Kate Chopin's Writing Career and Influence on Society

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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.

Kate Chopin was an author best known for her strong leading female characters. The essence of her characters was based on her female oriented upbringing. She was raised at home by her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother and at school she was taught by nuns. The soul of her characters were thought to have come from her great grandmother’s french stories. Common aspects of her great grandmothers tales, such as freedom, desire, and convention, appeared in Kate’s stories. Kate was taught the traditional role women had in society. However since all of the women in her life were widowed and therefore had authority she was not “ experiencing in her own family the traditional submissiveness of women to men” (Skaggs 2). This and her happy marriage contributed to the creation of her individuality seeking characters. After Kate’s husband and mother died she started her writing career. The three influences that drove Kate to start writing were; she was an avid reader, she needed to support her family, and her doctor, Dr. Kolbenheyer, told her to write as a form of emotional release. Kate had strong views of how people could live a satisfactory life. If they had a place in society, had love, and had a sense of individuality, they could live a full life. These three aspec...

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...rs to the literary world. She was one of the few writers of her time to freely write about women openly searching for fulfillment in their lives. Kate’s last published novel The Awakening is such a brilliant story of a married woman seeking individuality and love that people in the male dominant society harshly critiqued which resulted in the termination of Kate’s career.

Works Cited

"How to Write Citations and Bibliographies in MLA Style." Memorial University Libraries. Memorial University of Newfoundland n.d. March 31st, 2011.

Shaker, Bonnie. Coloring Locals. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003. Print.

“The Influence of Woman.” Kate Chopin. Webpage. March 26th 2011.

Skaggs, Peggy. Kate Chopin. Boston: Twayne Publishers,1985. Print.

Toth Emily, Seyersted Per, eds. Kate Chopin’s Private Papers. Indiana University Press. 1998.

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