Public domain photograph of Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin (1850-1904)

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Introduction [all free]

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.

"Kate Chopin." An introduction, biography, and brief discussion of her works. Free content from the subscription service Enotes.

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

A brief introduction to Kate Chopin from academic publisher Heath.

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.

"Kate Chopin: 'The Story of an Hour.'" Audio lecture with slides, plus discussion questions and suggestions for writing, from the academic publisher A.B. Longmans.

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.

"Regionalism and Local Color Fiction, 1865-1895." Covers American regional literature in New England, the South, Midwest, Great Plains, and West. Includes Kate Chopin. Prof. Donna Campbell's web site.

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

Literary Criticism

Berkove, Lawrence L. "Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour.'" American Literary Realism, 32, 2 (Winter 2000) [subscription service].

Bucher, Christina. "Perversely Reading Kate Chopin's 'Fedora.'" Mississippi Quarterly, Summer 2003 [free].

Bunch, Dianne. "Dangerous spending habits: The epistemology of Edna Pontellier's extravagant expenditures in The Awakening." Mississippi Quarterly, 2001/2002 [free].

Harmon, Charles. "'Abysses of solitude': Acting naturally in Vogue and The Awakening." Harmon argues 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) [article preview].

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

Llewellyn, Dara. "20th century AD." Llewellyn contends that the concept of boundary can shed light on Kate Chopin's story "Beyond the Bayou." She remarks that 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) [free].

Mathews, Carolyn L. "Fashioning the hybrid woman in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Mosaic 35, 3 (2002) [subscription service].

McManus, Barbara F. "Characteristics of a Feminist Approach." An excerpt from Prof. MacManus's Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics. Also links to other feminist criticism of literature. At Prof. McManus's web site [free].

Pontuale, Francesco. The Awakening: Struggles toward l'ecriture feminine" [and feminist theorist Helene Cixous]. Mississippi Quarterly, Winter 1996/1997 [free].

Rich, Charlotte."Reconsidering The Awakening: The literary sisterhood of Kate Chopin and George Egerton." Southern Quarterly 41, 3 (Spring 2003) [subscription service].

Ryan, Steven T. Depression and Chopin's The Awakening. Mississippi Quarterly Spring 1998 [free]

Scullion, Val. An introduction to Kate Chopin from the Literary Encyclopedia [subscription service].

Simons, Karen. "Kate Chopin on the nature of things." Simons contends that "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 [free].

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

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

Warren, Nagueyalti and Sally Wolff, eds. A review of Southern Mothers: Fact and Fictions in Southern Women's Writing (Louisiana State UP 1999). The book covers Kate Chopin, Ellen Glasgow, Katherine Anne Porter, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, Barbara Kingsolver, and others. Reviewed by Debra Beilke in Mississippi Quarterly, Winter 2000/2001 [free].

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