SOURCE: Delbanco, Andrew. “Was Kate Chopin a Feminist?” In Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now, pp. 113-32. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.

In the following essay, Delbanco explains why he believes Chopin's works deserve a place among the classics of American literature.

It seems a long time ago that teachers could distribute without embarrassment The Lifetime Reading Plan or some such guide to literacy and expect students to measure their progress toward adulthood by the number of checks beside the titles read. There is a certain comfort in the authority of lists. But since we may never again have such lists, the idea of the classic—if it is to be preserved at all—needs to be saved from the idea of the absolute. In a charming rescue operation conducted some years ago, Frank Kermode gave this modest definition of what a classic is: “A...