The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Kate Chopin [2]
1863 In January Kate’s great-grandmother and teacher, Victoire Verdon Charleville, dies. In February, George O’Flaherty, Kate’s half-brother and a Confederate soldier, dies from typhoid fever.
1865 The Civil War ends. The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlaws slavery.
1866 Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton found the American Equal Rights Association to promote women’s suffrage.
1867 Kate’s teachers at the Academy of the Sacred Heart assign her to keep a commonplace book, which becomes a diary of her intellectual and social life.
1868 In June Kate graduates from the Academy. The Fourteenth Amendment grants African Americans equal protection of the law.
1869 Kate writes “Emancipation: A Life Fable.” Anthony and Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association to advocate easier divorce and to end gender inequity in employment and pay. The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) is formed in Boston.
1870 Kate marries Oscar Chopin in St. Louis; the couple spends the summer in Europe, then settles in New Orleans. Kate writes her last diary entry during her three-month honeymoon. The AWSA founds the Women’s Journal, edited by Lucy Stone. Women’s journals emerge across the nation, including The Woman Voter (New York City) and Western Woman Voter . The Fifteenth Amendment grants African-American males the right to vote.
1871 On May 22, Kate Chopin’s first son, Jean Baptiste, is born in New Orleans. She spends the summer months at Grand Isle, a resort for wealthy Creole women, which she will later use as the setting of The Awakening .
1873 Chopin’s brother Thomas dies in a buggy accident. The Comstock Law prohibits the use and prescription of contraceptives. Over the next six years Chopin’s sons Oscar, George, Frederick, and Felix and her daughter, Lelia, are born.
1879 When Oscar’s cotton business nearly fails, the family moves to Cloutierville, in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, to the plantation of Oscar’s family, where Kate becomes acquainted with the Creole community.
1882 In December Oscar dies of a severe malarial fever. The family physician, Frederick Kolbenheyer, suggests that Kate use writing as an outlet for her anger and depression.
1883 Chopin embarks upon a year-long affair with Albert Sampite, a married man.
1884 She moves back to St. Louis.
1885 Chopin’s mother, Eliza, dies in June. Kate begins reading Guy de Maupassant, who has published Une Vie (1883), followed by Bel-Ami (1885). His works inspire her to write “life, not fiction.”
1889 Chopin’s first poem, “If It Might Be,” is published in January in America, a political and literary journal. In April she brings Oscar’s body back from Cloutierville to St. Louis.
1890 Chopin’s first novel, At Fault, is published at her expense and meets unfavorable reviews. She discovers the “amoral” stories of Guy de Maupassant, whose influence is evident in The Awakening. She becomes involved with the St. Louis literary and publishing circle and socializes with feminists. On December 1, Chopin is inaugurated into the Wednesday Club, an organization whose purpose is to “create and maintain an organized center of thought and action among the women of St. Louis.” Many of the club’s members also belong to the Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri. Chopin travels to Boston in search of a publisher for her “collection of Creole stories.” Her novel Young Dr. Gosse is rejected by publishers.
1892 On April 4 Chopin resigns from the Wednesday Club after writing “Miss McEnders,” a short story satirizing the society women of St. Louis.
1893 Chopin publishes ((Désirée’s Baby,“ one of her most notable short stories, in Vogue magazine. ”Mrs. Mobry’s Reason,“ a story hinting at venereal disease that had been rejected more than a dozen times, is accepted by the New Orleans Times-Democrat. New Zealand women win the right to vote.
1894 In March Houghton Mifflin (New York) publishes Bayou Folk , the first collection