Kate Chopin’s Followers (1,928)

Kate Chopin

Born

in St. Louis, Missouri, The United States

February 08, 1850

Died

August 22, 1904

Genre

Fiction

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Kate Chopin was an American author whose fiction grew out of the complex cultures and contradictions of Louisiana life, and she gradually became one of the most distinctive voices in nineteenth century literature. Raised in a household shaped by strong women of French and Irish heritage, she developed an early love for books and storytelling, and that immersion in language later shaped the quiet precision of her prose. After marrying and moving to New Orleans, then later to the small community of Cloutierville, she absorbed the rhythms, customs, and tensions of Creole and Cajun society, finding in its people the material that would feed both her sympathy and her sharp observational eye. When personal loss left her searching for direction, s Kate Chopin was an American author whose fiction grew out of the complex cultures and contradictions of Louisiana life, and she gradually became one of the most distinctive voices in nineteenth century literature. Raised in a household shaped by strong women of French and Irish heritage, she developed an early love for books and storytelling, and that immersion in language later shaped the quiet precision of her prose. After marrying and moving to New Orleans, then later to the small community of Cloutierville, she absorbed the rhythms, customs, and tensions of Creole and Cajun society, finding in its people the material that would feed both her sympathy and her sharp observational eye. When personal loss left her searching for direction, she began writing with the encouragement of a family friend, discovering not only a therapeutic outlet but a genuine vocation. Within a few years, her stories appeared in major magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, and The Century, where readers encountered her local-color sketches, her portrayals of women navigating desire and constraint, and her nuanced depictions of life in the American South. She published two story collections, Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, introducing characters whose emotional lives were depicted with unusual honesty. Her short fiction often explored subjects others avoided, including interracial relationships, female autonomy, and the quiet but powerful inner conflicts of everyday people. That same unflinching quality shaped The Awakening, the novel that would later become her most celebrated work. At the time of its publication, however, its frank treatment of a married woman’s emotional and sensual awakening unsettled many critics, who judged it harshly, yet Chopin continued to write stories that revealed her commitment to portraying women as fully human, with desires and ambitions that stretched beyond the confines of convention. She admired the psychological clarity of Guy de Maupassant, but she pushed beyond his influence to craft a voice that was unmistakably her own, direct yet lyrical, and deeply attuned to the inner lives of her characters. Though some of her contemporaries viewed her themes as daring or even improper, others recognized her narrative skill, and within a decade of her passing she was already being described as a writer of remarkable talent. Her rediscovery in the twentieth century led readers to appreciate how modern her concerns truly were: the struggle for selfhood, the tension between social expectations and private longing, and the resilience of women seeking lives that felt authentically theirs. Today, her stories and novels are widely read, admired for their clarity, emotional intelligence, and the boldness with which they illuminate the complexities of human experience. ...more

Combine Editions
Kate Chopin’s books

Average rating: 3.74 · 298,725 ratings · 18,491 reviews · 821 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Awakening 3.69 avg rating — 226,571 ratings — published 1899 — 1229 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Story of an Hour 4.06 avg rating — 26,709 ratings — published 1894 — 46 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin, Cynthia Brantley Johnson (Editor), Alyssa Harad (Goodreads Author) 3.89 avg rating — 14,302 ratings — published 1899	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin, Jacqueline Kinlow (Read by) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 5,985 ratings — published 1893 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin, Kaye Gibbons (Introduction), Nina Baym (Editor) 3.82 avg rating — 2,542 ratings — published 1899 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Pair of Silk Stockings 3.65 avg rating — 2,537 ratings — published 1897 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Storm 3.59 avg rating — 2,217 ratings — published 1969 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin, Rachel Adams (Introduction) 3.92 avg rating — 1,884 ratings — published 1899 — 16 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Awakening and Other Stories by Kate Chopin, Pamela Knights (Editor) 3.85 avg rating — 1,105 ratings — published 2000 — 89 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Pair of Silk Stockings and Other Stories 3.86 avg rating — 996 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Kate Chopin…

Series by Kate Chopin

The Storm (1 book)
by

Kate Chopin

3.56 avg rating — 2,730 ratings

Quotes by Kate Chopin (?)

“The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

2793 likes

“She wanted something to happen - something, anything: she did not know what.”
― Kate Chopin

2113 likes

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening, and Selected Stories

1319 likes

See all Kate Chopin's quotes »

Polls

February 2015 Old School Classics Poll

Which book would you like to read for our February 2015 Old School Classics group read?

1887, The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, 126 pages

10 votes, 20.0%

1899, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, 195 pages

8 votes, 16.0%

1818, Persuasion by Jane Austen, 249 pages

6 votes, 12.0%

1864, Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 233 pages

5 votes, 10.0%

800, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Unknown, 213 pages

5 votes, 10.0%

1853, Bleak House by Charles Dickens, 1017 pages

4 votes, 8.0%

1893, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, 321 pages

4 votes, 8.0%

1871, Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, 108 pages

3 votes, 6.0%

1767, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne, 588 pages

2 votes, 4.0%

1782, Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 448 pages

2 votes, 4.0%

1795, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 396 pages

1 vote, 2.0%

1877, Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, 245 pages

0 votes, 0.0%

50 total votes

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Kate Chopin’s Followers (1,928)

Kate Chopin

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Kate Chopin’s books