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)

Q: How do you pronounce "Chopin"?

A: 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 show that Chopin was born on February 8, 1850. Some printed sources and web sites erroneously 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 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)

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.

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 Andrew York's music brings alive the emotional arc of this story with a score that includes new, unpublished pieces and a live performance by York.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."

New books about Kate Chopin for 2008

Kate Chopin in the Twenty-first Century: New Critical Essays, edited by Heather Ostman. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.

Kate Chopin's The Awakening, edited by Harold Bloom. Chelsea House, 2008.

The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin, edited by Janet Beer. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

At Fault is on line

Kate Chopin's early novel At Fault 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.

"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.

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