by Kate Chopin
It is the folk that inhabit these taciturn wildernesses that Miss (?) Chopin introduces to us in her unpretentious, unheralded little book. She is evidently familiar at first hand with the illiterate Creoles, the old broken-down plantations, the queer patois people, the bayou landscapes to which she leads us in these simple tales, whose very simplicity increases their verisimilitude and makes in some cases a powerful impression on the imagination. She takes Middle-Upper Louisiana, as distinct from ‘Cadjen country and New Orleans, as the scene of her little dramas, and reproduces for us, often very realistically and pathetically, the oddities in life and character which she has observed there. In her sheaf of twenty-three sketches some are like rude cartoons whose very rudeness brings out a more vivid effect, as in “Beyond the Bayou,” “The Return of Alcibiade,” “A Rude Awakening” and “For Marse Chouchoute.” These are admirable little bits, as effective as a frontispiece by Castaigne. Others are flooded with more color, as “Desiree’s Baby “and “ Love on the Bon-Dieu.” If we are not mistaken, Louisiana has another remarkable observer in this “unannounced “ lady, whose keen eyes see even through the green glooms of her prairies and cane-brakes, and see things well worth bringing into the light. Personal familiarity with much of this unique region tells us that Miss Chopin’s work is true to nature and often singularly dramatic in substance. There is not the languorous grace of Miss King, or the subtlety of Cable, or the delicious humor of Ruth McEnery Stuart, but there is photographic realism, shrewdness of observation and a fine eye for picturesque situations: which is only saying that Miss Chopin is herself, and nobody else.
From: Book News, September 1895. Pages 5-6
MRS. KATE CHOPIN.
Since the appearance of “Bayou Folk,” says the St. Louis Life, there has been a general curiosity expressed from all over the country to know something about the writer of this collection of charming tales. Very few new authors have made such a success with their first book as has fallen to the share of Mrs. Chopin.” Bayou Folk “is not, in point of fact, Mrs. Chopin’s first book. She published, about four years ago, as her first literary effort, a novel entitled, “At Fault,” which was a very clever story, and showed much of the grace of diction and facility for word-painting found in her later sketches and short tales; but as the book was published in St. Louis, and was not pushed after the manner known to the trade, it had a purely local circulation and added nothing to the author’s fame outside the limited circle of her own acquaintance. Her first short story, “A No-Account Creole,” was sent to the Century and immediately accepted by its editor, the letter of acceptance abounding in expressions of warmest praise of the story. Before the appearance of the Century story, however, several other stories and sketches had appeared in the Youth’s Companion, Vogue, Harper’s, the New Orleans Times-Democrat, St. Louis Life, and other publications. The most of these stories, twenty-three in number, have been collected in a single i6mo volume under the title of “Bayou Folk.”
Among the things most remarked by the critics of “Bayou Folk “ is the facility and exactness with which Mrs. Chopin handles the Creole dialect and the fidelity of her descriptions of that strange, remote life on the Louisiana bayous. There is the best reason in the world for this, as Mrs. Chopin herself is a Creole, and has lived much of her life in New Orleans and on her Natchitoches plantation. Before her marriage to Mr. Oscar Chopin, a New Orleans cotton factor, the son of a wealthy Louisiana planter,
Miss Katie O’Flaherty was one of the belles of St. Louis, the daughter of Mr. Thomas O’Flaherty, a wealthy Catholic gentleman and merchant of St. Louis. It is through association with her maternal grandmother, Madame Ath6naise Charleville Faris, who is still living, and other older members of her family, that Mrs. Chopin has become so familiar with the Creole accent that it slips from her pen as readily and smoothly as English. By her marriage Mrs. Chopin allied herself with the famous Creole families of Benoist and Sanguinet, some of whom migrated from Canada to the tropical swamps and bayous of Louisiana. Mr. Oscar Chopin was born in Natchitoches Parish, and since his death, which occurred some years ago, his widow makes frequent visits there to look after her property in that section of the State. So that the author of “Bayou Folk,” by inheritance of birth and by marriage, is herself one of those quaint and charming “bayou folk” of which she writes so cleverly. Mrs. Chopin was left a widow with five handsome boys and a daughter to care for, and in the absorption of her maternal cares gave no thought to literature until, at the urgent request of an intimate friend who had read many of her letters, she consented to write her first long story, which was never published. Then she wrote “At Fault,” and dropped into the short story form, which proved an immediate success.
Mrs. Chopin is a graduate of the Sacred Heart Convent. She is the exact opposite of the typical blue-stocking. She has no literary affectations; has no “fads” or “serious purpose” in life; declares that she has never studied. She takes no notes and has never consciously observed people, places, or things with a view to their use as literary material. She has, however, always been an omniverous reader. When a child she “absorbed’’ all the standard authors, but now selects her reading rather carefully, and has a preference for the best examples of the French school of literature, at the head of which she places De Maupassant, whose artistic method she thinks has not been reached by any other French writer of the present day. Walt Whitman is one of her favorites in English, and she always has a copy of his prose writings, as well as his “ Leaves of Grass” at hand. She never works systematically, but takes up a story when in the mood, and usually finishes it very quickly. Mrs. Chopin now has in manuscript a novel which she may publish soon. Mrs. Chopin, in addition to her knowledge of books, has had the advantages of travel, having visited all the points of interest in Europe as well as in America.
Current Literature.
From: The Dial, August 1, 1899. By William Morton Payne Page 75
“The Awakening,” by Mrs. Chopin, is a story in which, with no other accessories than the trivial details of everyday life in and about New Orleans, there is worked out a poignant spiritual tragedy. The story is familiar enough. A woman is married without knowing what it is to love. Her husband is kind but commonplace. He cares overmuch for the conventions of life; she, finding them a bar to the free development of her wayward personality, casts them off when “ the awakening “ comes to her, and discovers, too late, that she has cast off the anchor which alone could have saved her from shipwreck. It is needless to say that the agency by which she becomes awakened is provided by another man. But he proves strong enough to resist temptation, while she is too weak to think of atoning for her fault. To her distraught think! ng, self-destruction is the only way out, and the tragedy is accomplished in picturesque fashion. The story is a simple one, not without charm, but not altogether wholesome in its tendency.
From: The Nation, August 3, 1899. Page 96
‘The Awakening’ is the sad story of a Southern lady who wanted to do what she wanted to. From wanting to, she did, with disastrous consequences; but as she swims out to sea in the end, It Is to be hoped that her example may lie for ever undredged. It is with high expectation that we open the volume, remembering the author’s agreeable short stories, and with real disappointment that we close it. The recording reviewer drops a tear over one more clever author gone wrong. Mrs. Chopin’s accustomed fine workmanship is here, the hinted effects, the well-expended epithet, the pellucid style; and, so far as construction goes, the writer shows herself as competent to write a novel as a sketch. The tint and air of Creole New Orleans and the Louisiana seacoast are conveyed to the reader with subtle skill, and among the secondary characters are several that are lifelike. But we cannot see that literature or the criticism of life is helped by the detailed history of the manifold and contemporary love affairs of a wife and mother. Had she lived by Prof. William James’s advice to do one thing a day one does not want to do (in Creole society, two would perhaps be better), flirted less an
d looked after her children more, or even assisted at more accouchements — her chef d’oeuvre In self-denial — we need not have been put to the unpleasantness of reading about her and the temptations she trumped up for herself.
From: The Land of Sunshine, July 1899. By Chas. F. Lummis Page 120
Kate Chopin, whose Bayou Folks made a favorable impression, is out with a longer, more ambitious story, The Awakening. It has the same rather flexible wrist and attentive eye, and its atmosphere is equally Louisianian. But it is not so healthful. The “Awakening” is of the animal in a Kentucky woman, nee decent, married to a New Orleans Creole, and very cheaply kindled by almost any other male person. It does not seem wise to put skill to the telling of this sort of story. The book is handsome — naturally, being published by its publishers. H S. Stone & Co., Chicago. $1.50.
From: The Outlook, June 3, 1899. Page 314
The Awakening is a decidedly unpleasant study of a temperament. The author, Kate Chopin, is known as the writer of several faithful stories of Louisiana life. This, too, is faithful enough in its presentation of certain phases of human passion and downward drift of character, but the story was not really worth telling, and its disagreeable glimpses of sensuality are repellent. (H. S. Stone & Co., Chicago.)
From: Public Opinion, June 22, 1899. Page 794
“The Awakening,” by Kate Chopin, is a feeble reflection of Bourget, theme and manner of treatment both suggesting the French novelist. We very much doubt the possibility of a woman of “solid old Presbyterian Kentucky stock” being at all like Mrs. Edna Pontellier who has a long list of lesser loves, and one absorbing passion, but gives herself only to the man for whom she did not feel the least affection. If the author had secured our sympathy for this unpleasant person it would not have been a small victory, but we are well satisfied when Mrs. Pontellier deliberately swims out to her death in the waters of the gulf. (Cloth, pp. 303. Herbert S. Stone & Co., Chicago.)
From: Public Opinion, August 17, 1899. Page 223
Mrs. Kate Chopin, it is said, does not care to talk of her work, and little is known of her life beyond the fact that she was born in St. Louis in the early fifties, educated at the Sacred Heart convent there, and married to Mr. Oscar Chopin at the age of nineteen. Until his death she lived in New Orleans and Natchitoches. Since then she has lived quietly with her children in St. Louis, avoiding society, especially that of literary or “bookish” people. The events of her literary life have been the publication of “Bayou Folk” in 1894, “A Night in Acadie” in 1897, and “The Awakening” in 1899. She is said to write seldom, but with great rapidity and little or no correction.
From: The Green Bag, August 1894. Page 392
Bayou Folk. By Kate Chopin. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, 1894. Cloth. $1.25.
A most delightful collection of stories of Louisiana life makes up the contents of this volume. The author’s pen is one of wonderful power of description, and these sketches display the hand of the real artist. There is an indescribable charm in these pictures of Creole life which fairly captivates the Northern reader. The score or more of stories, all equally well told, are none too many to satisfy the reader, for there is not a superfluous line or a suggestion of repetition in the whole book.
From: Land of Sunshine, February, 1898. Page 135
Twenty-one stories and sketches of Acadian life and love in Louisiana, by the author of Bayou Folk, part the plump covers of Kate Chopin’s A Night in Acadie most refreshingly. Here are good human stories, full of delicate feeling and vital if simple interest, in an atmosphere evidently true. A few of the numbers are slight, even for sketches, but all are graceful; and the longer stories are of those that come to the heart. Way & Williams, Chicago. $1.25.
From: The Atlantic Monthly, April 1894. Pages 558-559
To the noticeable group of Southern writers of fiction it is a pleasure to add a new name. Miss King has written enough to make her Balcony Stories a confirmation of her power; Mrs. Chopin’s Bayou Folk ‘ is, we believe, her first collection, though most, if not all of the stories which compose it have appeared in periodicals. It sometimes happens, however, that a distinctive power is not fully recognized until scattered illustrations of it are brought into a collective whole. In this case the reader perceives that Mrs. Chopin has taken for her territory the Louisiana Acadie; that she has chosen to treat of a folk that, despite long residence among no very distant kinsmen, has retained and perpetuated its own native characteristics. The exiles from Acadie who were transplanted to Puritan New England appear to have been merged in the people; those who found a more congenial resting-place amongst co-religionists and a folk of the same Latin race seem to have been more persistent in the preservation of a type. At any rate, Mrs. Chopin shows us a most interesting group in her several stories. Her reproduction of their speech is not too elaborate, and the reader who at once shuts up a book in which he discovers broken or otherwise damaged English would do well to open this again; for the writer is discreet enough to give suggestions of the soft, harmonious tongue to which the Bayou folk have reduced English speech, and not to make contributions to philology. What he will find, both in speech and manner, is a sensitiveness to passion, a keen feeling for honor, a domesticity, an indolence which has a rustic grace, and a shiftlessness which laughs at its penalties.
One in search of the pleasure which stories may bring need not suspect from this that he has fallen upon a writer who is afflicted with a purpose to add to our stock of knowledge concerning obscure varieties of the human race. Mrs. Chopin simply deals with what is familiar to her, and happens to be somewhat new in literature. She deals with it as an artist, and the entire ease with which she uses her material is born not less of an instinct for story-telling than of familiarity with the stuff out of which she weaves her stories. The first story is the longest in the book, but, like the shortest, is an episode, as it were. All of the stories are very simple in structure, but the simplicity is that which belongs to clearness of perception, not to meagreness of imagination. Now and then she strikes a passionate note, and the naturalness and ease with which she does it impress one as characteristic of power awaiting opportunity. Add to this that a pervasive humor warms the several narratives, that the persons who appear bring themselves, and are not introduced by the author, and we have said enough, we think, to intimate that in this writer we have a genuine and delightful addition to the ranks of our story-tellers. It is something that she comes from the South. It is a good deal more that she is not confined to locality. Art makes her free of literature.
From: The Nation, June 9, 1898. Page 446
A Night in Acadie
Kate Chopin tells a story like a poet, and reproduces the spirit of a landscape like a painter. Her stories are to the bayous of Louisiana what Mary Wilkins’s are to New England, with a difference, to be sure, as the Cape Jessamine Is different from the cinnamon rose, but like In seizing the heart of her people and showing the traits that come from their surroundings; like, too, in giving without a wasted word the history of main crises In their lives. That Cape Jessamine is sometimes a thought too heavy is perhaps inevitable in the heated South. But enough there Is of artistic In the best sense to hold the reader from cover to cover, transported for the time to a region of fierce passions, mediaeval chivalry, combined with rags and bad grammar, a soft, sliding Creole accent, and the tragedies and comedies that loom with special meaning In a sparsely settled” country.
From: The Interior, August 2, 1894. Page 987
Bayou Folk, by Kate Chopin. There are twenty-three short stories In this volume, and no pleasanter reading could be asked for. Ruth McEnery Stuart has a not unformidable rival in the field of Louisiana folk tales. The darkies, however, figure more Incidentally in Miss Chopin’s stories than in Mrs. Stuart’s, and, conversely, it is the Creole type which most engages the newer writer. Them she has portrayed to a nicety, having caught their spirit from the race characteristics to their soft, lazy patois. She has undoubtedly given
them a wee glamor of romance, faithfully accurate as she has tried to be, but the stories are only the better for that, for there are very splendid tragedies and comedies to be found in the lives of these simple, ardent children of the sunny South, although those same tragedies might seem less sad and those same comedies less dainty, seen without the pretty halo of the author’s refined and dainty writing. One hesitates to name a choice among so many pleasing tales, but the first three are among the best, as are, also, Desiree’s Baby, Love on the Bon-Dieu, A Visit to Avoyelles, Ma’ame Pelagie, At the ‘Cadian Ball, and La Belle Zoraide. There are several hours of pleasant reading in the three hundred pages, and many pretty touches of a really high order. [Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.]
From: The Reader Magazine, November 1904. Pages 700-701
The death of Mrs. Kate Chopin removes from the West one of its most talented writers. Mrs. Chopin was an artist of exquisite refinement, the beauty and singularity of whose work passed unnoticed, or all but unnoticed in a day of the swift triumph of more spectacular work. Her home was in St. Louis, where she moved with the French rather than the American group, but found in neither, perhaps, the companions who would incite her to sustained work. Her talent was treated by her and probably by her friends as something casual, whereas it was so fine a thing as to deserve comparison with that of George W. Cable. It is not because their subjects were similar that this comparison is suggested so much as because of the finish and fascination of their work. Both had a trick of insinuating rather than baldly relating a fact; both knew how to give a quality of elegance to a character without specifying that it was elegance, and both could present a simple situation in such a manner as to make it dramatic. Both were deficient in plots; both were at their best in their delineation of naive characters. Mrs. Chopin’s published books ought to have been supplemented by others; but she was a sensitive and a proud woman, and the indifference of the public to work which she must have known was of an exceptional quality, discouraged her. She practically ceased to write. Had she lived in the East or in England, or had she written twenty years ago, her fine abilities would have brought her appreciation. But she chanced upon an expositional time, and her beautiful and finished miniatures took up too small a space on walls devoted to striking and gawdy canvases, for them to receive their due.