A Morning Walk: the resurrection and the life

The April 17, 1897, issue of the Criterion in St. Louis published a story titled "An Easter Day Conversion," which its author Kate Chopin later renamed "A Morning Walk." The tale introduces the reader to Archibald, who people believe is in his 50s though he is only 40. It is the beginning of spring, and Archibald is walking amidst in the wind after a fresh rain in his village. "The spring was nothing new to him," writes Chopin, "nor was its sounds, its perfumes, its colors; nor was its tender and caressing breath; but, for some unaccountable reason, these were reaching him to-day through unfamiliar channels." But Archibald is not walking for beauty or sentiment, but for the practicality of imbibing fresh air for his health.

A man of studious habits and "mental preoccupation," he is all the same impressed by the beauty of the morning. He forgets the name of his 20-year old "saucy" neighbor Lucy when he meets her on the side of the road. They walk together, Lucy slightly teasing the older man, and she leads him to the church. It is Easter morning after all. Archibald surprises himself by going in to mass with her. He all but ignores the prayers, the songs, and the mass in general — until he hears the minister say, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." Those words were enough to cause Archibald some kind of religious conversion:

This was his text. It fell upon ears that had heard it before. It crept into the consciousness of Archibald, sitting there. As he gathered it into his soul a vision of life came with it; the poet’s vision, of the life that is within and the life that is without, pulsing in unison, breathing the harmony of an undivided existence.

He listened to no further words of the minister. He entered into himself and he preached unto himself a sermon in his own heart, as he gazed from the window through which the song came and where the leafy shadows quivered.

Besides the religious message of the story, the short text is rich with interesting thoughts and symbols. Archibald goes from a practical man who knows nothing of sentiment, a man who lopped the heads off flowers, to a man of faith. And who is Lucy, the woman who he mistakenly calls by several different names (despite having only two lines of actual dialogue in the text)? Though deemed an older man, he is somewhat attracted to her and sees her romantically, or even sexually:  "He looked down into the girl’s face, and her soft, curved lips made him think of peaches that he had bitten; of grapes that he had tasted; of a cup’s rim from which he had sometimes sipped wine." The story also uses the presence of flowers for its symbolism, much like another of Chopin's stories, "Lilacs."

Unexpected Chopin: shuddering, shrinking, shriveling

Vogue magazine's issue for September 18, 1895 included the short story "The Unexpected" by Kate Chopin (one of several by the author in that magazine in the 1890s). The short sketch opens with the separation of Randall and Dorothea, an engaged young couple in an unspecified place in the northern United States. Randall was ill, and doctors told him to go South. "The parting was bitter," Chopin writes, and their final moments together were spent in a passionate embrace.

Randall would be away for less than a month and the two exchanged letters daily. After a time, however, his illness worsened and his letters became less frequent. His return was delayed and delayed again. "All this was torture to the impatient Dorothea," though her parents would not allow her to travel to be by his side.

When his physicians tell him he would need to spend the winter in the South, he refused to let another day pass without seeing his love Dorothea. He forewarns her, however, that the illness has left him changed. When he arrives, they embrace and kiss — just as they had done before he parted from her. Now, however, Dorothea no longer recognizes the man she agreed to marry: " What hideous transformation had he undergone, or what devilish transformation was she undergoing in contemplating him?" She feels a physical change in herself as well, "something within her seemed to be shuddering, shrinking, shriveling together." Chopin explains: "She felt as if it was her heart; but it was only her love."

Dorothea realizes she no longer loves this man who has now become so sick. She does not say so, however, and listens to his proposal that they get married immediately and return to the South together. In case he dies, he wants her to have all his wealth. A coughing fit, however, calls his physician to take him away and rest. As soon as he leaves, so does Dorothea:

She sped along the familiar roadway, seemingly borne on by some force other than mechanical — some unwonted energy — a stubborn impulse that lighted her eyes, set her cheeks aflame, bent her supple body to one purpose — that was, swiftest flight.

The story ends with Dorothea lost and alone in an unrecognized place deep within uncivilized nature, where she finally answers (to herself) the answer to Randall's proposal: "Never!" The story offers a cynical view of youthful idealism in beauty, love, and marriage. The reader is left to wonder if Dorothea will ever marry at all, and if Randall ever receives her message.

The lilacs were crushed between them

"Did you ever know, Sister Agathe, that there is nothing which so keenly revives a memory as a perfume—an odor?" So asks Adrienne, the main character in Kate Chopin's short story "Lilacs." Published on December 20, 1896 in the New Orleans Times-Democrat, the tale is unusual for Chopin in that it is not set in Louisiana but, instead, in Paris. Adrienne is an actress/musician/dancer who was apparently raised partially in a convent. Every year, with the first scents of the blooming lilacs, she travels back to that convent to visit for two weeks:

"...the scent of the lilacs at once changed the whole current of my thoughts and my despondency. The boulevard, its noises, its passing throng, vanished from before my senses as completely as if they had been spirited away. [I imagined that] I was standing here with my feet sunk in the green sward as they are now. I could see the sunlight glancing from that old white stone wall, could hear the notes of birds, just as we hear them now, and the humming of insects in the air. And through all I could see and could smell the lilac blossoms, nodding invitingly to me from their thick-leaved branches. It seems to me they are richer than ever this year, Sister Agathe."

Though her trip is apparently an annual tradition, Adrienne never announces her departure in advance, leaving her servant and her employer confused and worried about her sudden absence. Her servant worries about Adrienne's sanity, in fact, suggesting her sudden disappearance is "an attack of lunacy which seizes her once a year."

This visit to the convent shows a fascinating opposition to her usual life. In the busy city, all is chaos and disorder, represented by Chopin by the messy room in which she lives (described as being in an "its accustomed state of picturesque disorder"). The convent, however, is clean, ordered, and far from the bustle of the city. Adrienne meticulously folds her clothes here and carefully drapes them on a chair, unlike her more casual habits at home.

Throughout the story, potential themes of lesbianism are interwoven. Just what is Adrienne's relationship with Sister Agathe? Coming up the road, her gift of freshly-picked lilacs in hand, Adrienne is greeted by Sister Agathe in an enthusiastic embrace, while all the other nuns merely await her from the door:

But Sister Agathe, more daring and impulsive than all, descended the steps and flew across the grass to meet her. What embraces, in which the lilacs were crushed between them! What ardent kisses! What pink flushes of happiness mounting the cheeks of the two women!

The two women share a bed during her visit, and Adrienne admits she is having difficulty sleeping. "The excitement of my arrival—I don't know what—keeps me awake." The "I don't know what" may have been the cause of Adrienne's unceremonious banishment from the convent after that trip. The story closes with both Adrienne and Sister Agathe crying, as the customary gift of lilacs are swept away.

Doctor Chevalier's Lie: shoulders were shrugged

Kate Chopin wrote "Doctor Chevalier's Lie" in September 1892, though, after an initial rejection, it was not published until 1893 in the October 5 issue of Vogue. It was credited only to "K.C." and earned Chopin $4.00 (the anonymity, some speculate, was because the story was based on true events). The story — or, more accurately, the short sketch — starts with a gunshot:

The quick report of a pistol rang through the quiet autumn night. It was no unusual sound in the unsavory quarter where Dr. Chevalier had his office. Screams commonly went with it. This time there had been none.

Despite the lack of screams, the physician Chevalier knows he will be soon be needed and puts away the book he was reading. The scene he comes upon, he thinks, is typical: groups of frightened or sobbing women, the morbidly curious, and the dead body sprawled before them. This one was different, however. As he looked upon the face of the dead woman who had fired the gun at her temple, he quickly recognized her.

Dr. Chevalier remembered her when he met her in a simple cabin in Arkansas where he spent time with her and her loving family. He took it upon himself to see to her burial arrangements and wrote a letter to her family: "One, doubtless, to carry sorrow, but no shame to the cabin down there in the forest." Sending with the letter locks of her hair and "other trinkets," he writes only that she has died of an illness and even invents "tender" last words. The lie referenced in the title was that he did not say to her family what the girl had become: a prostitute.

Of course it was noised about that Doctor Chevalier had cared for the remains of a woman of doubtful repute. Shoulders were shrugged. Society thought of cutting him. Society did not, for some reason or other, so the affair blew over.

Chopin: Love on the Bon-Dieu

"Love on the Bon-Dieu" was originally published as "Love and Easter" on October 3, 1891, though the author, Kate Chopin, frequently republished it before finally including it in her collection Bayou-Folk in 1894. The short story focuses on Lalie, a poor Cajun girl who has "a frailness that indicated a lack of wholesome and plentiful nourishment." While waiting to ask the local priest Pére Antoine for help convincing the local store owner to trade eggs for good shoes she can use for Easter,  she meets Azenor. Azenor immediately pities the girl, who stands out at Easter mass for wearing very simple clothes compared to the other people:

He was angered against other young women who passed him, because of their flowers and ribbons, when she wore none. He himself did not care, but he feared she might, and watched her narrowly to see if she did.

Lalie didn't mind. In fact, through the story, she endures uncomplainingly - not only her poverty, but also the strange grandmother whom she lives with (in one scene, she is crooning at the moon). Azenor gives Lalie a beautifully decorated Easter egg. Other girls tease him for his interest in her. He then provides her with a substantial meal, without her knowing he was her benefactor. The next Sunday, however, she does not appear in church and Pére Antoine tells him she is sick.

Azenor, without hesitation, rushes to the small, decrepit home where she lives. He is ashamed that he never went sooner, realizing that he had been afraid of her poverty. "Fear had kept him,—dread to see her desolate life face to face. He did not know he could bear it." He finds her ill and weak, but still clutching the Easter egg he had given her. Immediately, he knows that she loves him as much as he loves her. He picks her up and carries her back to home, where he announces to a servant that she must fetch the priest so that they can be married. As he carries her:

Once, where the water was trickling cool through rocks, he stopped to lave Lalie's hot cheeks and hands and forehead. He had not once touched his lips to her. But now, when a sudden great fear came upon him because she did not know him, instinctively he pressed his lips upon hers that were parched and burning. He held them there till hers were soft and pliant from the healthy moisture of his own.
Then she knew him. She did not tell him so, but her stiffened fingers relaxed their tense hold upon the Easter bauble. It fell to the ground as she twined her arm around his neck; and he understood.

Chopin: prostrate with grief

Kate Chopin had a difficult life. For one, her four siblings all died before reaching adulthood. Her husband died young and, in financial difficulty, she moved back to St. Louis at the insistence of her mother, Eliza Faris O'Flaherty. Her mother, however, died of cancer shortly thereafter on June 28, 1885. Kate Chopin was "literally prostrate with grief."

Eliza O'Flaherty had a substantial influence on her daughter Kate Chopin. Perhaps most importantly, O'Flaherty was Creole (the "O'Flaherty" name came from her Ireland-born husband) and she retained a French accent which inspired her daughter's writing. But her death left the 35-year old Chopin, as biographer Emily Toth wrote, "at the head of a generational chain." All of her siblings were dead, as were both her parents and her husband. She moved to the other side of the city, far away from her childhood home. A family friend and doctor urged Chopin to write to overcome her grief — an occupation which also resulted in an income and allowed her to provide for her own six children. Her first published work was music: a polka for piano (1888) she originally composed for her daughter:

*My sources for this post are Unveiling Kate Chopin (1999) by Emily Toth and Kate Chopin's Private Papers (1998) edited by both Emily Toth and Per Seyersted.

The genuine book critic was so rare a bird

After the publication of her book Bayou Folk, Kate Chopin was dismayed by critical response — not based on whether the reviews were positive or negative, but if they offered legitimate critique. In a diary entry dated June 7, 1894, she wrote:

In looking over more than a hundred press notices of "Bayou Folk" which have already been sent to me, I am surprised at the very small number which show anything like a worthy critical faculty. They might be counted upon the fingers of one hand. I had no idea the genuine book critic was so rare a bird. And yet I receive congratulations from my publishers upon the character of the press notices.

For one, Chopin was worried she would be labeled as a "dialect writer" or local color author, thereby dismissing the additional merits of her work. Either way, 1894 made the St. Louis-born Chopin a nationally-known writer. In addition to the collection of stories in Bayou Folk, she published several other in several periodicals throughout the country. The variety of reviews further spread her fame.

Bayou Folk included the story "Beyond the Bayou," about a black woman named "La Folle" who had, according to locals, lost her senses and confined herself into an imaginary circle around her cabin and farm. She befriended a local boy whom she calls Chéri, who offers to hunt squirrels for her supper. The boy, however, accidentally shoots himself instead and La Folle must take him to find help:

She had reached the abandoned field. As she crossed it with her precious burden, she looked constantly and restlessly from side to side. A terrible fear was upon her, — the fear of the world beyond the bayou, the morbid and insane dread she had been under since childhood. When she was at the bayou's edge she stood there, and shouted for help as if a life depended upon it... Then shutting her eyes, she ran suddenly down the shallow bank of the bayou, and never stopped till she had climbed the opposite shore.

*This information in this post, particularly the dated diary entry, was found in Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography (1980) by Per Seyersted, University of Louisiana Press.

Chopin: the voice and the dream

Though best known as the author of the feminist novel The Awakening, Kate Chopin wrote many other works. The Louisiana writer, perhaps most surprisingly, also wrote several poems. One, "By the Meadow Gate," is dated October 24, 1898, and slyly questions the expected roles of male/female:

Over the hill and across the ford and down by the meadow gate
A girl is asleep in the long, cool grass.
The soft winds blow and the soft winds pass;
The birds call: "awake!" but they do not stay
While the maid is dreaming the time away
           By the meadow gate

Over the hill and across the ford and down by the meadow gate
A youth with the light of the boundless skies
A glow in his soul and a flame in his eyes,
Follows a voice that is never still,
Trading the path to the distant hill
           By the meadow gate

Over the hill and across the ford and down by the meadow gate
The voice and the dream are near — so near,
That if he but listened his heart might hear.
Now he may follow the years and afar,
He may walk from the world to the evening star
           Past the meadow gate.

Over the hill and across the ford and down by the meadow gate
May her days be many, her days be few,
The dream of the maiden will never come true.
For the soft wind carried the moment away,
And the birds they sang, but they would not stay
           By the meadow gate.

Chopin: the reproach of being a cabin

It was on this date on October 1, 2008, that the former home of writer Kate Chopin burned down. The Cloutierveille, Louisiana house, which had become the Bayou Folk Museum, was a total loss.

The structure was built in the first few years of the 19th century but it was not until 1879 it was purchased by Kate Chopin's husband Oscar. After her husband's death, Chopin moved out in 1884 and settled in the city of her birth, St. Louis, where she began her writing career in earnest.

In the small town, over 250 miles from New Orleans, Kate Chopin entertained many visitors who adored her sociability and intellect. She spent her days going for walks and riding horses. She fictionalized the town in her short story, "For Marse Chouchoute":

They lived quite at the end of this little French village, which was simply two long rows of very old frame houses, facing each other closely across a dusty roadway.

Their home was a cottage, so small and so humble that it just escaped the reproach of being a cabin.

For those of us who see the importance of a sense of place in literary studies, the story of the fire that destroyed Chopin's home is devastating. That it was so recent only makes the wound feel that much fresher. For another picture of the ruins, see here. More information  on the fire, including a response from Chopin's descendants, is available at the Kate Chopin International Society page.

Chopin: cannot fail to attract much attention

The advertisement promised "stories... quite unlike most other American tales, and [which] cannot fail to attract much attention." So claimed an advertisement in the March 17, 1894 issue of Publishers Weekly. The "semi-alien" characters in this upcoming book are "picturesque and altogether worthy of description and literary preservation" — all for a cover price of $1.25. The book in question was Bayou Folk, featuring stories about Creoles and Acadians in Louisiana.

The author, Kate Chopin, presented what must have seemed exotic: a representation of the scenes and dialects of these people (though, according to the ad, these dialects are not used "at such length to be tedious"). Chopin had previously lived in Louisiana, until the death of her husband Oscar Chopin left her with too much debt and she moved to St. Louis. Oscar, many years earlier, had found out his father was beating his mother, and helped her escape him.

Reviewers certainly noted the book's uniqueness, awed by appearances of alligators and strange insects. But, what critics failed to notice, was that these coorful stories were really about the universal condition of women. In the tale "In Sabine," for example, a traveler named Grégoire comes upon the home of Bud Aiken and recognizes his young wife as someone from his home town. 'Tite Reine ("little queen"), as she is called, seems embarrassed, but giving him imploring looks; Grégoire vows to spend the night and find out her secret. In the middle of the night, she wakes him, crying:

"Mista Grégoire," drawing close to him and whispering in his face, "Bud's killin' me." He clasped her arm, holding her near him, while an expression of profound pity escaped him... "I tell you, he beats me; my back an' arms — you ought to see — it's all blue. He would 'a' choke' me to death one day w'en he was drunk." ...[Grégoire] was wondering if it would really be a criminal act to go then and there and shoot the top of Bud Aiken's head off. He himself would hardly have considered it a crime, but he was not sure of how others might regard the act.

Unable to read or write, 'Tite Reine cannot contact family in her home town. Now, Bud plans to move her further away from home. "Oh, don't leave me here, Mista Grégoire! don't leave me behind you!" she implores. With the help of her only friend, a local black man she calls Uncle Mortimer, Grégoire helps her escape then steals Bud's horse, leaving Bud unable to follow after her.

*Much of the information from this post comes from Kate Chopin: A Literary Life (2001) by Nancy A. Walker. See also Kate Chopin (2007), which includes an essay by Emily Toth which was particularly helpful here.

Chopin: count it happiness, indeed, to live

Katherine O'Flaherty was born in St. Louis, Missouri on February 8, 1850 (some sources incorrectly list her birth year as 1851). She would be remembered as Kate Chopin after her 1870 marriage to Oscar Chopin, known as the author of the feminist novel The Awakening (1899). Her earliest published work, however, was a poem. "If It Might Be" was published in 1889 in the Chicago-based magazine America.

Chopin suffered depression after the death of her husband and, shortly after, her mother. Left in debt, her late husband's business failed and she moved back to St. Louis after living in New Orleans. A family friend and physician suggested she turn to writing. She was prolific as a prose writer, often detailing conflicted emotions as a woman. Of her poems, however, only about 20 survive, including "If It Might Be":

If it might be that thou didst need my life;
Now on the instant would I end this strife
'Twixt hope and fear, and glad the end I'd meet
With wonder only, to find death so sweet.

If it might be that thou didst need my love;
To love thee dear, my life's fond work would prove.
All time, to tender watchfulness I'd give;
And count it happiness, indeed, to live.

*Recommended reading: Unveiling Kate Chopin (1999) by Emily Toth and, of course, Chopin's outstanding novel The Awakening.