Line #12 Creator/KateChopin


1	Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was a [[NineteenthCenturyLiterature nineteenth century]] author of novels and short stories. Today she is probably best known for her novel ''Literature/TheAwakening'' (1899) and her short stories ''Desirées Baby'' (1893), "The Story of an Hour" (1894), and "The Storm" (1898, though not published until 1969), many of which scandalised contemporary audiences with their frank treatments of taboo subjects such as miscegenation, adultery, and sexuality. Influenced by UsefulNotes/CharlesDarwin's theories of sexual selection and Creator/GuyDeMaupassant's naturalistic short stories, Chopin's probing explorations of women's lives in the late-nineteenth-century South have earned her a reputation as an early feminist author, although she rejected the label for herself.
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3	Although to some extent she has been VindicatedByHistory, her writings were not wholly unsuccessful during her life; two of her novels and two collections of short stories were published during her life, and she saw her work published in magazines such as ''Vogue'' and ''The Atlantic Monthly''. While ''The Awakening'' in particular was condemned as immoral by many critics, it received unqualified praise in other publications, such as the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' and even the ''New York Times''. Despite this, it went out of print for several decades before being rediscovered, along with the rest of her body of work, during TheSixties and TheSeventies.
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5	Overall, her work is marked by strong local flavour (being particularly influenced by the Natchitoches region of Louisiana, New Orleans, and St. Louis) and generally centres on women's continual struggles to establish their own identities. Her writing is particularly critical of the contemporary institution of marriage, which often had more to do with social respectability than it did passion or love. "The Storm" is particularly notable for being one of the earliest written examples of erotica in the English language by a female author, though not published until long after her death.
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7	!!Tropes present in Chopin's work include:
8	* ChocolateBaby: In the short story "Desirée's Baby", Armand and Désirée, two white-presenting parents have a baby that is clearly mixed. Because Desirée was adopted and the races of her birth parents are unknown, she is assumed to be the mixed one and is cast out by her husband for such. [[spoiler: However, it is later revealed through a letter that it was instead the husband who was of mixed race.]]
9	* DeathByDespair: Although Elizabeth Stock is said to have perished of consumption, the implication is that, at least in part, this was also the case. "The Story of an Hour" provides a more instantaneous example (perhaps Death by Unwanted Shock is a better way to describe it).
10	* DownerEnding: An awful lot of stories end either with the deaths of their protagonists or at least with said protagonists becoming fully cognizant of their dissatisfaction with society.
11	* DramaticIrony: "The Story of an Hour": the main character initially reacts to news of her husband's death with grief, but upon becoming cognizant that this affords her newfound freedom, she begins to experience joy. However, her husband then returns alive and well, and she experiences a fatal heart attack. She is said to have perished "of joy that kills", when of course the implication is the precise opposite.
12	* DrivenToSuicide: Several characters, including the protagonists of ''The Awakening'' and "Desirée's Baby".
13	* EmpathicEnvironment: The weather in "The Storm" corresponds entirely with the main characters' passion.
14	* ExtremelyShortTimespan: Per its title, "The Story of an Hour" takes place entirely over an hour between a woman being notified of her husband's death, being so excited by the prospect of her freedom as an unmarried woman that she dies and her body is discovered at the end.
15	* GRatedSex: By today's standards many of her sex scenes come off as this, though the ones in ''Literature/TheAwakening'' were considered so racy at the time that the novel almost wasn't published. Regardless, they are subtle enough that many contemporary readers completely miss the fact that they are sex scenes. By contrast, "The Storm" is racy even by today's standards, which is one reason it wasn't published during her lifetime.
16	* GratuitousFrench: Her writing is peppered with bits of French, befitting the Cajun setting.
17	* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: For delivering an urgent message, Elizabeth Stock is fired from her job as postmistress, since she would have had to read the message to deliver it, and doing so was against regulations.
18	* StylisticSuck: "Elizabeth Stock's One Story" is written with poor grammar to represent its titular character's lack of education. The DirectLineToTheAuthor framing the story states that it was the one piece of Stock's writing that had a coherent narrative.

Context Creator / KateChopin