Woman of the Bayou: Kate Chopin, Author of The Awakening

Everyone has read "The Awakening" at one point in their life or another whether it be in college or some in high school. You may be one of the few who have never read this novel, but have at least heard of either the novel or its author Kate Chopin. Kate Chopin put a little bit of herself in all of her works. She wrote about the issues of women during her time and all in retrospect of all time. Her work reaches the spans of any age, any day, and any time. Chopin wrote many short stories but her two great works where her two novels, "The Awakening" and "At Fault."

Though many of Kate Chopin's works take place in Louisiana, she was born in Missouri, but moved to New Orleans after she married. Chopin's father, Thomas O'Flaherty, an Irish businessman, died when she was only five years old. After his death she developed a close bond with her mother and great-grandmother. Not even ten years after her father's death her half brother died from swamp fever as a prisoner of war, and her great-grandmother. After their deaths she dropped out of her schooling and engrossed herself in her books of fairy tales, religion, and poetry. Two years later she returned to school and graduated with the honor of Master Storyteller.

A year after she graduated when she was 20, Chopin married Oscar Chopin and moved to New Orleans. This area highly influenced her writing mainly the Creole culture. She and Oscar managed a few plantations and a small store. When Oscar died in 1882 of swamp fever as her brother had, he left her in debt of roughly 300,000 according to today's standards, but 12,000 to her. She engaged herself in a relationship with a married farmer. Not long after her mother talked her into moving back to St. Louis where money was not an issue for her. A year after Chopin and her six children made the move, her mother passed away. This caused Chopin to have a nervous breakdown to which her doctor advised her to write as a way to calm herself.