lefleur at Louisiana State University has been working on Cajun French. She and Klingler are both cooperating to develop the tutorials in both local dialects of French. There has long been a dictionary of Cajun French by Jules Daigle, and a number of dictionaries have been subsequently developed. This is an interesting issue, as there are Creole and 'Cajun characters in the work. There is the question of linguistic variations of French as spoken in old St. Louis as well. As Chopin's family and friends had strong Louisiana connections, as Emily has indicated, it seems likely that the patterns of language to which she had been exposed in her youth, aside from her school experiences, were similar to those in Louisiana.

Emily: Thanks to Tom for further names of experts. I continue to think it's something that can't be determined, because Kate O'Flaherty, even as a youngster, would've heard many varieties of Americanish French.

How did the slaves in St. Louis, for instance, pronounce "Miz Athénaïse"--or would they have said "Madame Athénaïse" or "Madame Faris"? (I dunno.) Then of course there were Sacred Heart teachers [Kate studied at the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart], who taught in French but were often Irish. There were neighbors and other family friends, and Kate’s father, Thomas O'Flaherty himself, who probably pronounced French in some kind of Irish way (which leads me to one of my all-time favorite Kate Chopin lines--in her short story “A Matter of Prejudice”--about the crotchety maman's theory that "the Irish voice is distressing to the sick . . .").

Tom: Absolutely--on variety. All one has to do is experience the anglicized pronunciations of French and Greek named streets in New Orleans. And given the variances of pronunciation of French and German in St. Louis and especially New Orleans, I am with Emily on this matter.

What we say about the pronunciation of Athénaïse could apply to the names of other Chopin characters as well.

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