Public domain photograph of Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin (1850-1904)

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Literary Criticism

Beer, Janet. Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction (Palgrave, 2005). Google blurb.

Byrd, Lynda J. "Maternal Influence and Children in Kate Chopin's Short Fiction." Womenwriters.net.

Ewell, Barbara C. "Changing Places: Women and the Old South; or, What Happens When Local Color Becomes Regionalism." An essay on "how stories create places and then how the Old South served as an 'other' place for the United States." From a Case Study program at Georgetown Univ.

Goddard, Paula. "Mrs. Chopin was at least a decade ahead of her time: The Place of The Awakening in the American Canon," excerpt from a dissertation.

Griggers, Cody "Next Stop-- Paradise: An analysis of setting in The Awakening." Womenwriters.net.

Harmon, Charles. "'Abysses of solitude': Acting naturally in Vogue and The Awakening." Harmon contends that "By juxtaposing The Awakening to Vogue, it is possible to demonstrate that American culture during Chopin's era communicated a mixed yet finally overwhelmingly violent message to its women." College Literature, Fall 1998.

Harrington, Ellen Burton. Scribbling women & the short story form; approaches by American & British women writers (Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2008). Includes "Naturalism and the Short Story Form in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour,'" by Scott D. Emmert. Covers Rebecca Harding Davis, Louisa May Alcott, Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Cynthia Ozick, and Ursula Le Guin, as well as lesser-known authors such as L.T. Meade, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Sui Sin Far. Contends that the short story form can be viewed as feminist. Publisher's web site.

Holtman, Janet. "Failing Fictions: The Conflicting and Shifting Social Emphases of Kate Chopin's 'Local Color'" Stories, Southern Quarterly, Winter 2004.

Klein, Sarah. "Kate Chopin's Ecofeminism: A Dialogue Between The Awakening & Contemporary Women." Womenwriters.net.

Klein, Sarah. "Writing the 'Solitary Soul': Anticipations of Modernism and Negotiations of Gender in Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Womenwriters.net.

Li-Dai, Lu. "The Awakened One," a Buddhist reading of The Awakening. Womenwriters.net.

Llewellyn, Dara. "20th century AD." Llewellyn contends that the concept of boundary can shed light on 'Beyond the Bayou'. The story "is about boundaries of the usual sort (physical, temporal, psychological) while it foregrounds the boundary conditions of the reader's experience." Studies in Short Fiction, Spring, 1996.

MacDonald, Erin E. "'Necessarily Vague': Kate Chopin's Gender-Awakening." Womenwriters.net.

Mahin, Michael James. "The Awakening and the Yellow Wallpaper: An intertextual Comparison of the Conventional Connotations of Marriage and Propriety." Womenwriters.net.

McManus, Barbara F. An excerpt from McManus's, Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics, and links to other feminist criticism of literature.

Rich, Charlotte. "Reconsidering The Awakening : The literary sisterhood of Kate Chopin and George Egerton," Southern Quarterly, Spring 2003.

Scullion, Val. An introduction to Kate Chopin from the Literary Encyclopedia.

Smith-Riser, Emily. "Kate Chopin's 'Lilacs' and 'Two Portraits': Examples of Catholic Sensibility or Modernism?" Womenwriters.net.

Sprinkle, Russ. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening: a Critical Reception." Womenwriters.net.

Thomas, Heather Kirk "Kate Chopin's The Awakening: Screenplay as Interpretation." Studies in Short Fiction, Spring, 1994.

Treu, Robert "Surviving Edna: A reading of the ending of The Awakening," College Literature, Spring 2000.

Wells, Kim. "Magic Realism and the Writings of Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin and Willa Cather." Womenwriters.net.

Beilke, Debra. On Southern Mothers: Fact and Fictions in Southern Women's Writing, Mississippi Quarterly, Winter 2000/2001. On Kate Chopin, Ellen Glasgow, Katherine Anne Porter, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, Barbara Kingsolver, and others (taken offline).

Bucher, Christina. "Perversely Reading Kate Chopin's 'Fedora,'" Mississippi Quarterly, Summer 2003 (taken offline).

Bunch, Dianne. "Dangerous spending habits: The epistemology of Edna Pontellier's extravagant expenditures in The Awakening," Mississippi Quarterly, Winter 2001/2002 (taken offline).

Pontuale, Francesco. The Awakening: Struggles toward l'ecriture feminine," Mississippi Quarterly, Winter 1996/97 (taken offline).

Simons, Karen. "Kate Chopin on the nature of things." Simons contends that "the focus on gender/self limits the scope of Chopin's vision in The Awakening..The Awakening tells the story of a woman who comes to understand her sexuality and its function in the larger scheme of things, a scheme which might best be understood as Lucretian." Mississippi Quarterly, Spring 1998 (taken offline).

Introduction & Lighter Reading

On "The Story of an Hour," from the Kate Chopin International Society. Includes discussion questions (FAQs), where to find an accurate text of the story, and a recommended reading list for "The Story of an Hour" and for Chopin's stories generally.

Web site of the Kate Chopin International Society, edited by Bernard Koloski. Includes sections on Kate Chopin's biography, The Awakening, At Fault, and separate pages on each of the short stories "The Storm"; "The Story of an Hour"; "Athénaïse"; "Désirée's Baby"; "A Respectable Woman"; "A Pair of Silk Stockings"; "Lilacs"; and "At the 'Cadian Ball." The chapters include discussion questions (FAQs), where to find an accurate text, and a recommended reading list. An excellent job, a model web site for online literary studies.

On the Cane River and the town of Natchitoches, from the Cane River Heritage web site On Kate Chopin's home in Natchitoches, the largest town in the Cane River region of Louisiana.

A web site from Public Broadcasting Service on Kate Chopin includes an overview of her career, interviews with experts, and links to e-texts of her works.

A brief introduction to Kate Chopin from publisher Heath.

Reeves, W.J. A Rush Limbaugh-type diatribe against teaching Kate Chopin, Amy Tan, Chinua Achebe and others. "Will zealots spell the doom of great literature? - the toll of political correctness," USA Today, Sept, 1996.

Bibliographies, web sites

Web site for Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature: A scholarly journal devoted to the study of women's literature of all periods and nationalities [Feminist and Women's Studies].

Web site for Women's Writing, an international scholarly journal focusing on women's writing up to the end of the long nineteenth century. A sample copy is available for viewing, requires registration.

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