Kate Chopin: Her Life and Its Influences of The Awakening

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Kate Chopin, born February 8, 1850, used her life’s experiences to express strong opinions to her 1900s American audience. Although her work was criticized for its honesty and audaciousness, by the late 1900s Chopin’s work was considered as brilliant literature that accurately described women of the late 1800s. The Awakening was Chopin’s most famous work, however it nearly ended her writing career due to the violent backlash she received for writing such a truthful novel about women in a time which they were still considered inferior to men. This novel was practically ignored during the early 1900s because it had been considered inappropriate as Chopin was among the first authors of her time to write accurately about a woman’s life. Kate Chopin was greatly influenced by the strong single women who raised her, the southern way of life of the 1800s, and French literature and authors to write her highly-criticized, feminist novel The Awakening.
Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Eliza and Thomas O’Flaherty. Born into a wealthy catholic family, at age five Chopin attended the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart, a boarding school mentored by nuns (“Kate Chopin Biography”). In 1855, two months into Chopin’s boarding school, her father was killed in a railroad accident due to a collapsing bridge, and Chopin was brought to her family from boarding school, although she returned two years later. All widows, Chopin was raised by her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. No married couples lived in Chopin’s house until she was sixteen, but her house was filled with brothers, uncles, and cousins. Chopin was the only of five children to live past the age of twenty-five (Wyatt).
The Awakening is a novel about a woman who i...

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...ically ended her career and good writing spirits. Five years after the publishing of The Awakening, Chopin died of a brain hemorrhage in 1904, but had led an eventful and influential life. Although her work was not popular among the early 1900s audience, Chopin’s work was rediscovered around 1970 and since has become known as classic literature from a brilliant author.

Works Cited

"Kate Chopin." Magill's Survey of American Literature. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Vol. 1. New York:
Salem, 1991. 384-91. Print.
"Kate Chopin Biography." KateChopin.org. Kate Chopin International Society, n.d. Web. 12
Feb. 2014.
"The Awakening Kate Chopin 1899." Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen and Kevin Hile.
Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. 45-67. Print.
Wyatt, Neal. "Biography of Kate Chopin." Biography of Kate Chopin. Virginia Commonwealth
University, 1995. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

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