Kate Chopin News
Kate Chopin, the New York Times, Grand Isle, and the BP Oil Spill: A Continuing Story
This satellite photo from June 10, 2010, shows the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. The photo comes from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Rapid Response System. You can view and download updated photos on the MODIS Rapid Response site.
The New York Times on July 9, 2010, ran an op-ed essay by Martha Serpas describing the effect of the April 20 BP oil spill on life along the Louisiana coast.
"I was born and raised on Bayou Lafourche," Serpas begins her essay, "30 miles from Grand Isle, which is Louisiana’s only inhabited barrier island and also the setting of Kate Chopin’s 19th-century novel of maternal disorientation, The Awakening. But Frankenstein offers the more appropriate narrative lesson for the Deepwater Horizon disaster."
An earlier front-page article in the Times on June 11, 2010, focuses on how the oil spill is affecting the people of Grand Isle.
"Grand Isle," the Times articles says, "has undergone huge transformations before. Over the last 300 years it has been home to pirates and smugglers, sugar plantations and several grand hotels that were wiped out by the hurricane of 1893. It was the setting of Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel, The Awakening [the Times article includes a link to this site]. Now most islanders make their living from fishing, tourism, or the oil industry, which have all been imperiled by the oil spill.
A June 14, 2010, article in the Huffington Post develops the story.
Kate Chopin's Louisiana Home Destroyed by Fire
Fire destroyed the Kate Chopin House (the Bayou Folk Museum) at 243 La. Highway 495 in Cloutierville, Louisiana, early on October 1, 2008.
Photo by Jean Carter, courtesy Cane River National Heritage Area
We received the following message from Jean Carter:
"I am sending you several of my photos of the tragic fire (10/1/08) that destroyed this wonderful residence and all of its contents. The entire Cloutierville community has suffered a tremendous loss much akin to the death of a beloved family member.
"The historical and cultural heritage of this region will never be the same, and because this tragedy is so fresh, not much has been directed toward the future of the remaining structures on the Kate Chopin property. I hope that you will be able to share my photos with those who value Kate Chopin the person and the author. Thanks for caring about the Kate Chopin House and Bayou Folk Museum.
Jean Carter is the Heritage Ranger for the Cane River National Heritage Area
According to the Shreveport Times:
"The site was a National Historic Landmark and, in its heyday, drew literary audiences from throughout the United States. The loss of the structure and its contents is 'devastating' for the multitude of men and women who for decades have been committed to preserving the Kate Chopin House, said Vicki Parrish, president of the Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches. . . .
"History dates construction of the house by slave labor to 1805 to 1809. Alexis Cloutier was the original inhabitant. Oscar Chopin bought it in 1879 and, years later, moved his wife and their six children to the plantation.
"Oscar Chopin died in 1882. Kate Chopin, known as a free-spirited woman, tried to keep it up but moved away in 1884. She sold the property and moved to St. Louis, where she began her literary career."
Photos before and after the fire by Jean Carter, courtesy Cane River National Heritage Area
We received this message from Thomas Bonner, Jr:
"The Kate Chopin House stood on a less traveled Louisiana highway in the small town of Cloutierville. The size of the town, closer to a village, has changed little since the early 1880s when Chopin lived there with her family. Cars and trucks have replaced the horses and wagons that once traveled the road along the front of the house where once a dirt street separated wooden sidewalks. From the front gallery of the house, one could look across the road over the low roofs of modest modern homes to the slowly meandering Cane River and the cultivated fields beyond, a scene similar to what Chopin herself would have enjoyed.
"The house itself built on brick piers would have survived any high water from an over flow of the river. The main rooms were six to seven feet above the ground-level basement. The house was more charming and gracious than elegant; in the Mississippi Valley it was rare to have an elegant home far from the Mississippi River, the route which artisans in the fine building trades traveled.
"As Chopin had earlier in New Orleans, she collected characters and experiences for her fiction in and around the settlement on the Cane River. In her writing she used the 'village' as she often referred to Cloutierville in many stories, at least once describing it as 'two long rows of very old frame houses.' She set her first novel At Fault in the pastoral plantation country about Cloutierville, where the modern world was arriving in the forms of the railroad and lumber mills.
"The great threat to homes in Chopin's time was fire, and that threat was realized in the past week when now the chimney overlooks the ruins about it."
Thomas Bonner, Jr. is Professor Emeritus at Xavier University of Louisiana. He is the author of The Kate Chopin Companion with Chopin’s Translations from French Fiction. He has published and spoken on Kate Chopin and her writing since 1969.
We received the following message from Susie Chopin and Annette Chopin Lare:
While our family has never placed great emphasis on material things, there was a collective gasp and profound sadness when it was learned that Kate's home in Cloutierville, Louisiana, had burned. The Kate Chopin House in Cloutierville was our grandfather’s boyhood home. For those of us who were fortunate enough to visit The Bayou Folk Museum, walking through the rooms where Kate and Oscar lived with their children and seeing the bayou country that inspired so much of Kate’s best work, was an inspiring and unforgettable experience. We understand a first edition of Bayou Folk has been spared and for this we are forever grateful to the person whose hands picked it up.
We speak for our entire family in expressing our thanks to those who cared for the Bayou Folk Museum over the years and to all of you who keep her words and spirit alive on a daily basis through wonderful websites such as this one and the Kate Chopin Society of North America in Kate’s hometown of St. Louis. We're also grateful to those who continue to research and teach her writings in universities all over America and abroad. You do Kate and our family a great honor.
We're fortunate to have one of Kate's remaining homes in St. Louis. While the Cloutierville house can never be replaced, it is our hope that one day her final home in St. Louis can be restored with the same love and care as the Bayou Folk Museum.
Very sincerely,
Susie Chopin
Great Granddaughter
St. Louis, Missouri
Annette Chopin Lare
Great Granddaughter
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania |
Update: 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. The YouTube video describes work being done at the site of the fire. There's also a new photo of the burned house.
Also, "can writers' former homes become tourist destinations?" a scholar asks in an American Prospect article. "The odds are long and the payoff is low."
For more information about the fire, contact the manager of the Association for the Preservation of Historical Natchitoches (APHN) Foundation:
Scott Norton
Melrose Plantation
P. O. Box 48
Melrose, LA 71452-3416
Phone: 318.379.0055
To donate for the restoration of the site of the Kate Chopin House, contact and/or send donations to the non-profit organization that owns it. Designate the purpose of the donation:
The Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches
Vicki Parrish, President
P.O. Box 2248
Natchitoches, LA 71457
Phone: 318.357.5000
parrishvj@aol.com
Kate Chopin in university textbooks
From everything we can tell, Kate Chopin’s work continues to appear in university textbooks of all sorts—in American literature textbooks, of course, but also in textbooks for “Introduction to Literature” courses and for courses that combine literature and writing. One of the latest examples is the third edition of Reading Literature and Writing Argument by Missy James and Alan P. Merickle (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008). The book contains “Désirée’s Baby” and “The Storm.
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About this website
(If you've visited this site before November, 2011, you may have noticed that we've made some changes. If you remember seeing an item somewhere but cannot find it, use the search box at the top of any page.)
KateChopin.org is sponsored by the Kate Chopin International Society.
The site is revised regularly. Its posting date appears in the blue banner at the top of each page.
The site editor is Bernard Koloski. Information on the site that is not credited to an author was written by the editor.
Decisions about what to post are made by the editor, in consultation with the officers and the web advisory committee of the Kate Chopin International Society.
This is an informational site. We do not post commercial messages.
Information on the site is copyrighted. You may quote from it under fair use guidelines.
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About questions
We are happy to answer questions about Kate Chopin and her work that are not dealt with on this site.
But if you're a student, please understand that as a group of teachers, scholars, and other professionals, we do not want to position ourselves between you and your instructor. So we cannot help you with questions or assignments designed to teach you to think independently about what you're reading.
If you're a scholar: We seek to make our listings of Chopin scholarship accurate and up to date. If you find a mistake, an omission, or a misplacement, would you tell us? If a listed article is available on the web, would you send us the link? If you have an announcement of an event or a publication about Kate Chopin, would you please contact us?
How to cite the information on this website.
We're pleased that you find our information useful and that you plan to refer to it. But if you're writing an academic essay, we ask that you cite your references accurately.
You can cite information using the MLA format or other formats for electronic citations.
Assuming you're using the MLA format, as described in "Basic Style for Citations of Electronic Sources" (scroll down on the OWL at Purdue), here is a way to proceed:
You'll notice that some information on this website includes an author's name, but some does not.
If the passage you're citing does include an author's name, begin by listing that name. For example, in citing a passage from the "Questions and answers about 'Fedora,'" which includes ideas from several authors, list the author you're using--Barbara Ewell, Peggy Skaggs, Joyce Dyer, Robert Arner, Christina G. Bucher, Karen Day, or Thomas Bonner and Jacqueline Olson Padgett.
If the passage you're citing does not include an author's name, begin by listing the editor's name. For example, in citing most passages from "Questions and answers about 'The Storm,'" list the editor, Bernard Koloski.
(If you're using photographs or other images on the site, check below.)
Then list the title of the article (the title of the page on the site where you found the information) as it appears in color underneath the image at the top of that page (for example, Kate Chopin "The Storm"), followed by the subheading you're referring to: "Kate Chopin 'The Storm': Questions and answers about 'The Storm.'"
List the title of this website as it appears in the blue banner at the top of each page: KateChopin.org.
List the publisher (the sponsor) of the site as the Kate Chopin International Society.
List the posting date on the site as it appears in the blue banner at the top of each page. This site is not indexed or numbered by volume, issue, version, or revision.
List the type of citation this is: a Web citation.
Finally, list the date you accessed this website. Because the site is updated frequently, the posting date in the blue banner at the top of each page may be the same as the date you visited the site.
A sample citation as it would look in the MLA format:
Toth, Emily. "Kate Chopin 'The Story of an Hour': Questions and answers about 'The Story of an Hour.'" KateChopin.org. Kate Chopin International Society, 1 Feb. 2012. Web. 1 Feb. 2012. |
Information on this site is copyrighted. Please keep in mind fair use guidelines (see the fair use page on the OWL at Purdue). You may not copy large pieces of this site for proprietary or for-profit uses.
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If you're citing photographs or other images on the site, list the person credited beneath the image. Most images on the site that do not have a credit beneath them are in the public domain, so they do not need an attribution. But please note several exceptions: For book covers, check with the publisher. For the photograph of Kate Chopin at the top of the home page and other pages, list the Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. The constructed designs on the top of pages--like on the top of the home page and on pages devoted to Biography, The Awakening, At Fault and the "Many Kates" design, used at the top of most pages devoted to Chopin's short stories--© 2005, 2011 by Jenny Oyallon-Koloski.
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