Kate Chopin Research Paper

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Kate Chopin’s biography Kate Chopin was born Kate O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850. She was the third of five children, but her sisters died in infancy and her brothers -from her father's first marriage- in their early twenties. So she was the only child to live past the age of twenty-five. In 1855, she was sent to The Sacred Heart Academy, a Catholic boarding school in St. Louis. Unfortunately, her father was killed two months later in a train accident. For the next two years she lived at home with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, all of them widows. Her great-grandmother, Victoria Verdon Charleville oversaw her education and taught her French, music, and the gossip on St. Louis women of the past. Kate O'Flaherty…show more content…
He was French catholic in background, as was Kate. He adored his wife, admired her independence and intelligence, and "allowed" her unheard of freedom. After their marriage they lived in New Orleans where she had five boys and two girls, all before she was twenty-eight. Oscar was not an able business man, and they were forced to move to his old home in a small Louisiana parish. Oscar died of swamp fever there in 1882 and Kate took over the running of his general store and plantation for over a year. In 1884 she had to sell it up and moved back to St. Louis to live with her mother. Sadly, Eliza O'Flaherty died the next year, leaving Kate alone with her children again. To support herself and her young family, she began to write. By the end of 1880s, Kate Chopin was writing short stories, articles, and translations which appeared in periodicals. She was quite successful and placed many of her publications in literary magazines. However, she became known only as a regional local colour writer and her literary qualities were overlooked. In 1899 her second novel “The Awakening” was published, and the book was criticized because of its moral as well as its literary standards. This, her best-known work, is the story of a woman trapped in the confines of an oppressive society. Out of print for several decades, it is now widely available and critically acclaimed for its writing quality and importance as an early feminist

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