This was originally written for the Wordsworth Editions Blog.

Kate Chopin was not a conventional woman.  She was a professional writer at a time when it was unusual and somewhat irregular for a woman to have such an occupation.  She was unconventional though, before she became a writer and shocked her in-laws with her behaviour which would have seemed most unladylike in New Orleans during the 1870s.  This shocking behaviour consisted of expressing her opinions freely, smoking, and walking around the city unaccompanied.  For more detailed information, the Introduction to the Wordsworth Classics Edition of The Awakening and Selected Stories provides a comprehensive account of her life and work.

In a way it was both tragedy and necessity which turned Kate Chopin into a writer.  In the space of a few years she experienced two life changing losses.  Her husband Oscar Chopin died of malaria in 1882, leaving her with six children.  Two years later she left New Orleans with her children and returned to St Louis to live with her mother.  Sadly, her mother died the following year.  On Oscar’s death the family physician had suggested that writing might be a therapeutic pastime and after the death of her mother she began to embark on such a pursuit.  Following a not very successful novel, At Fault (1890) she turned her hand to short stories and produced a large number over the coming years.  Many of these were published in newspapers and magazines and then compiled in two collections published during her lifetime – Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897).  Although she is probably best known for her novella The Awakening (1899), a text which was highly controversial at the time of publication, her short stories are also worthy of attention.  I have selected two to focus on, although the others in the collection are all engaging.

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