1. Kate Chopin

2.  Born in St. Louis in 1851.  Came from a family of wealthy slave owners.  Her parents were well regarded in their community and well respected.  Father died in a train accident when she was four years old.

3. Kate Chopin  After her father’s death, she was raised by her mother and grandmother.  Mother and grandmother were of French- Creole descent.  Two years after completing high school, she married Oscar Chopin.  Oscar was a businessman in Louisiana and was also of French-Creole descent.

4. Kate Chopin  Kate and Oscar moved to New Orleans, where they had six children.  Oscar’s business failed in 1879.  The family moved to Cloutierville.  Oscar’s family owned a farm and a plantation store there.

5. Kate Chopin  Oscar died in 1882, leaving Kate and her six children in financial problems.  Kate moved her family back to St. Louis in 1884.  She began writing at the age of 39.  Magazines in St. Louis and New Orleans published her early short stories.

6. Kate Chopin  Writing was influenced by French authors Guy de Maupassant and Moliere.  Most stories set in Louisiana.  Characters are diverse—Southern belles, Creoles, blacks, mulattos.

7. Kate Chopin  Themes include class relations, male/female relationships, and feminine sexuality.  Chopin began receiving national attention for her fiction in 1890.  One of her most famous short stories is “The Story of an Hour”.  Her masterpiece is considered to be the novel, The Awakening, published in 1899.

8. Kate Chopin  The Awakening was a controversial novel.  It was banned in several places, including her hometown of St. Louis.  Chopin was upset by the outrage over the novel, and all but stopped writing.  She wrote very little after The Awakening.  She died in August of 1904 after suffering from a stroke.

9. Naturalism  Drew much from Darwin  An object, rather than imaginative and escapist, study of human beings  A belief that a person is governed by his or her passions, heredity, and surroundings is often subordinate to the social environment of which he/she is a part  A base, often pessimistic view of life

10. Darwin’s The Origin of Species  “Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained – namely, that each species has been independently created – is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledge varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species.

11. Reactions to Passage  Late 19 th century American?  Religious beliefs?  Man superiority in the natural world?  Biology vs. free will vs. divine intervention

12. Bildungsroman  novel that recounts the development (psychological or spiritual) of an individual.  novel where one realizes his or her place in the world.

13. Kunstlerroman  novel of the artist.  development of the artist to maturity  struggle of a sensitive character to overcome bourgeois values— a realization of creative freedom