Historical figure · Pearson Edexcel International GCSE revision on Incandio

Kate Chopin

Who Wrote The Hour And Not The Year · Novelist & Short-Story Writer · 1850–1904

The St Louis writer who was widowed at thirty-two, began publishing to support six children, and wrote a novel so badly received that she nearly stopped.

Defend these ideas against Chopin

Incandio is a free revision platform for the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE, and on it a topic counts as mastered only once you have learned it, proved it in questions, taught it back and defended it against the person with the strongest claim on it. Kate Chopin is that person for one topic on the course:

• The Story of an Hour — English Language A · the anthology

Who was Chopin?

Kate Chopin was born Katherine O'Flaherty in St Louis in 1850. Her father was killed in a railway accident when she was five, and she grew up in a household of widows — her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother — where French was spoken as readily as English. She married Oscar Chopin at twenty and moved to New Orleans, then to Cloutierville in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, where he ran a general store. They had six children. Oscar died of fever in 1882 and left debts; Chopin ran the business herself for a year before returning to St Louis, and began to write on the encouragement of the family physician, Dr Frederick Kolbenheyer. She published quickly and widely in the magazines, was known for her Louisiana stories, and translated Guy de Maupassant, whose economy she admired and learned from. In December 1894 Vogue printed a very short story of hers about a woman told that her husband has been killed in a railway accident, who goes upstairs alone, discovers something about herself in the space of an hour, and dies at the moment the news turns out to be wrong — with the doctors supplying an explanation the reader can see straight through. Her novel The Awakening appeared in 1899 and was received badly enough that she published little afterwards. She died in 1904, after two days at the World's Fair in St Louis.

Major achievements

• Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897)
• The Awakening (1899)
• A very short story printed in Vogue in December 1894 that turns entirely on one hour
• Translations of Maupassant, and a prose economy learned directly from him

Life in brief

• 1850 — Born in St Louis: Into a French-speaking household.
• 1855 — Her father is killed: In a railway accident; she is five.
• 1870 — Marries Oscar Chopin: And moves to New Orleans.
• 1882 — Widowed: Runs the Louisiana business for a year, then returns home.
• 1894 — Vogue, December: Prints the story of one hour.
• 1899 — The Awakening: Published, and badly received.
• 1904 — Dies in St Louis: Shortly after visiting the World's Fair.

Explore the life of Chopin — five chapters

1. A House of Widows — St Louis, and a childhood without a man in charge
2. Louisiana — New Orleans, a general store, and six children
3. An Hour — Vogue, December 1894
4. The Awakening — A novel that closed a career
5. Found Again — Fifty years in the wrong category

Read the five-chapter life of Kate Chopin →

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