The Works of Kate Chopin

Kate Choplin was an early feminist writer in America. Her works were usually set in the deep south in Louisiana so one could argue the point that she was a strong regionalism writer but if the reader were to delve deeper into the words it would become evident of her realistic style. Most of her novels have female main characters and the novels explore the struggles they must go through and the hardships they must endure throughout their lifetime because of their gender. She writes as how things were for women in the period and how little respect they garnered from society. Her works explore these women working to make a change in society and attempting to overcome their disadvantages to achieve the American Dream.

As Werlock describes it, "Realism is the attempt to depict life as it actually exists, not as the author wants it to be in the present or the future, or imagines it was in the past. A realist carefully chooses details that illustrate this vision, unlike the naturalist who tries to include all possible details." Choplin was notorious for her depiction of life in Louisiana as it was and her novels revealed much about the society and their attitudes towards women at the time. For examples Choplin writes in this line from her novel The Awakening, "An indescriabable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish." This line describes this intolerable cruelty of how women were treated unfairly in olden society. The woman is having trouble keeping her emotions in check due to the vast amount of injustices that she must endure day in and day out as they are beginning to take her toll on her. The mentality of the character reveals the mentality of women in this culture and the attitude of others towards them as they were treated with less justice then the men.

One of her other works, a short story called "The Story of an Hour," is a story of an elderly woman who is told of her husband passing away and her difficulty in coping with this news, in the end she dies from a heart disease she had after receiving the tragic news. Chopin manages to create a tragic tale that shows how much women cared for their lovers and reveals much about the mentality of the aged lovers and how the women react when their husband passes away. The story documents the troubled, yet always prevailing relationship that Chopin wrote of with lines like, " And yet she had loved him---sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter!" The line reveals the tipsy turny nature of their love and yet once he is gone the woman realizes how strong the love between them was and shows the mentality of the character and the realistic nature of losing a loved one. With both of her stories Chopin is able to delve in the minds of women from different social classes, ages, and upbringings and reveal their character and the society that surrounds them, and these qualities land her as a realistic writer as opposed to a regionalistic writer.

Chopin, Kate. "The Awakening." Glencoe American Literature. comp. Wilhelm, Jeffery. McGraw Hill. Columbus, OH. 2009. pg. 491.

Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus; McGraw-Hill, 2010. 554-555. Print.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= Gamshrtsty0575&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 14, 2011).