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Kate Chopin in New Orleans
Imagine a young, attractive, married Kate Chopin (1850-1904), skirts pinned up, hair free, galloping bareback in rural Louisiana fields. After the ride, she boldly jumps off for a chat and a smoke with her neighbor, who gallops nearby. Stunningly virile, “stripped to the waist, stallion sweaty,” Albert Sampitié, a rumored “womanizer,” leaps down to join her. Such is a description, beautifully rendered as is much of the rich prose, in Kate Chopin in New Orleans by Rory O’Neill Schmitt and Rosary O’Neill.
Though this was likely one of the pair’s many meetups for business purposes, local gossips scandalized Chopin and Sampitié, who were married to others. If the scene took place in the 21st century, few would care, normed by celebrities’ and politicos’ untoward sexual behaviors, some “off the charts” of respectability. However, in the patriarchal, parochial Louisiana backcountry of the time, defiant Kate Chopin had to hold her head high, ignoring the askance looks and whispers of locals and putting off Victorian traditions.
Living Her Life as Freely at Possible
One theme of Kate Chopin in New Orleans reveals how Chopin, a maverick of her time, lived her life as freely as possible. Her genius in carving out her own empowerment fostered her writing career. Exceptional for an American woman at the turn of the 19th century, Kate Chopin’s writing output still stuns today.
Schmitt and O’Neill identify how Kate Chopin’s need for independence and the urge to be her own person served as writerly grist. In this hybrid-genre nonfiction work the authors emphasize that Chopin’s unique voice developed like a diamond under the pressures of her life’s experiences. In due time, when the public ripened to fully appreciate her, Chopin’s global literary renown fully blossomed.
In revealing her tumultuous life enduring the “slings and arrows” of fickle fortune, with death claiming siblings, father, husband and mother, the authors emphasize that Kate Chopin mourned all. However, the losses strengthened her. Indeed, her wondrous, shining spirit represents an iconic example for women today, the authors gently note.
Authors Hail from New Orleans
The mother-and-daughter author duo come from New Orleans and both hold Ph.D.s. They researched together and collaborated on the book, and wrote about the most salient themes embracing the indelible impact Louisiana had on Chopin’s short stories and her masterpiece The Awakening.
The authors particularly investigate Chopin’s marriage to Oscar Chopin, yielding six children in the Crescent City and rural Cloutierville, Louisiana. They parallel painter Edgar Degas’ arrival in New Orleans with Kate and Oscar’s return from France, as Oscar’s cotton brokerage moved very near to the Degas brothers’ New Orleans cotton office, represented by Edgar Degas in a famous painting. Did Oscar Chopin and the Degas brothers know each other? Descendants of Kate Chopin report that one of the men in Edgar Degas’ The Cotton Office (1873) resembles Oscar Chopin.
Cotton Exchange Failures, Financial Ruin
The failures on the cotton exchange led to the financial ruin of Oscar and the Degas brothers. Degas returned home to recoup losses and paint and support the family, while Oscar’s death from malaria three years later forced Kate to reassess and take control of their finances in Cloutierville. These new ventures in autonomy may have led to her ties with Sampitié, who at times hovered around her and the general store she owned. Eventually, when circumstances didn’t work out, Kate returned to her mother and their family home in St. Louis, Missouri in 1884.
However, the book reveals that the whispers of her artistic genius lay in Bayou Country. Again and again Kate Chopin returned to visit Oscar Chopin’s relatives in Cloutierville, after mourning her beloved mother who died in 1885.
Forging a Writing Career to Support Her Family
With little financial stability, Kate Chopin established a lucrative writing career to support herself and her children. Her subject matter included an unparalleled perspective about women, typified in the renowned “The Story of an Hour.” But predominantly she wrote with abandon about the Bayou folk she had observed and come to love. By unveiling her knowledge and understanding of the colorful folklore and evanescent magic of an alluring, remarkable Louisiana, Chopin captured the hearts of her readers. Seamlessly, organically, she threaded her short stories with the flavor and atmosphere of the evocative place of her marriage where she raised her children.
Chopin’s growing success brought her back to the Bayou. Indeed, her in-laws and relatives touted her and newspaper notices lauded her literary genius. But while most locals “fawned over her,” others resented her, rehashing the old gossip.
Repeated Returns to Cloutierville
Additionally, Schmitt and O’Neill suggest Kate Chopin returned to Cloutierville perhaps to rekindle the neighborly bonds she once enjoyed with Sampitié, a landowner and rancher. However, in investigating this possibility the authors do not amplify suggestions of an entrenched romance. Nor can history shed light on the “affair” beyond rumor.
Intriguingly, though, the point must be made that the striking Sampitié held a place in Kate Chopin’s heart. For Albert Sampitié serves as an inspiration for two of her male characters, Robert Lebrun and Alcée Arobin. These men awaken Chopin’s protagonist Edna Pontellier to her inner soul’s independence and affirmation of true spiritual freedom in Chopin’s The Awakening.
Kate Chopin in New Orleans: Embracing the Crescent City’s Beauty
The tone of Kate Chopin in New Orleans captures a poetic charm and clever whimsy which informs the engaging narrative. Relating as New Orleanians to their subject, the authors embrace her as emblematic of the Crescent City, especially in Chopin’s short stories’ subject matter and settings. As such, they have gathered other New Orleanians to share their appreciation of their adopted, artistic “ancestor,” who made her home there and walked the streets and rode the trolley cars often alone in the daytime.
Such native New Orleanians include actor/producer/writer Mark Duplass, who wrote the foreword, and fellow actor/director/writer Barret O’Brien, who contributes his poetry uplifting Kate in the chapter “The Soul of an Artist.”
Securing a Ready Understanding
Throughout, the authors secure the reader’s easy understanding of Chopin. For example, Rosary O’Neill brings Chopin to life as a character in two brief scenes of dialogue. Also, the authors include photographs of Chopin, her parents, her husband, their children, and their homes in St. Louis, New Orleans, and Cloutierville. To stir up the atmosphere of New Orleans, photos represent highlights of the city’s historic neighborhoods. Photographs come from various contributors. These include the Missouri Historical Society, the Library of Congress, Chopin’s great-grandchild Susie Chopin, and Rachelle O’Brien.
Finally, Chapter 3 contains interviews with various Chopin scholars whose profound perspectives fill in some of the mystery surrounding the writer’s life. Perhaps the most fascinating are the interviews with Chopin’s great-grandchildren. Annette Chopin Lare, Susie Chopin, Gerri Chopin Wendel, and Tom Conway discuss their relative’s legacy.
The book, comprised of two sections which inform each other, is divided into headings to guide the reader. Thus, it provides a novel and facile understanding of this amazing American woman writer. Because of the variety of contributors and modalities, one walks away with a more intimate and revelatory portrait of Kate Chopin.
The Sanctity of Freedom and Autonomy in Chopin’s Life and Work
By the conclusion of Kate Chopin in New Orleans, one cannot help but appreciate the sanctity of freedom and autonomy that embodied Chopin’s life and work, a key theme the authors emphasize. Forever, Cloutierville, New Orleans, and the state of Louisiana must remember her legacy and not abuse it with hypocrisy and overshadow it with political considerations.
Especially, the state must recognize how critics attempted to dismiss The Awakening because Chopin wrote authentically about a female character’s choices. Chopin affirmed the sanctity inherent in a woman’s right to choose freedom, despite others’ disapproval of her controversial choice. In remembrance of this great author, wisdom prevails, as Schmitt and O’Neil affirm. To attempt to suppress Chopin’s voice as expressed in The Awakening was folly in the long run. For her the spirit of freedom and truth revealed in her works resonated with a spiritual essence sacred to all life, whether acknowledged or not. Because of that spirit of freedom, Kate Chopin’s work is celebrated internationally to this day.
Kate Chopin in New Orleans is published by Acardia Publishing.
