Relationship between Chopins Life and The Awakening Essay -- Chopin

Relationship between Chopins Life and The Awakening Katherine OFlahtery Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri February 8,1851. She was the daughter of Thomas and Eliza OFlaherty, a prominent Irish-born merchant and his wife. Together, Chopins parents delineated freedom and the American dream. Their ambition and spirit helped mold Chopin into a laughable character with independence and intelligence. Her father died suddenly when Chopin was four years old. His cobblers last was the result of a terrible accident that took the lives of several civic leadership when the key link to the Pacific Railroad was being completed and a bridge collapsed. After Thomas OFlahterys death, Katherines childhood was most profoundly influenced by her mother and grandmother, women of French Creole pioneers. As a child, Chopin spent oft of her time with her familys Creole and mulatto slaves, whose dialects she mastered. She studied piano, wrote poetry, and read books by such noted authors as Dickens, Austen, and Goethe. Although Katherine displayed a very independent and responsible personality, she was once nicknamed the littlest resurrect for yanking down a Union flag. However, despite her free spirit, Chopin grew to be a leading social belle, admired for her wit and beauty. As a debutante, Chopin was an unnoticeable student at the convent school named the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart. She graduated at age seventeen and spent two years as a young woman of fashionable St. Louis society. It was then that the young Katherine OFlaherty met Oscar Chopin, a soused Creole cotton factor. In the year 1870, Kate married Oscar and, for the next decade, Kate Chopin pursued the demanding social and domestic schedule of a wealthy wife and mother. ... ...r that meet the publication of The Awakening, and its harsh reception is what ultimately stopped her from writing. She felt that because of the extensive amount of controversy and criticism she received because of The Awake ning, there was no future day for her as an author. Chopin devoted the last few years of her life to her family. Katherine OFlaherty Chopin died of a cerebral hemorrhage on August 22, 1904 at the age of 53. umteen felt that Kate Chopin had been denied the recognition she desperately wanted and richly deserved. As vigorous as The Awakening, other of Chopins writings are receiving the critical acclaim that they had been neglected. The small stories collected in Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie set up Chopin as an important writer of local-color fiction. Works CitedChopin, Kate. The Awakening. 1899. Mineola, NY Dover Publications, 1993.