Kate Chopin Bio/Intro

Born in St. Louis, Kate Chopin’s parents Eliza and Thomas O’Flaherty were Irish immigrants who became rich merchant and arranged for their daughter to be educated in a Roman Catholic Convent school. This was definitely a plus for Kate so that she could have a better life when she grew up. She later became one of the acknowledged belles of society. When she was nineteen she married Oscar Chopin. Her husband died later of swamp fever and she moved all of children to St. Louis. She would definitely have to be a strong woman to take care of six children on her own. She began to write again. When her first writing failed she began to sell her stories to magazines such as Vogue. She would often write about subjects that challenged normative female scripts of the nineteenth century. Her novel The Awakening was judged as being too strong drink for moral babes. They also judged by saying The Awakening should be labeled poison. She was in amazement that she was being criticized his harshly. So Kate withdrew and ceased to write almost entirely. Five years later she died. It was not until after she died that her work was recognized as going beyond the conventions of popular fictions for women to portray the anguish of women and men who are bereft of hopeful illusions and impelled by forbidden desires.