Kate O'Flaherty Chopin
In 1855, Kate was enrolled at the Sacred Heart Academy, a Catholic boarding school in St. Louis. Her father was killed two months later in a train accident. For the next two years, Kate lived with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, all of them widows. She grew up surrounded by smart, independent women and became an avid reader of fairy tales, poetry, and classic and contemporary novels.
During Kate's teen years, the Civil War raged on, and Kate’s relatives were Southern sympathizers. She was separated from the one friend she had made at the Sacred Heart Academy, Kitty Garesche. Kitty’s family owned slaves and supported the South. St. Louis for the most part supported the Union, and Kitty’s family were forced to move.
Kate’s great-grandmother Madame Victoire Charleville died in 1863, and a month later, Kate's adored half-brother George O'Flaherty, a 23-year-old Confederate soldier, died of typhoid fever while being held in a Northern prison.
In 1868, Kate graduated from the Sacred Heart Academy. In her late teens, she was a belle in St. Louis society, where she was known for her wit and her great interest in music. During these years, she began to question the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, because of its subjugation of women.
At the age of 19, Kate met Louisiana native Oscar Chopin, the son of a wealthy cotton-growing family in Louisiana. They were married him on June 9, 1870. They established their new home in New Orleans and awaited the birth of their first child, which was conceived while they were honeymooning in France.
For the next ten years, Kate and Oscar lived in New Orleans, where he was a cotton broker. During this period, Kate gave birth to five sons and one daughter, all before she was 28 years of age. They were also active in the city's social life. They spent their summers at Grand Isle, a resort on the Gulf of Mexico.
Oscar's cotton brokerage failed in 1879, and he decided to move his family north to Natchitoches Parish, where his family owned several small plantations and a general store in Cloutierville, Louisiana. They became active in local society, and Kate became acquainted with the Creole community, which later became an important part of her writing.
In 1882, Oscar came down with swamp fever. He died in January 1883, leaving Kate with six young children and $12,000 in debt (more than $200,000 by today’s standards). Kate tried to manage the plantations and store alone, but was unsuccessful.
Her mother begged her to move back to St. Louis, which she did in 1884. Kate and the children gradually settled into life in St. Louis. With family support, she didn’t have to worry about money, and she was able to read more.
The following year, Kate's mother died, and Kate had a nervous breakdown due to suffering so much loss in such a short period of time. Her doctor suggested she start writing as a way of expressing her disappointments. She took his advice, and soon discovered her natural story-telling ability.
She was immediately successful and wrote short stories about people she had known in Louisiana. In 1888, her first poem, “If It Might Be,” was published in the literary and political journal, America. Two of her stories were published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Other stories and articles appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Criterion, and Vogue.
In 1890, she published her first novel, At Fault, with her own funds. It received negative reviews because the story involves alcoholism and passionate affairs. Shortly thereafter, she brought out two collections of her short stories. She submitted another novel, Young Dr. Gosse, several times, but was unable to get it published. In disgust, she later destroyed the manuscript.
But her stories and articles kept her in the public eye, and she was a popular writer for several years, and a force in St. Louis society. During this time, she sometimes wrote only one or two days a week and reserved most of her time for raising her children. She was never able to live off her earnings from writing, but with that plus the income from her real estate holdings in Louisiana and St. Louis, they lived somewhat comfortably.
In 1899, her novel, The Awakening, was published to harsh criticism and scathing reviews. It tells the story of an unhappy wife who explores her sexuality. A bit too racy for the times, it is now appreciated as an early feminist work.
After that novel’s publication, Kate was denied admission into the St. Louis Fine Art Club. She was crushed by the reaction to the book, and in the remaining five years of her life, she wrote only a few short stories, and only a small number of those were published.
On August 20, 1904, Kate collapsed while visiting the St. Louis World’s Fair. She died two days later of a cerebral hemorrhage, at the age of 53.
Copyright © 2006 Maggie MacLean
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