Kate Chopin

Through symbolism, imagery, irony, dialogue and other literary devices, the fiction of Kate Chopin often focuses on the emotional and sexual suppression of women in a male dominated culture. Her most famous and critically received work is the novella The Awakening, a book that Ker (2004) maintains represented "a benchmark for the transition of American women writers from the themes of romance and contented domesticity to the exploration of the emotional and sexual needs of women" (1). While Chopin's upbringing include life in the privileged St. Louis social class, her role as a southern debutante that prepared her for life as a mother and wife left her unfulfilled. However, raised in a household of women and schooled by nuns, Ker (2004) notes that while she would have been "instructed in the basic duties of being both a wife and mother, [including] subordination of self to a �higher' masculine authority, her primary role models were women" (2). The impact on a woman's identity of such subordination, particularly emotionally and sexually, is often conveyed in Chopin's work through a number of literary devices.

The sudden loss of her husband Oscar Chopin and her mother within a period of a few years left Chopin with a need for self-understanding and self-identification that we see many of her protagonists struggle with in her fiction. In her first ever story, Emancipation, Chopin uses symbolism to convey these themes. In the beginning of t

Related Essays

At the 'Cadian Ball (Kate Chopin) Kate Chopin's slight short story, "At the 'Cadian Ball," is one of her early local color stories set in the Bayou of Louisiana in its use of place, dialects .... (1890 8 )

Kate Chopin Emancipation .... all its variety. Chopin, K. "Emancipation: A Life Fable." From Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories, 199x, pp. 177-178. (1057 4 )

Kate Chopin's The Storm In Kate Chopin's The Storm, we find that the female protagonist, Calixta, suffers from repressed sexual desire even though she is married with a son. .... (549 2 )

The Awakening (Kate Chopin) .... Chopin uses birds, either caged or free, to symbolize both Edna's frustrations and her desires. .... It was musical and true" (Chopin 1976, 41). .... (750 3 )

The Storm Kate Chopin Chopin's The Storm depicts the adulterous union of two married people, Calixta and Alcee. Calixta's .... adults. Chopin, K. The Storm. .... (369 1 )

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