The Awakening

Kate Chopin was born as Katherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850, the daughter of an Irish immigrant father and French-Canadian mother. At age 20, she married Oscar Chopin and moved to New Orleans. With five sons and a daughter born in quick succession, Chopin tried to keep the family’s cotton brokerage business afloat after her husband’s death in 1882, but a few years later moved back to St. Louis to live with her mother. After losing her mother the following year, a family friend suggested that she write to deal with her sorrow. In 1890, at age 40, she published her first novel, At Fault, and her short stories appeared in major magazines throughout the 1890s. In 1899, The Awakening was published-a novel now considered one of the earliest feminist works. Chopin passed away in 1904 at age 54.