Kate Chopin is considered among the most important women in nineteenth-century American fiction. She is best known for her 1899 novel, The Awakening, a once-scandalous account of one woman's growing sexuality in the American South during the Victorian era. For this novel, Chopin faced critical abuse and public denunciation as an immoralist, and she consequently abandoned writing. In more recent years, however, The Awakening has grown in stature and is now recognized as a masterpiece of its time. Critics such as Van Wyck Brooks and Edmund Wilson have commended the novel, and numerous others, including Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Anne Goodwyn Jones, and Elaine Gardiner, have subsequently revealed its social and psychological themes. The efforts of these and other critics have helped establish Chopin as a significant figure in American, particularly feminist, literature.

Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1851. Her mother, Eliza Faris O'Flaherty, was a member of...