Kate Chopin’s. Born Catherine O’Flaherty Creole/Irish Background Widowed at 32: husband Oscar...
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Transcript of Kate Chopin’s. Born Catherine O’Flaherty Creole/Irish Background Widowed at 32: husband Oscar...
• Born Catherine O’Flaherty
• Creole/Irish Background
• Widowed at 32: husband
Oscar dies and leaves Kate
with $230,000 in debt
• Wrote to support family:
became successful author of
short fiction…
Historical background
Critical response- Some positive:
• “Analytical, and fine-spun,” - The Book Buyer
• “The work of an artist who can suggest more than one side of her subject with a single line.” - St. Louis Republic
• “not…wholesome,” - The Dial
• “should be labeled ‘poison’,” - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• “It was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the over-worked field of sex-fiction,” - Chicago Times-Herald
But most critical response:
• Women’s role in society• Women’s role in the household• Consequences of Individualism• Implications of Self-Expression
• Aphrodite (Greek) or Venus (Latin):
Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty. She was said to have been born of water. It is believed that she sprang from a sea-birth near the island of Cytherea. The two components of Aphrodite are passion and water.
• Fairy Tales:
Classic Images:• Women are vestal and innocent
• Put to Sleep or Isolated to preserve innocence
• Desired for innocence