The Awakening

Kate Chopin was born Katherine O'Flaherty on February 8, 1850 in St. Louis Missouri. Her father had immigrated from Galway, Ireland and her mother was part of a creole community in St. Louis descended French and French Canadian immigrants. Kate was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in St. Louis and married Oscar Chopin from New Orleans when she was twenty. They settled in New Orleans and had six children. When Oscar died twelve years later, he left her a heavily indebted estate. She moved back to St. Louis to live with her mother and concentrated on writing in order to support herself and her family. Her work, especially her novels, was often criticised for the frank realism with which she depicted the lives of women, especially Southern women, in society. She died in 1904 of a brain hemorrhage and is buried in St. Louis.