Kate Chopin

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Kate Chopin.

Kate Chopin (/ ˈʃoʊpæn /; * February 8, 1850 as Katherina O'Flaherty in St. Louis ; † August 22, 1904 there ) was an American writer. She is known primarily as the author of the 1899 first published novel The Awakening ( The Awakening ), which is now the canon is one of English literature. She also wrote numerous short stories .

Life

Katherine O'Flaherty father's side was Irish - Catholic , mother of French descent. She was the third and youngest child of Thomas O'Flaherty and his second wife, Eliza nee. Faris, who came from an old French family in St. Louis. However, her father (like her sister later) died during her childhood.

In 1870 she married the plantation heir Oscar Chopin, moved with him to New Orleans and had six children. When the cotton plantation no longer yielded enough, the family moved to Cloutierville, Natchitoches Parish , in northwestern Louisiana in 1879 . Until her husband's death in 1882, Kate Chopin fulfilled her role as a housewife, wife and mother. In 1884, at her mother's insistence, she returned to St. Louis. The death of her mother a year later plunged Kate Chopin into a deep crisis. A doctor friend advised her to start writing to overcome her crisis. Writing became a therapy for Kate Chopin to get over the losses she had suffered. Time and again, the relationship between man and woman is at the center of her poems and later her prose works.

Her first novel, At Fault , which takes up the subject of a love triangle and divorce, was completed in 1890. While The Fault was well received by contemporary critics after its publication, Kate Chopin found Young Dr. Do n't drain a publisher. She destroyed the manuscript and began writing short stories. In the following years numerous stories published by it in big magazines and were then in the two anthologies Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie anthologisiert .

In her early short stories the regional aspect still prevailed. Increasingly, however, she went beyond the more external representation in her stories and concentrated on the psychological inner workings of her narrative characters, especially the female figures. In stories like The Story of an Hour , she challenged more and more accepted societal morals, which led her publisher to exercise greater censorship.

Her third novel that would make them famous later, the adultery novel The Awakening (dt. The Awakening ), caused a scandal when it appeared 1899th Contrary to all prevailing moral standards, the protagonist of the novel separates from her husband and her two children, withdraws from society and engages in two love affairs. She has become aware that up to this point of her "awakening" she could not meet her needs and realize herself. However, there is no future for the protagonist's self-realization in her society. Therefore, at the end of the novel, she swims out into the sea.

After the appearance of The Awakening , there were only devastating judgments among the critics. The protagonist of the novel was accused of selfishness, irresponsibility and immoral behavior. The turmoil surrounding the novel was widespread: Kate Chopin's former girlfriends were denied; the bookstores and libraries in her hometown of St. Louis weeded the book.

When Kate Chopin was unable to publish another collection of short stories ( A Vocation and a Voice ) in 1900 , she withdrew from public life and wrote little. In August 1904, Kate Chopin died of a cerebral haemorrhage. In literary criticism and literary studies her work received almost no attention for decades; The Awakening was no longer printed. It was only with the publication of Complete Works in 1969 that Kate Chopin's literary output experienced a significant appreciation long after her death. In the 1970s and 1980s in particular, attention was again drawn to her life and work in numerous publications, and the lasting literary quality of her work was recognized. From today's perspective, The Awakening is considered an early novel of the women's movement .

Works

In the original

  • At Fault (1890)
  • Bayou Folk (1894; collection of short stories)
  • A Night in Acadie (1897; collection of short stories)
  • The Awakening (1899)
  • Désirée's Baby (1893)
  • Complete Novels and Stories (complete works)

In German

  • Story an hour. Stories and the novel The Awakening. Edited and translated by Barbara Becker, Petra Bräutigam, Josefine Carls, Miriam Hansen, Iris Klose, Sibylle Koch-Grünberg, Rita Maier, Heide Schlüpmann and Petra Stein. Verlag Roter Stern 1978 ( ISBN 3-87877-100-2 )
  • The awakening: novel . Translated from the English by Barbara Becker. With an afterword by Barbara Vinken. Revised by Karen Nölle and Christine Gränke. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2010.
  • The awakening: novel . Translated from the English by Ingrid Rein. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997.
  • The storm. Selected short stories and short stories. Translated by Elisabeth Thielicke u. a. Edited by Miriam Hansen and KD Wolff. dtv, Munich 1990 ( ISBN 3-423-11239-5 ); Goldmann, Munich 2002 ( ISBN 3-442-72552-6 )
  • The silk stockings. Narratives . Ed., Translated into German and provided with an afterword by Ingrid Rein. Ars Vivendi, Cadolzburg 1999 ( ISBN 3-89716-050-1 ).

literature

  • Emily Toth: Unveiling Kate Chopin , Jackson, Miss. : University Press of Mississippi, 1999, ISBN 1-57806-102-4
  • Per Seyersted: Kate Chopin: a critical biography , Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8071-0678-X
  • Nancy A. Walker: Kate Chopin: a literary life Basingstoke [u. a.]: Palgrave, 2001, ISBN 0-333-73789-X

Web links

Commons : Kate Chopin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See The Kate Chopin International Society: Frequently Asked Questions about Kate Chopin .
  2. ↑ See The Kate Chopin International Society : “Her tombstone says 1851, but thirty years ago a French scholar revealed that the United States census and her baptismal certificate show that Chopin was born on February 8, 1850. Some printed sources and web sites erroneously give her birth date as 1851. "
  3. ↑ Cf. Carmen Birkle: Kate Chopin: "The Storm" - The birth of the "New Woman" from the spirit of regionalism . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 110–119, here pp. 111f.
  4. ↑ Cf. Carmen Birkle: Kate Chopin: "The Storm" - The Birth of the "New Woman" from the spirit of regionalism . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 110–119, here p. 112.
  5. ↑ Cf. Carmen Birkle: Kate Chopin: "The Storm" - The Birth of the "New Woman" from the spirit of regionalism . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 110–119, here pp. 112f. See also Sandra Gilbert: Introduction: The Second Coming of Aphrodite . In: Kate Chopin: The Awakening and Selected Stories . Penguin (Penguin Classics / Penguin American Library), Harmondsworth 1985. ISBN 0-14-039022-7 . Pp. 7–33, here p. 9.
personal data
SURNAME Chopin, Kate
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Louis
DATE OF DEATH August 22, 1904
Place of death St. Louis