Kate Chopin’s Followers (1,927)

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 · 298,461 ratings · 18,458 reviews · 818 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Awakening 3.69 avg rating — 226,403 ratings — published 1899 — 432 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 — 26,669 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 — 14,299 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 — 5,981 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 — 2,537 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 — 2,532 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 — 2,215 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 — 1,103 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 — 995 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 — 2,727 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

January 2015 Old School Classics Poll

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

1851, Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, 257 pages

14 votes, 24.1%

1842, Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, 464 pages

11 votes, 19.0%

1899, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, 195 pages

7 votes, 12.1%

1764, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, 125 pages

4 votes, 6.9%

1874, Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, 480 pages

4 votes, 6.9%

800, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, 213 pages

4 votes, 6.9%

1868, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, 449 pages

3 votes, 5.2%

1894, The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling, 368 pages

3 votes, 5.2%

1847, Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë, 251 pages

2 votes, 3.4%

1892, The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith, 176 pages

2 votes, 3.4%

1830, The Red and the Black by Stendhal, 607 pages

2 votes, 3.4%

1869, The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, 560 pages

1 vote, 1.7%

1895, Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane, 272 pages

1 vote, 1.7%

58 total votes

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Kate Chopin’s Followers (1,927)

Kate Chopin

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Kate Chopin’s books