Kate Chopin "A No-Account Creole"

From the short story:

"I thought a creole knew better than that how to love a woman."

"By----! are you goin' to learn me how to love a woman?"

"No, Placide," said Offdean eagerly, as they rode slowly along; "your own honor is going to tell you that. The way to love a woman is to think first of her happiness."

When Kate Chopin's "A No-Account Creole" was written and published

Except for a piece she wrote when she was about nineteen, this is Kate Chopin's first short story. It was written in 1888, when Chopin was thirty-eight, and then rewritten between January 24 and February 24, 1891. It was published in the Century on January 24, 1894, and reprinted that year in Bayou Folk, Chopin's first published collection of stories. Its earlier titles were "Euphrasie" and "Euphrasie's Lovers."

The first page of the story in The Century in 1894

Kate Chopin's "A No-Account Creole" on line and in print

On line you can read the story here, although if you're citing a passage for research purposes, you should check your citation against one of the accurate texts listed below.

In print you can find "A No-Account Creole"in The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, in the Penguin Classics edition of Chopin's Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, and in the Library of American Literature Kate Chopin volume, as well as in other paperback and hardcover books. For publication information about these books, see the section "For students and scholars" near the bottom of this page.

"A No-Account Creole" characters

• Wallace Offdean, a New Orleans businessman
• Fitch, a friend of Offdean
• Lucien Santien, before the Civil War, owner of a large property and a hundred slaves; he appears in Chopin's story "Ma'ame Pélagie" and is mentioned in At Fault; his three grandsons play prominent roles in several of Chopin's short stories and in At Fault
• Jules Santien, son of Lucien and father of Hector, Grégoire, and Placid
• Hector Santien, a New Orleans gambler, brother of Placide; he appears in "In and Out of Old Natchitoches"
• Placide Santien, engaged to marry Euphrasie
• Pierre Manton, manager of the old Santien place
• Lacroix, a neighbor who owns mules
• Euphrasie Manton, Pierre Manton's daughter; she appears also in "After the Winter"; Chopin first called this story "Euphrasie" and "Euphrasie's Lovers"
• Mme. Duplan, the "Lady Bountiful" of the area; she is the wife of Joe Duplan, owner of Les Chênièrs (the Oaks) plantation on the Cane River; the Duplans raised Euphrasie after her mother died; the couple appears also in At Fault, "A Rude Awakening," "After the Winter," and "Ozème's Holiday"
• Gus Adams, apparently a neighbor
• La Chatte (the Cat), an African American woman living on the old Santien place; she helped raise the Santien boys
• Rose, a young woman on the porch of La Chatte's cabin; she seems to be employed on the Santien place
• Uncle Noah, apparently an old man known to La Chatte
• Mme. Carantelle, Mme. Duplan's mother
• old Charlot, who waters plants in Mme. Carantelle's courtyard
• Judge Blount, a "staid" gentleman of Orville, Louisiana
• 'Tit-Edouard, a maigre-échine (skinny man) of Orville
• Uncle Abner and Luke Williams, also Orville men

"A No-Account Creole" time and place

The story takes place in Louisiana--in New Orleans, in Natchitoches, in Orville, and on the old Santien place, apparently in the 1880s

"A No-Account Creole" themes

You can read about finding themes in Kate Chopin's stories and novels on the Themes page of this site.

Questions and answers about "A No-Account Creole"

Q: This is an upbeat story. Isn't that unusual for Kate Chopin? I think of her works as pessimistic.

A: Some of Chopin's works-- The Awakening, "The Story of an Hour," and "Désirée's Baby," among them--have dark closings. But some--At Fault, "Athénaïse," "The Storm,"and others--are, in ways, hopeful, suggesting that in spite of social, economic, and other pressures, people have a chance to find happiness.

Q: Aren't Kate Chopin's women usually more courageous? Euphrasie Manton knows what she wants but isn't strong enough to reach for it.

A: Critics often see Euphrasie that way. She is, however, as critic Helen Taylor points out in the recent Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin, "a confused and inexperienced woman." And she's not entirely without resources. Like Thérèse Lafirme in Chopin's At Fault (written soon after "A No-Account Creole"), she herself creates the situation that leads to the resolution of the story. Through her letters, she is, albeit unknowingly, responsible for the appearance of Offdean on the plantation and, therefore, in her life.

You might say that early Chopin characters like Euphrasie and Thérèse morph into later characters like Athénaïse, Mrs. Baroda in "A Respectable Woman," Edna Pontellier in The Awakening, or Calixta in "The Storm."

Q: Chopin's description of Wallace Offdean is insightful: "He meant to use his faculties intelligently. . . . Above all, he would keep clear of the maelstroms of sordid work and senseless pleasure in which the average American business man may be said alternately to exist, and which reduce him, naturally, to a rather ragged condition of soul." Are there other men like him in Chopin's fiction?

A: A few--perhaps David Hosmer in At Fault or Gouvernail in "A Respectable Woman," "Athénaïse," and, briefly, The Awakening.

Q: I had no idea that so many Kate Chopin characters appear in more than one story. These Santien brothers are all over the place. How would I find out about such characters? And is it common for writers to use the same characters over and over?

A: You can track Chopin's characters in Thomas Bonner, Jr., The Kate Chopin Companion New York: Greenwood, 1988.

It's not unusual for other writers to do what Chopin does. William Faulkner, for one, is fond of repeating characters.

Q: I was upset seeing words like "negroes" and "darkies"in this story. Why did Chopin include them?

A: Chopin’s language here is a picture of the way people in her time spoke to one another. Words like “darkey” and “Negro,” offensive for us in the twenty-first century, were used familiarly by people of color and white people in Chopin’s Louisiana, usually without intended rancor. Kate Chopin reproduced such language in her characters’ speech, as she reproduced people’s dialectal patterns. For her, as for Mark Twain and others of her generation, recording accurately the way people spoke was an important part of being a good writer.

Louisiana at the time was just a decade or so away from slavery. Chopin does not pretend that the color line is gone, that African Americans enjoy complete freedom and equality, or that everyone lives in racial harmony with everyone else. There are racial tensions in several of her stories.

Chopin was, of course, a nineteenth-century, white, Southern woman, but she was also deeply steeped in French culture, being bilingual and bi-cultural from birth. She shares both American and European attitudes toward race, and she always sees more than her characters do.

As we note on other pages of this site, there's been a good deal written about Chopin and race. If you want to explore the subject you might start by reading articles by Anna Shannon Elfenbein, Helen Taylor, and Elizabeth Ammons in the Norton Critical Edition of The Awakening, and you might look at Bonnie James Shaker's Coloring Locals. For a defense of Chopin you might start by checking Emily Toth's Kate Chopin and Bernard Koloski's Kate Chopin: A Study of the Short Fiction, and on line you could read Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's comments on the Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening site. You can find information about these and other publications about Chopin and race at the bottom of the Awakening page and the Short Stories page of this site, as well as on pages devoted to individual stories, like "Désirée's Baby."

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 "A No-Account Creole"

The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Edited by Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969, 2006.

Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie. Edited by Bernard Koloski. New York: Penguin, 1999.

Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Short Stories. Edited by Sandra Gilbert. New York: Library of American Literature, 2002.

Publications that may be helpful in studying "A No-Account Creole"

Some of the articles listed here may be available on line through university or public libraries.

Taylor, Helen "'The Perfume of the Past': Kate Chopin and Post-Colonial New Orleans." The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. 147-160. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Despain, Max and Thomas Bonner, Jr. "Shoulder to Wings: The Provenance of Winged Imagery from Kate Chopin's Juvenilia Through The Awakening." Xavier Review 25.2 (2005): 49-64.

Brown, Pearl L. "Awakened Men in Kate Chopin's Creole Stories." American Transcendental Quarterly 13.1 (1999): 69-82.

Benfey, Christopher Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1997.

Bendel-Simso, Mary M. "Mothers, Women and Creole Mother-Women in Kate Chopin's South." Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South 3.1 (1992): 35-44.

Grover, Dorys Crow "Kate Chopin and the Bayou Country." JASAT (Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas) 15.(1984): 29-34.

Selected books that discuss Chopin's short stories

Beer, Janet. The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Ostman, Heather. Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2008.

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..

Walker, Nancy A. Kate Chopin: A Literary Life Basingstoke, England: Palgrave, 2001.

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.