Kate chopin brief biography of benjamin

While Kate Chopin never flouted convention as strongly as did her fictitious heroine, she did exhibit an individuality and iconoclasm remarkable for upper-middle-class women of the time. Born on February 8,in St. The O'Flahertys were members of the Creole social elite and were fairly well-off. When Kate was very young, her father Thomas O'Flaherty died in a work-related accident.

He left behind a family of four generations of women all living in the same house. Kate was very close to her maternal great-grandmother, Madame Charleville, who first introduced her to the world of storytelling. Family tragedy surrounded the young Kate. When she was eleven, Madame Charleville died, and her half-brother George was killed while fighting in the Civil War for the Confederate side.

Yet, Kate seems not to have completely despaired; she earned a kate chopin brief biography of benjamin as the "Littlest Rebel" when she tore down a Union flag that had been tied to her front porch by Yankee soldiers. Had Kate not been a young girl at the time, the incident might have resulted in serious consequences, but since she was, her act became famous as a local legend.

While attending a Catholic high school, Kate studied both French and English literature and became an accomplished pianist. She attended numerous social events and became very popular in St. Louis high society. Chopin was educated at the Sacred Heart Academy in St. She then attended the St. Louis Female Academy, where she studied music and art.

Inshe married Oscar Chopin, a cotton planter from New Orleans. The couple had six children together. InOscar Chopin died suddenly, leaving Kate Chopin a widow with six young children to support. Representation in other media [ edit ]. Works [ edit ]. Honors and awards [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. Lexico UK English Dictionary.

Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on May 16, Retrieved July 23, American National Biography online ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Gwwin Norton, W. ISBN The Story of an Hour. The Kate Chopin International Society. Retrieved January 28, A History of American Literature Since Harvard University Press. Louis University Libraries, Inc.

Louis, Inc. Literary St. Louis: Noted Authors and St. Louis Landmarks Associated With Them. Cambridge University Press. Kate Chopin's Private Papers. Indiana University Press. Retrieved December 11, American Antiquarian Society. Retrieved February 29, Southern Review Short Story Criticism. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism.

Kate Chopin. Kate Chopin: A Literary Life. Palgrave Publishers. The Southern Literary. American Writers, Retrospective Supplement 2. Literature Resource Center. American Literature. JSTOR The Southern Literary Journal. ISSN Research guide to American literature. Facts On File. OCLC The Women's Review of Books. Studies in American Naturalism.

S2CID The New York Times. Retrieved February 22, Studies in American Fiction. ISSN X. March 1, The Mississippi Quarterly. Retrieved March 19, The Town Talk. Louis Walk of Fame. Louis Walk of Fame Inductees". Archived from the original on October 31, Retrieved April 25, West End Word. March 14, Retrieved January 8, Further reading [ edit ].

Despite this, she produced incredible works. She kept an accurate record of her works. She kept a list of the works she produced, those which were published, and those which were rejected. She was an activist and a suffragist. She wrote nonfiction works as well, which were mainly intended to shed light on the conditions of women. She suffered a brain hemorrhage when she was visiting St.

She died two days later due to it at the age of fifty-four. She was buried in Calvary Cemetery, St. She belonged to the creole French culture in America, and its impacts are clear in her works. The greatest literary influence on her style was Guy de Maupassant, who was her contemporary French short story writer. She was a revisionist mythmaker who transformed the myths to represent the people of her society.

She is more clear in her style and technique than Maupassant. She has employed irony in her works which is too subtle to be observed by a non-observant reader. Her women characters seem unloving, cold, and unfeeling. She was a vocal feminist, and this is evident in her works where clear disapproval of men is expressed. Feminism is one of the major themes of her works.

In contrast to typical feminism, she is of the view that both male and female face problems to fit with their mate and this creates problems in individual life. The influence of Maupassant is clearly visible in the conclusion of her short stories which are sharp and ironic. She made stylistic and thematic experiments in her works.

Her difference from Maupassant lies in her objective psychological realism.

Kate chopin brief biography of benjamin

Her focus is more on the character instead of the plot. She has survived illusions of romance, friendship, marriage, motherhood, etc. She had the belief that these would provide her identity and companionship. In her works, we see the evolution from the fantasies that a person can fuse with another becoming one. In this novel, the protagonist is shown breaking from conventional beliefs and making her own destiny.

She breaks from the conventional roles of a mother and wife. This can also be seen as a parable which represents the literary awakening of the author. There is an evident struggle seen in the lives of the protagonist and the author. They are caught between femininity and creativity. They have two choices before them, either to be part of tradition or to go against it, gaining emancipated womanhood and emancipated fiction.

Both go for an autonomous life, going against female plots and feminine endings. Chopin had come to believe in the writing of The Awakening that if a writer has to make her own place, they have to go against the tradition. She has integrated the post-civil-war conflicts in the lives of women in this novel. The conflict between love and desire is the most significant of these.

These women are the product of aesthetic sophistication and Darwinian skepticism. In her fictional work, Kate Chopin has encompassed nineteenth-century South and contemporary life there. She represents a period of transmogrification.