Biographical Essay on Kate Chopin essays

Biographical Essay on Kate Chopin essays Kate Chopin, born Katherine O'Flaherty, grew up in a prominent family on February 8, 1850. Her father, Thomas O'Flaherty, was an immigrant from Ireland who was a merchant. Her mother, Eliza Faris O'Flaherty, was from one of the oldest aristocratic Creole families in the St. Louis area. Kate attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis. During this time, Tonette Inge states that Chopin was "exposed to Catholic teachings and a French educational emphasis upon intellectual discipline" (Inge). Her early interests in reading and writing would benefit her later in life. Inge notes that while Chopin appeared to be a social belle on the surface, her writing suggests that she devoted a great deal of time contemplating Chopin married Oscar Chopin in June of 1870. He was from a French- Creole family and operated a cotton plantation. On her honeymoon, she met Victoria Claflin and Victoria Woodhull, two women who would influence her writing. In fact, Inge reports that Woodhull, with a reputation of being a "radical-feminist publisher, stockbroker, spiritualist, and future nominee for president" (Inge), advised Chopin " not to fall into the useless degrading life of most married ladies'" (Inge). This advice is something that Chopin certainly took to heart after events in her life left her alone to provide for her six children, Jean, Oscar, George, Frederick, Felix, and Lelia. Chopin was married for six years, of which while she devoted her family and household, she still managed to reconcile the needs of her own being with the expectations of her conventional milieu. She dressed unconventionally and smoked cigarettes long before smoking was an approved practice among women in her class. (Inge) Interestingly, Chopin was not a feminist in the way that the word is perceived today. Seyersted writes that she never joined women's rights organizati...