MARCH IS WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

For Women’s History Month, the Orange Park Campus Library is featuring Kate Chopin.

“Chopin was born in St. Louis in 1851. Her parents, Thomas and Eliza O'Flaherty, were wealthy, slave-owning Catholics who held a prominent position in their community. When Chopin was four, her father died in a train accident, and she was raised by her French-Creole mother and great-grandmother. At seventeen, she graduated from the Academy of the Sacred Heart. Two years later, in 1870, she married Oscar Chopin, a Louisiana businessman of French-Creole descent. In New Orleans, where she and her husband lived until 1879, Chopin was at the center of Southern aristocratic social life. During this period, she bore six children. In 1879, when Oscar's business failed, the family moved to Cloutierville, where Oscar's family owned a farm and a plantation store. When Oscar died in 1882, Chopin was left with six children and meager financial resources. The family moved back to St. Louis in 1884.

At the age of thirty-nine, Chopin began writing poetry and fiction. Her early short stories were published in magazines in St. Louis and New Orleans, and were influenced by writers such as Guy de Maupassant and Moliere. Most of her stories are set in Louisiana, and they portray characters as diverse as Southern belles, Arcadians and Creoles, mulattos and blacks. The stories center around the themes of class relations, relationships between men and women, and feminine sexuality. In the 1890s, Chopin began receiving national attention for her fiction. She published Bayou Folk in 1894, and A Night in Acadie, which contains her often anthologized short story "The Story of an Hour," in 1897. The success of these two collections made Chopin financially independent and nationally known as a major author. In 1899, Chopin published The Awakening, now regarded as her masterpiece. The novel's frank treatment of an independent woman who, after an extramarital affair and a sexual "awakening," commits suicide rather than conform to society's mores, provoked outrage among readers and critics. The novel was banned in St. Louis and elsewhere. As a result of the hostile reception to the novel and difficulties with publishers, Chopin wrote very little at the end of her life. Five years after the publication of The Awakening, Chopin died of a stroke in St. Louis on August 22, 1904.”
"Kate Chopin." LitFinder Contemporary Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.

Interested in learning more? Why not check out a website dedicated to Ms. Chopin’s life and works? This site is produced by the Kate Chopin International Society, and is full of interesting information. Also check out the resources available at the SJRCC Libraries.

Enjoy!

- Eric Biggs