Kate Chopin At Fault

From At Fault: "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."

When Kate Chopin's At Fault was written and published

The novel was composed between July 5, 1889, and April 20, 1890. Chopin sent the manuscript to Belford's Monthly, a magazine in Chicago that published a novel in each issue, but after the editor turned it down, she had a thousand copies printed privately by the Nixon-Jones Printing Company in St. Louis in September 1890. She sent copies of the book to newspapers in several cities, but the critics were not impressed with the work, and their reviews were in general tepid.

Kate Chopin's At Fault on line and in print

The novel is now available on line here 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.

In print you can find a copy in The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, in the Penguin Classics edition of At Fault, in At Fault: A Scholarly Edition with Background Readings, and in the Library of American Literature Kate Chopin volume, as well as in other paperback and hardcover editions. For publication information about these books, see the section "For students and scholars" near the bottom of this page.

At Fault characters

Place-du Bois characters:

• Thérèse Lafirme, owner of the Place-du-Bois plantation
• Uncle Hiram, employee of Thérèse
• Aunt Belindy, cook for Thérèse
• Betsy, household employee of Thérèse
• Mandy, household employee of Thérèse
• Grégoire Santien, nephew of Thérèse; his brothers Hector and Placide appear in Chopin stories "In Sabine," "A No-Account Creole," "In and Out of Old Natchitoches," and "Ma'me Pélagie"
• David Hosmer, manager of the sawmill on the Place-du-Bois plantation
• Melicent Hosmer, sister of David
• Joçint, employee of Hosmer at the sawmill
• Morico, father of Joçint
• Aunt Cynthy, Suze, Mose, Minervy, Araminty, employees and relatives of employees at Place-du-Bois
• Sampson, employee of Thérèse assigned to work at Fanny's home
• Marie Louise, called Grosse tante, Thérèse's childhood nurse and attendant
• Pierson, employee of Thérèse
• Joseph Duplan, owner of Les Chênières plantation; he appears also in Chopin short stories "A Rude Awakening," "After the Winter," "A No-Account Creole," and "Ozème's Holiday"
• Mrs. Duplan, wife of Joseph; she appears in "A No-Account Creole" and "A Rude Awakening"
• Ninette Duplan, daughter of Joseph and Mrs. Duplan; she appears in "A No-Account Creole"
• Rufe Jimson from Cornstalk, Texas
• Johannah, household servant of Melicent Hosmer
• Nathan, employee who manages the ferry on the Cane River
• Aunt Agnes, employee on the plantation
• a teamster crossing the Cane River

St. Louis characters:

• Fanny Larimore Hosmer
• Belle Worthington, friend of Fanny
• Lorenzo Worthington, husband of Belle
• Lucilla Worthington, daughter of Belle and Lorenzo
• Lou Dawson, another friend of Fanny
• Jack Dawson, husband of Lou

At Fault time and place

At Fault is set in the late nineteenth century in Louisiana and St. Louis, Missouri. Except for the few chapters in St. Louis, the novel plays out on the Place-du-Bois plantation on the Cane River in northwestern Louisiana, near Natchitoches, not far from the Texas border. As in Kate Chopin's short stories, the characters in the novel, like many 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 Thérèse Lafirme, David Hosmer, and their families, most of the Louisiana characters are poor, because the area has yet to recover from the devastation of the Civil War. Many of the Louisiana characters speak French and Creole as well as English and the novel contain phrases in French and Creole.

Frequently asked questions about At Fault

Q: I love The Awakening, but I don't know At Fault. Should I read it? Is it any good?

A: Yes and yes, but with qualifications. If you fell in love with The Awakening at some point in your life and want to preserve that magic moment by remembering Kate Chopin as you knew her from Edna Pontellier's story or from a few Chopin short stories like "The Storm," "A Pair of Silk Stockings," "The Story of an Hour," and a few others, then perhaps you should read no further. If, though, you want to know Kate Chopin more fully, as a woman not only way ahead of the times but as a complex, sophisticated woman of the times, then reading some of her other stories and her early novel is a good idea.

Q: Why are there so many French expressions in the novel? If I don't understand French, how do I know what those expressions mean?

A: Most of the characters in the book—like those in Kate Chopin's short stories and The Awakening—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 At Fault (like the Penguin edition and At Fault: A Scholarly Edition with Background Readings) 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 the novel.

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 At Fault

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

At Fault. Edited by Bernard Koloski. New York: Penguin, 2002.

At Fault: A Scholarly Edition with Background Readings. Edited by Suzanne Disheroon Greeen and David J. Caudle. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001.

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

Selected recent publications about At Fault

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

Koloski, Bernard. "Introduction" At Fault New York: Penguin, 2002.

Anderson, Maureen. "Unraveling the Southern Pastoral Tradition: A New Look at Kate Chopin's At Fault." Southern Literary Journal 34 (2001): 1-13.

Witherow, Jean. "Kate Chopin's Dialogic Engagement with W. D. Howells: 'What Cannot Love Do?'." Southern Studies 13 (2006): 101-116.

Menke, Pamela Glenn. "The Catalyst of Color and Women's Regional
Writing: At Fault, Pembroke, and The Awakening." Southern Quarterly 37 (1999): 9-20.

Green, Suzanne Disheroon, and David J. Caudle. At Fault: A Scholarly
Edition with Background Readings Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2001.

Fluck, Winfried. "Kate Chopin's At Fault: The Usefulness of Louisiana
French for the Imagination." Creoles and Cajuns: French Louisiana--La
Louisiane française. 247-266. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 1998.

Cole, Karen. "A Message from the Pine Woods of Central Louisiana: The Garden in Northrup, Chopin, and Dormon." Louisiana Literature 14 (1997): 64-74.

Warren, Robin O. "The Physical and Cultural Geography of Kate Chopin's Cane River Fiction." Southern Studies 7 (1996): 91-110.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. "Kate Chopin's Fascination with Young Men."
Critical Essays on Kate Chopin. 197-206. New York: Hall, 1996

Selected books that discuss At Fault.

Koloski, Bernard. "Introduction" At Fault by Kate Chopin New York, NY: Penguin, 2002.

Green, Suzanne Disheroon, and David J. Caudle. At Fault: A Scholarly Edition with Background Readings Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2001.

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

Toth, Emily. Unveiling Kate Chopin Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi, 1999.

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.

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, MA: 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.