The Unique Style Of Kate Chopin 's Writing

Kate Chopin was a influential author that introduced powerful female characters to the american literacy world. She was most known for her brilliant book The Awakening. However at that time it received many negative reviews, causing the downfall of Kate’s writing career. Now the book is such a influential story that it is being taught in classrooms throughout the world. This essay will discuss Kate Chopin’s writing career and the impact her writing has on society.

“Love and passion, marriage and independence, freedom and restraint.” These are the themes that are represented and worked with throughout Kate Chopin’s works. Kate Chopin, who was born on February 8, 1851, in St. Louis, was an American acclaimed writer of short stories and novels. She was also a poet, essayist, and a memoirist. Chopin grew up around many women; intellectual women that is. Chopin said herself that she was neither a feminist nor a suffragist; she was simply a woman who took other women intensely seriously. Chopin believed women had the ability to be strong, individual, and free-spirited. She herself reached out, in

A Woman Far Ahead of Her Time, by Ann Bail Howard, discusses the nature of the female characters in Kate Chopin’s novel’s and short stories. Howard suggests that the women in Chopin’s stories are longing for independence and feel torn between the feminine duties of a married woman and the freedom associated with self-reliance. Howard’s view is correct to a point, but Chopin’s female characters can be viewed as more radically feminist than Howard realizes. Rather than simply being torn between independent and dependant versions of her personality, “The Story of an Hour’s” Mrs. Mallard actually rejoices in her newfound freedom, and, in the culmination of the story, the position of the woman

Commonly explored throughout her works, the idea of marriage inhibiting a woman’s freedom is the driving force behind Kate Chopin’s contextual objections to propriety. In particular, The Awakening and “The Story of an Hour” explore the lives of women seeking marital liberation and individuality. Mrs. Chopin, who was raised in a matriarchal household, expresses her opposition to the nineteenth century patriarchal society while using her personal experiences to exemplify her feminist views.

     Kate Chopin was one of the greatest and earliest feminist writers in history, whose works have inspired some and drawn much criticism from others. Chopin, through her writings, had shown her struggle for freedom and individuality.

Kate Chopin was a notorious American author who wrote various short-stories, poems, and novels. She was born during the nineteenth century in St. Louis, Missouri; throughout her childhood she was mentored by her mother, grandmother, as well as her great grandmother with no male authority present. She had a very dramatic life throughout her childhood, in 1855 her father was killed in a railroad accident, followed by her great grandmother passing away in 1863.

Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” can arguably be considered a feminist piece, but regardless of whether it is or not, the short story unmistakably describes how life was for women in the late 1800’s. Her story is a great example of the sexist views of the time and existing social roles for each gender. The literature includes a large interplay between society and gender roles, which affected the reader’s response to the plot and other literary devices such as imagery back then and even today.

Kate Chopin’s strong female influences provided her with her love for storytelling along with her curiosity, and her feelings on women’s stereotypical roles inspired her to write. Compared to others in her generation she was very forward-thinking with a lot of her views. Kate Chopin was born into the generation of change by them accepting change and questioning typical roles (“Women’s Issues in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening” 13). The changing views of that time period paired with the fact that she was raised by three strong women set the foundations for her views. As “Women’s Issues in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening” says her most notable female influence her great-grandmother who introduced her to stories creating Chopin’s love for books. Kate’s great-grandmother shared her

The novel was not well received, as it dealt with themes that were quite taboo for the time. The book contained controversial themes about infidelity, female sexuality, and motherhood. This would later go on to be her most popular piece, and is regarded by many as her best. The novel was about a woman who is trapped in an oppressive, patriarchal society. The novel is also regarded as one of the earliest important novels for feminism. This, and other works by Chopin, were too far ahead of their time. The irony of this is that Chopin wrote about women oppressed in a patriarchal society, but because of the oppressive society that Kate lived in, these stories were not well received. After twelve years of struggling as a writer, not accepted by society, she became deeply discouraged. She turned to writing short stories. In 1900, Chopin wrote “The Gentleman from New Orleans”. During this year, she was named in the first edition of Marqauis Who’s Who.

I have decided to focus on the works of one of the most controversial and influential authors to emerge during the realism and naturalism movement, Kate Chopin. Chopin was a feminist writer who frequently focused on the difficulties of being a woman in that time

During the feminist movement many female authors began to write novels about female emancipation. In these novels, the protagonist experiences enlightenment where she discovers that she is living an incomplete life that society has oppressed her into. Before the movement, society forced women into roles that were inferior to men and they were thought of as men’s property. Harold bloom states, “The direction of The Awakening follows what is becoming a pattern in literature by and about women…toward greater self-knowledge that leads in turn to a revelation of the disparity between that self-knowledge and nature of the world” (Bloom, Kate Chopin 43). Moreover, Chopin viewed women’s independence as a personal challenge more than a social struggle, which contradicts her literary works. According to Harold Bloom, “Chopin’s novel was not intended to make a broad social statement but rather that it indicates that Chopin viewed women’s independence as a personal matter”(Bloom, Bloom’s Notes 58). In the past, the novel was banned because of its connection to the feminist movement.

Kate Chopin is known as one of the most unique and outspoken author of the late nineteenth century. Some background information on the author Kate Chopin is that she was born as Katherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri in 1851 and moved to New Orleans with her husband, Oscar Chopin, in 1870. Kate wrote many popular short stories such as The Awakening, A Night in Acadie, and The Story of an Hour. The characters in these short stories she wrote would usually target feminist readers (555). The stories she would write usually scandalized her readers because of the portrayal of female sexuality in her characters. To this day, Chopin’s stories still provokes intense discussions between people about her female characters (555). Kate Chopin provides

    Kate Chopin was an extraordinary writer of the nineteenth century. Despite failure to receive positive critical response, she became one of the most powerful and controversial writers of her time. She dared to write her thoughts on topics considered radical: the institution of marriage and women's desire for social, economic, and political equality. With a focus on the reality of relationships between men and women, she draws stunning and intelligent characters in a rich and bold writing style that was not accepted because it was so far ahead of its time. She risked her reputation by creating female heroines as independent women who wish to receive sexual and emotional fulfillment,

At the end of 19th century, American society presented an ideology of patriarchy. Feminists struggle for the equality and discrimination against female. As feminist movement started, lots of female writers were explored. One of the most famous writers is Kate Chopin. Her works mostly present a theme of women pursue freedom and equality. “The Story Of An Hour” and “The Awakening” are her representative works. In these two works, Kate Chopin reveals how women lived under the oppression of male-dominated society, especially for women who got married. They were not financially independent and their freedom and rights were deprived. Therefore female were forced to be an “angle in the home”. Both challenge the preconception that women can only be a housekeeper and marriage is the only way out.

Kate Chopin is known as one of the greatest feminist authors of her time. She grew up around independent, widowed women: her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. With her father’s death due to a train wreck, and her husband’s death from“swamp fever,” Chopin was left alone to support her six children. According to Nina Baym, the author of Chopin’s biography, influences from strong women in Chopin’s life led to why she wrote about desires, limited aspects of women’s lives, and how women began to challenge the male-dominated culture (550). A lack of men as chief figures in Chopin’s life prevented her from experiencing a tradition of submission by women to men. Additionally, many of Chopin’s works were influenced by realism and feminism.