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    Short Stories - Kate Chopin
    Short Stories - Kate Chopin
    Short Stories - Kate Chopin
    Ebook68 pages58 minutes

    Short Stories - Kate Chopin

    By Kate Chopin

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    Kate Chopin, born Katherine O'Flaherty (February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904), was a U.S. author of short stories and novels. She is now considered by some to have been a forerunner of the feminist authors of the 20th century of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald.


    This edition contains the short stories:

    Beyond the Bayou
    Ma’ame Pelagie
    Désirée’s Baby
    A Respectable Woman
    The Kiss
    A Pair of Silk Stockings
    The Locket
    A Reflection
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKate Chopin
    Release dateJun 23, 2016
    ISBN9786050463675
    Short Stories - Kate Chopin
    Author

    Kate Chopin

    Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was born in St. Louis and spent much of her life in Louisiana. Widowed with six children at age thirty-two, she published stories and articles often set in the Creole culture of late-nineteenth-century New Orleans. The candor and sympathy with which she explored the contours of modern women's lives were unprecedented. So prescient were Chopin's fictions that, many decades after her death, they would become touchstones for second-wave feminism.

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      Book preview

      Short Stories - Kate Chopin - Kate Chopin

      Table of Contents

      Cover

      The Book

      The Author

      Title

      Copyright

      Short Stories

      Beyond the Bayou

      Ma’ame Pelagie

      Désirée’s Baby

      A Respectable Woman

      The Kiss

      A Pair of Silk Stockings

      The Locket

      A Reflection

      The Book

      Kate Chopin, born Katherine O'Flaherty (February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904), was a U.S. author of short stories and novels. She is now considered by some to have been a forerunner of the feminist authors of the 20th century of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald.

      This edition contains the stories:

      Beyond the Bayou

      Ma’ame Pelagie

      Désirée’s Baby

      A Respectable Woman

      The Kiss

      A Pair of Silk Stockings

      The Locket

      A Reflection

      The Author

      Kate Chopin, born Katherine O'Flaherty (February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904), was a U.S. author of short stories and novels. She is now considered by some to have been a forerunner of the feminist authors of the 20th century of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald.

      From 1892 to 1895, she wrote short stories for both children and adults that were published in such magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The Century Magazine, and The Youth's Companion. Her major works were two short story collections, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her important short stories included Désirée’s Baby, a tale of miscegenation in antebellum Louisiana (published in 1893), The Story of an Hour (1894), and The Storm(1898). The Storm is a sequel to The 'Cadian Ball, which appeared in her first collection of short stories, Bayou Folk. Chopin also wrote two novels: At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), which are set in New Orleans and Grand Isle, respectively. The characters in her stories are usually inhabitants of Louisiana. Many of her works are set in Natchitoches in north central Louisiana.

      Within a decade of her death, Chopin was widely recognized as one of the leading writers of her time. In 1915, Fred Lewis Pattee wrote, some of [Chopin's] work is equal to the best that has been produced in France or even in America. [She displayed] what may be described as a native aptitude for narration amounting almost to genius.

      Chopin was born Katherine O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Thomas O'Flaherty, was a successful businessman who had emigrated from Galway, Ireland. Her mother, Eliza Faris, was a well-connected member of the French community in St. Louis and herself the daughter of Athénaïse Charleville, who was of French Canadian descent. Some of Chopin's ancestors were among the first European inhabitants of Dauphin Island, Alabama. She was the third of five children, but her sisters died in infancy and her half-brothers (from her father's first marriage) died in their early twenties. After her father's death in 1855, Chopin developed a close relationship with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She also became an avid reader of fairy tales, poetry, and religious allegories, as well as classic and contemporary novels.

      In St. Louis, Missouri, on 8 June 1870, she married Oscar Chopin and settled in New Orleans. Chopin had six children between 1871 and 1879 –in order of birth, Jean Baptiste, Oscar Charles, George Francis, Frederick, Felix Andrew, and Lélia (baptized Marie Laïza). In 1879, Oscar Chopin's cotton brokerage failed, and the family moved to Cloutierville in south Natchitoches Parish to manage several small plantations and a general store. They became active in the community, and Chopin absorbed much material for her future writing, especially regarding the Creole culture of the area. Their home at 243 Highway 495 (built by Alexis Cloutier in the early part of the century) was a national historic landmark and the home of the Bayou Folk Museum. On October 1, 2008, the house was destroyed by a fire, with little left but the chimney.

      When Oscar Chopin died in 1882, he left Kate with $42,000 in debt (approximately $420,000 in 2009 money). According to Emily Toth, for a while the widow Kate ran his [Oscar's] business and flirted outrageously with local men; (she even engaged in a relationship with a married farmer).

      Although Chopin made an honest effort to keep her late husband's plantation and general store alive, two years later she sold her Louisiana business. Her mother implored her to move back to St. Louis, so Chopin did, and the children gradually settled into life in St. Louis, where finances were no longer a concern. The following year, Chopin's mother died.

      Chopin now found herself in a state of depression after the loss of both her husband and her mother. Her obstetrician and family friend, Dr. Frederick Kolbenheyer, felt that writing would be a source of therapeutic healing for Kate during her hard times. He understood that writing could be a focus for

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