KATHERINE FLABERTY

Catherine Flaberty

Catherine Flaberty

Thesis

When an author writes about something they are familiar with, they know first hand the issues or the characters, and therefore,the plot is much more thought out.

Outline

Introduction

Chopin uses very little variation between story lines. She uses names such as e and Esplanade Street as important parts of many(Alc stories. The realistic style that Chopin uses are also very similar. She uses a southern dialect and the French language frequently.

This all shows that Chopin only writes about people and places that she is most familiar with which makes the writing more realistic. Chopin's writing, when published in the nineteenth century, was not accepted as good, wholesome, literature. “In herown city of St. Louis the libraries refused to circulate the book, and the Fine Arts Club denied her membership because of it.

Background

Kate Chopin's uninhibited treatment of subjects considered too taboo for the nineteenth century has rightfully earned her the title given to her by Per Seyested as “a woman decades ahead of her time”. Despite the century's limitations set against a woman's success in all social and domestic aspects, Chopin dared to express her viewpoints and strove to break down the walls that had stood in women's way in the traditional patriarchal society. Many of her short stories were rejected on the society's Victorian moral grounds. After her novel “The Awakening,” having been labeled by a critic of her time as “too strong a drink for moral babes, and should be labeled 'poison'” (Bender, Short Story Criticism 77), they were banished from most public libraries.

Conclusion

Since female professionalism was viewed as unladylike in her time, Chopin's social life and literary career were put under additional stress. Despite the extra tension received, Chopin still slightly contrasted local color in “At the Cadian Ball” with untypical descriptions of women (Calixta's forwardness), and the mocking of certain ideas (Calixta has to resort to being unhappy and marry within her own class). This contrast, or “fraying at the edges” (107) as Barbara Ewell describes it, was accepted probably because it was an interesting twist to the played out local color trend. The “fraying” of traditional ways obviously would pose somewhat of a threat to a society that was so used to the same unchanging ideals. In order to make sure that “At the Cadian Ball” would be fully accepted, it seemed Chopin would make up for her story's fraying ends by having her characters ...