Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening and her short stories for money while she raised her kids. I'm a bit nervous about saying so, but she claimed she barely proofred her work.
Chopin wrote in the 1800's, but her stories can still raise a bit of a scandal in class discussions. I don't want to give away too much, since most students will not have read "The Storm," yet, but here are a few things that to me seem worth your comments.
- Why are or aren't things OK at the end of "The Storm"?
- If this kind of thing goes against the morés of the 1800's, why was Chopin so popular. What, if anything, does that tell us about the general practice of censorship?
- Kate Chopin's works became less known in the early 20th Century, but they have undergone fresh popularity after the 1970's.
- Are Chopin's writings useful in the way they would have been when they were written?
