Kate Chopin Essay -- Essays Papers

Kate Chopin Kate Chopin is an American writer of the late nineteenth century. She is known for her depictions of southern culture and of womens struggles for freedom. At this time in American history, women did not have a voice of their own and according to custom, they were to obey their father and husband. Generally, many women agreed to accept this customary way of purport. Kate Chopin mind quite differently. The boldness Kate Chopin takes in portraying women in the late nineteenth century can be seen throughout The Awakening and other short stories. The pursual is an overview of her dramatic writing style.Elaine Showalter states, Chopin went boldly beyond the work of her precursors in writing about womens longing for sexual and personal emancipation. (170). Chopin said that she was not a womens rightist of a suffragist. She was not an activist and she never joined the womens suffrage movement or belonged to a female literary community. Chopin saw freedom as a matter of your won spirit or soul without constraints. She did not try to encourage the womens movement in her writing rather, she wrote what she felt. In writing what she felt, Chopin came to believe that a true artist defied tradition and rejected respectable morality and the conventions and formulas to literary success. (Showalter 171).It could be said Chopin had a literary awakening. In the early stages of Chopins career, she tried to trace the literary advice and examples of others of her time. These efforts proved to be worthless. Chopin translated Solitude, a story by Guy de Maupassant, in which Maupassant escaped from tradition and authorityhad entered into himself and looked out upon life though his own being and with his own eyes. (Seyested 701). Chopin did not want to imitate Maupassant she just wanted to express herself in her writing the way he had done so in his. In The Awakening Chopin seems to tell her story through the main character Edna Pontellier. Her breaking away from the conventions of literary domesticity is shown through Edna breaking away from the constituted feminine roles of wife and mother (Showalter 170). Kate Chopin shows boldness by taking the main characters and having them completely change their views on life. Edna is a young woman who discovers that her pampered married life is not what she wants. ... ...ory in such a way that Edna has come to know herself, her true self, and does not need to continue living and searching.Kate Chopins success as a writer plummeted after the release of The Awakening. It has been noted that contemporary critics were shocked at the way Chopin portrayed Edna Pontellier. Ednas character violated the codes of the behavior of nineteenth-century American women. The criticism became so bad the The Awakening was banned and dropped out of sight for many generations. It was not until the 1960s that Kate Chopin was recognized as a writer with her own views. Elaine Showalter states K ate Chopins literary evolution took her more and more through the three phases of the nineteenth-century American womens culture and womens writing. (176). Works CitedChopin, Kate. The Awakening. modernistic York Dover, 1993.Night in Acadie. The American Short Story Series. Vol. 8. New York Garrett, 1968.Seysrsted, Per, ed. Kate Chopin A Critical Biography. New York Octagon, 1980.Showalter, Elaine. Tradition and the Female Talent The Awakening and a Solitary Book. The Awakening. Ed. Nancy A. Walker. Boston Bedford, 1993. 169-89.