Kate Chopin

Chopin apparently wrote on a lapboard between kids' interruptions. She claimed to be an intuitive artist not given to revision, which must have helped under the circumstances. She wrote lots quickly, partly with an aim to support herself, most likely.

The Awakening

Chopin wrote in somewhat the manner of french realists and naturalists like Zola, de Maupassant, Flaubert or Balzac. She caused some scandal by writing about adultery and infidelity without condemning them, but fell into relative obscurity, perhaps as report of such things became more commonplace. Interest in her work resumed as options of ignoring childrearing to pursue status and money became more acceptable, and as feminist critics looked for women's works ignored by male academics.

In The Awakening, Chopin sketches a woman's failed attempt at liberation. She leaves her husband and children with no introspection besides a couple abstract comments by Chopin's narrator, then drowns herself when she finds she cannot have her favorite of several suitors.

Along the way, Chopin sketches us some fairly rich surfaces of family life among in and around upperclass fin de siecle New Orleans. She draws male characters quickly but deftly. Mr. Pontellier is an unsympathetic cuckold though Edna doesn't actually cuckold him. He's more concerned with what he may consider propriety. He returns from gambling to inform his wife that their child Raoul, soundly sleeping, has consumption. Then he sits and smokes, pouting. Likewise, Robert and Viktor LeBrun appear as variant pretty young men, shy and bold respectively; Alcee appears as an attractive rake. We read nothing to suggest that her children are other than chirpy or bothered by their mother and father's inattention and their mother's eventual suicide.

Chopin's narrator obtrudes at various points to philosophize or moralize, probably in favor of some vision of liberation. Thus on 492-3 we find explanation of Edna Pontellier's immediate actions in her recognition of her "position in the universe," whatever that is. On 524, Edna has comments to make about identity. On 547 we are informed, quite explicitly, that a relative is not aware that he has coerced his wife to an early grave, although no supporting detail or further explanation appears.

Teaching

This text has been popular with undergraduates. It's brief and clear, as far as it goes. I'd prefer taking apart the formal problems of realism and naturalism with Flaubert, Zola, or Henry James, all formally more proficient works, apart from their maleness -- and it seems unfair to trouble James even with that. It does seem a fine basis for debate over relative gender roles. Unfortunately, I suspect it's becoming dated for many young women, some of whom find Ms. P's separation from her husband prosaically obvious and her troubles over it rather inexplicable.

I'd should think that something in a similar vein dealing with the circumstances of women raised in a post-1970's milieu would be most useful, but I can't say I know of a title.

"Desiree's Baby"

A short story, kind of fun, straight out of de Maupassant but set in the American South around N'awlins. A local haciendado falls in love with a pretty orphan and impulsively, apparently open-mindedly, marries her over his father's objections. She bears him a child, who becomes with time obviously African. He rejects his wife as black and sends her and the child away. As he burns her remaining effects, he also burns a letter from his own mother, who admits that she is black.

Sadly, Chopin does not describe precisely whether he has known this and is sending her away to protect himself, or whether he has not known and cannot face it, or even whether he finds out or whether someone else burns it.

Despite the improbable coincidences left as possible by this unclarity, it's a nice little twist-ending short that nicely shows up inconsistencies in racial and gender standards. I haven't used this in a class, but I should think it would be a popular piece.

"The Storm"

A storm throws two ex-fiances together for a couple of hours. Although they have each married other people, they have sex, certain that the woman's husband will not venture to travel with his child until the storm has passed.

The woman welcomes her family with no obvious discomfort. Chopin lets moral judgment remain conspicuous by its absence.

When I've used this in class, Chopin's amorality still provoked nifty quarrels.

Kate Chopin, nee Katherine O'Flaherty (1851-1904)

The Awakening
"Desiree's Baby"
"The Storm"