Biography of Kate Chopin :: essays research papers

BiographyKate Chopin was one of the most influential 19th century American fiction writers. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri on either one of three dates February 8, 1851, February 8, 1850, or July 12, 1850, depending on the source. She once give tongue to that she was born in 1851, but her baptismal certificate states February 8, 1850 as her natal day (Inge, 2). There is also an indiscretion regarding the spelling of her name. Her full name is Katherine OFlaherty Chopin, but one source spells her first name with a C (Katherine, 1). Her father, Thomas OFlaherty, was an Irish immigrant who became a successful merchant in St. Louis. Her mother, Eliza Faris OFlaherty, came from a wealthy aristocratic Creole family (Inge, 2). Kate Chopin was a bookman at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis. Here she learned the Catholic teachings and great intellectual discipline. She graduated from this French school in 1868 (Inge, 2). On June 9th in 1870, she get married Oscar Chopin. Together the couple had six children blue jean (1871), Oscar (1873), George (1874), Frederick (1876), Felix (1878), and Lelia (1879) (Inge, 3).During the 12 years that she was married, Chopin spent 9 years in brand-new Orleans and the following three years in Cloutierville in Natchitoches Parish (Inge, 3). She was an extremely unconventional woman for her era. Not only did she write about a forbidden subject, female sexuality, but she smoked cigarettes and would go on farseeing walks through the streets of New Orleans by herself, both of which were not coarse practices during the nineteenth century (Inge, 3). Kate Chopin enjoyed the variety of cultures that surrounded her in Louisiana she was knotted in the lives of the wealthy Creoles and the poor sharecroppers. Tragedy struck her in celestial latitude of 1882, when her husband became ill from swamp fever and passed away (Inge, 3). Shortly afterwards his death, Chopin became involved with a man by the name of Albert Sampite, a married man (Anderson, 1). A lot of inspiration is thought to have experience from this blood because so many of the characters in her stories are married individuals who stick sexually involved with a single partner resulting in a relationship that ethically could never survive. She left Cloutierville in 1884, partly because of her relationship with Sampite, and moved back to St. Louis to be close to her mother (Inge, 3).