Kate Chopin scandalized the 19th century and triggered a revolution in the 20th. She set her stories in New Orleans and in the bayous and backwaters of Louisiana—a lush Creole world that awakened desire and longings for freedom. Lost for over half a century, her fiction has been unearthed and rediscovered for our time.
This Louisiana Public Broadcasting production revisits the life and work of renowned nineteenth-century Louisiana author Kate Chopin. She is best known for her work The Awakening, the story of a woman's self-realization that shocked the Victorian establishment. Actress Kelly McGillis (Witness) narrates the documentary and actress JoBeth Williams (The Big Chill) reads passages from Chopin's fiction.
A native of Missouri, Kate O'Flaherty married Oscar Chopin, the son of a wealthy Louisiana cotton grower, in 1870 and moved to New Orleans. They later relocated with their six children to the Chopin family home near Cloutierville in Natchitoches Parish. In 1882 Oscar died of swamp fever, and Kate and the children moved back to St. Louis, where she began writing to support the family. Nearly all of her work is set in the areas around New Orleans, Grand Isle and Natchitoches, and provides a vivid window into Louisiana life near the turn of the century.
Her early stories were well-received nationally and earned her literary fame as a "local colorist," even appearing in the first issue of Vogue. However, her career was devastated when The Awakening was published in 1899. It drew a storm of criticism for its "shocking, morbid, and vulgar" story and quickly went out of print. The novel was not resurrected until the 1950s, when its importance was recognized by participants in the growing women's movement. Today The Awakening is among the five most-read American novels in colleges and universities and is considered an early example of American realism.
National and international authorities on Chopin and Southern literature and culture contributed to this program, including Dr. Emily Toth of Louisiana State University; Elizabeth Fox-Genovese of Emory University; Barbara Ewell of Loyola University, New Orleans; R.W.B. Lewis of Yale University; Peggy Prenshaw of Louisiana State University; and Dr. Jean Bardot of France.
Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening was produced by Tika Laudun and Lucille McDowell and directed by Tika Laudun, based on a script by Anna Reid Jhirad. The program was photographed by Rex Fortenberry and edited by Randy Ward, with digital photo restoration and effects by Steve Mitchum. Funding was provided in part by grants from the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a transcript of the documentary Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening. The program was produced by Louisiana Public Broadcasting and premiered on PBS on June 23, 1999.
The people walked in little groups toward the beach. They talked and laughed. Some of them sang...
There were strange, rare odors abroad—a tangle of the sea smell and of weeds, and damp, new plowed earth, mingled with the heavy perfume of a field of white blossoms somewhere near....
She was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.
On the eve of the 20th century, Kate Chopin confronted the fundamental dilemma of what it meant to be a woman. In a stream of stories and in her novel, The Awakening, she explored the unsparing truth of women's submerged lives.
Chopin's stories were set in Louisiana in the aftermath of war. It would be a landscape she would draw from memory in the final years of her life.
Kate Chopin's own story began four decades earlier, further north along the river.
St. Louis in the 1850s still harbored the spirit of a fur-trading town, but the city was expanding as waves of settlers passed through to the West.
Here on the Front Street levee, Captain Thomas O' Flaherty, an Irish merchant, furnished them with boats and supplies.
He had married Eliza Faris when she was only 16, but her family had fallen on hard times and needed financial support. She gave him legitimacy in the French Creole aristocracy.
In 1850 their daughter Kate was born.
They were doing well. Then fate intervened.
On November 1st, 1855, Thomas O'Flaherty joined city leaders in celebration of a new line of the Pacific Railroad. Just as the train crossed a bridge, the structure buckled under the weight. Ten cars plunged thirty feet into the river, amidst rain and lightning. Kate's father and 29 others were killed.
Kate was only five, in a household now run solely by women.
Her great-grandmother, Mme. Victoire Charleville, determined to take over her education. She taught Kate music and French.
The nuns at Sacred Heart convent took over her days, with an elite education for French intellectual women. It was unusual, given that most girls didn't go to school at all.
There she met Kitty Garesche, a classmate.
Emily Toth: They had the kind of a friendship that a lot of girls have that really helps, helps them throughout life, having someone to tell secrets to and to share a lot of things with. It was the one lasting relationship throughout Kate's life.
But there were hardships. Civil War intervened.
Tragedies in the O'Flaherty household multiplied with the deaths of Kate's half-brother and Mme. Charleville.
Kitty's family was forced to leave town when it was learned her father was supplying the Confederates with guns. Kate and Kitty did not see each other for years.
When they finally came together again in the late 1860s, they were young women of marriageable age. "I do not think that Kate resembled her mother so much as her father," Kitty remembered, "She was an Irish beauty. Her eyes were brown and looked right at you."
Meanwhile, Kitty had decided to enter a convent. It was as if a curtain had fallen between them. The 1870's was a time of few choices for women. Kate's questioning of Catholicism and of women's roles came to the fore in her story, Lilacs.
Lilacs
Mme. Adrienne Farival never announced her coming, but the good nuns knew very well to look for her. With the scent of lilacs, Sister Agathe would turn to the window, upon her face the happy beatific expression with which pure and simple souls watch for the coming of those they love. . . . Adrienne rang the bell. The door was opened cautiously by a lay sister, who stood there with downcast eyes and flaming cheeks, saying "by order of our Mother Superior," after which she closed the door. Adrienne remained, stunned. The lilacs fell from her arms.
Barbara Ewell: The story sets up this relationship, this tension between the need in people's lives for sensuality, for the physical, for that kind of innocence and physicality represented by childhood that Adrienne comes to recapture, Adrienne comes to recapture in her time at the convent. Set against that is a morality, the rigid morality of Catholicism which will not permit, which will not tolerate the juxtaposition of innocence and physicality, and sensuality... that you have to be innocent or you have to be sexual. You can't be both.
Kate chose another path and stepped into a world of social engagements.
Many were held at Oakland, the elegant country home of Louis A. Benoist. It was the heart of St. Louis's French Creole society.
At one of these gala affairs Kate met Oscar Chopin, the son of a wealthy Louisiana planter and a relative of the Benoist family.
On June 9th, 1870, they married and embarked on a three month tour of Europe.
By the time they reached Paris, the Franco-Prussian war had broken out.
On August 19 Kate despaired, "Rain still falling so Oscar went out alone and returned with the very sad news of the war. Never have the French armies suffered such repeated mortifications."
Oscar and Kate were forced to retreat to his native Louisiana and settle in New Orleans in the Fall of 1870.
It was a world unto itself.
She arrived in the city pregnant with her first child.
She recalled, "I can remember yet that hot southern day on Magazine Street in New Orleans... waking from out of a stupor to see in my mother's arms a little piece of humanity all dressed in white which they told me was my little son!"
Over the decade, five more children were born.
Kate's time in New Orleans offered characters and settings to explore.
But to Oscar, the city stirred only bitter frustration. Business at the Cotton Exchange was down forty percent. The aftermath of the war affected everyone, white and black alike.
Kate's fiction would explore some of the racial tensions that had swept through the city during and before her time there...
La Belle Zoraide
Zoraide had seen the beau Mezor dance the Bamboula in Congo Square as proud looking as a king and Zoraide grew sick with love for Mezor. But when Zoraide kneeled before her mistress, and asked to marry Mezor. . . Madame Delariviere was speechless with rage. Mezor was sold away into Georgia where he would no longer hear his Creole tongue spoken, nor dance Calinda, nor hold la belle Zoraide in his arms. When their baby was born, Zoraide came out of the awful shadow. But the baby was removed (and) sent away to Madame's plantation far up the coast. Zoraide could only moan . . "Li mouri, li mouri," and turned her face to the wall. . . She was known ever after as "Zoraide la folle."
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: With Chopin the dark crannies of the human soul were part of what is to be human. It was part of her war against platitudes. If you look only at the surfaces you're not going to begin to understand what people are about. It's a measure of both her talent and her character, her strength as a woman, that she didn't find the depths of the human soul, even human depravity, threatening.
Where Kate explored, Oscar leapt to take a stand. He joined a White League in opposition to black leaders and Union forces. On September 14, 1874, the League led a full-scale riot in New Orleans. It took a week for Federal troops to restore order.
Five years later, economic pressures finally forced the Chopins to move. In 1879, they retreated to Oscar's ancestral home in northwest Louisiana.
Here along the Red River in Natchitoches Parish lay remnants of one of the oldest French plantation communities in America.
Emily Toth: She was plunked into a tiny town of 600 or 700 people. There really was just one long street and then fields. She never fit in.
The land became the central focus of Chopin's first novel, At Fault, and many of her short stories.
A No-Account Creole
There were acres of open land cultivated in a slovenly fashion, but so rich that cotton and corn and weed and "cocoa-grass" grew rampant ...
The Negro quarters were at the far end of this open stretch, and consisted of a long row of old and very crippled cabins. Directly back of these a dense wood grew, and held much mystery, and witchery of sound and shadow, and strange lights when the sun shown.
Of a gin house there was left scarcely a trace.
They dealt with the despair of Creoles ruined by the war.
Ma'ame Pelagie
About the great, solemn pillars, she reached her arms, and pressed her cheek and lips upon the senseless brick. Adieu! Adieu! (she) whispered......
She had grown very old. While the outward pressure of a young and joyous existence had forced her footsteps into the light, her soul had stayed in the shadow of the ruin.
They told of Acadians and former slaves gathering for weekly dances in the woods.
A Night in Acadie
Telesphore, looking out across the prairie, could see them coming from all directions. The little Creole ponies.....the mule carts....The Negro musicians . . .
There was the same scene every Saturday at Foche's. And all on account of the gumbo. . .. Foche stormed at old black Doute for her extravagance... she hurled it back at him while into the pot went the chickens and the pans-full of minced ham, and the fists full of onion and sage and piment rouge...She knew how to cook.
Barbara Ewell: There was great demand for short fiction at that period, and one of the genres that was most popular was the one known as "local color," which offered descriptions of the varied parts of the country, exotic parts of the country. It was pretty clear to her early on that it was her southern stories, her Louisiana stories that sold.
While the land inspired her imagination, her time there was limited.
A mere three years after they had arrived, Oscar became ill with malaria and died. It was fifteen days before Christmas.
Kate tried to hang on, taking over Oscar's place as manager of their plantation store, even keeping shop herself.
By 1884, legal matters were settled. Kate moved back to her native St. Louis, now a major commercial center.
Chopin seemed happy and the children were settled. Then on June 28, 1885, her mother, Eliza O'Flaherty, died. It was devastating. Kate felt she had lost her best friend.
She was now absolutely alone, with six children to support, the oldest of whom was fourteen. She had only a modest income.
In the 1880s, writing was one of few ways women could make a living, averaging some $l5 to $30 a story, and a few hundred for a novel.
At the age of 45, Chopin began her own journey towards becoming a published writer.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: The writer she especially admired was the short story and novella writer, Guy de Maupassant, who perfected a kind of writing that she took very seriously.
"Here was life, not fiction".. she wrote in her diary. "Here was a man who escaped from tradition and authority, who had entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being and with his own eyes; and who, in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw."
Her first work, a poem, appeared in January 1889. Soon it was her short stories that proved most successfull. Her social world expanded. Her home became a literary center.
David Chopin: She used to have these Thursday afternoon soirées and all the poets and the writers and editors and people who happened to be in town were there.
She seemed to be thriving, but how much freedom did an artist really have? In 1897, Chopin was beginning her most ambitious novel, The Awakening.
The Awakening
Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim. . . but that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence. . . . Once she turned and looked toward the shore . . .a quick vision of death smote her soul. .
The novel was set on Grand Isle, a fashionable resort for New Orleans' Creole elite. It is the story of Edna Pontellier, a discontented wife and mother. Her visit to the island and the sensuality of the Gulf trigger an awakening.
Barbara Ewell: Its spontaneity, and its physical demands opens up Edna to places in her heart and in her soul she'd lost contact with, maybe had never known were there.
The Awakening
Edna, left alone in the little side room, loosened her clothes, removing the greater part of them . . .
She looked at her round arms as she held them straight up and rubbed them one after the other, observing closely, as if it were something she saw for the first time, the fine, firm quality and texture of her flesh. . .
Barbara Ewell: I don't think any other writer of the period, certainly no male writer, and I don't think any other woman writer tried to understand what happens when a woman experiences her own sexual being and her own self. And of course, that's exactly the tragedy and the dilemma that Chopin is exploring in her fiction which is, what happens, how do you get past this, this bind for women that if you possess your own self, if you possess your own body, you know that the options the society offers you are marriage and death.
By novel's end, Edna has awakened to herself, but finds no place for that self in the world she knows. She swims out to sea till her strength is gone.
The Awakening
The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the million lights of the sun. . . .
Along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long sweeping stroke. She went on and on.
The question was whether Americans were prepared to read such emancipated fiction. There were a few positive letters, then the critical reviews came in.
David Chopin: They destroyed her spirit when they came out with all this adverse reaction and one of the newspapers called it pure poison and not fit for babes, and there was an awful lot of criticism.
Barbara Ewell: Once you begin to push against those margins, against those limits, you begin to offend people. You begin to offend convention and expectations, and that's exactly what Kate Chopin ran into with The Awakening.
After the harsh reception of her novel, Chopin retreated into private life. She sank into obscurity.
There was a brief moment of optimism when the Louisiana Exposition, a World's Fair, came to St. Louis. On August 20th, 1904, Chopin visited the fair grounds.
David Chopin: Right there at her door step were representatives from nations from over the globe, and there were lights, and there was action, and there was dancing and there were things to see and things to do and you can understand why she would like to put a lot of time in over there on that midway.
It was a hot day and she returned exhausted. That night she had a stroke.
David Chopin: I believe she died on a Monday, and I think Dad was the last one to see her alive. But he spoke of her with such pride.
Barbara Ewell: What drove Kate Chopin was her passion for writing, and her willingness to let writing take her into places that she had never been herself, necessarily. And certainly, the literary traditions out of which she came had never really gone.
It was in the late 20th century that her writings were really recovered. They came back into print, and they were newly recognized and appreciated by critics, and taught in schools, and that's what brings a writer back into currency.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: The rediscovery of The Awakening came as a Godsend, the most incredible gift to the women's movement.
Emily Toth: I'd first read her when I was given a copy of The Awakening by a woman who said to me, "You should read this book," and the big question that we asked ourselves was how did Kate Chopin know all that in 1899?
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: She's one of those writers whose sense of craft puts her right on the edge of poetry.
The Awakening
She could have shouted for joy. A feeling of exultation overtook her as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul.
How strange and awful to stand naked under the sky! How delicious! She felt like some newborn creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world it had never known.
INTERVIEWS
These are exceprts of interviews made during the production of Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening.
David Chopin,
Kate's Grandson
On Chopin and the St. Louis literary scene:
Well, it was really a kind of byway, an inn or hotel for just about every artistic person who came through town and was in town. She used to have these Thursday afternoon soirées and all the poets and the writers and the editors and people who happened to be in town were there. She sat there like the Grand Dame she was and entertained them. Dad used to speak about those times, and he himself was pretty fast with words and he kind of captured the whole spirit of what his mother had been doing. And I'd like to have been there to have enjoyed that myself because it was really a literary island I guess in the literary scene of St. Louis, and it really stood out.
On Chopin's impetuousness:
The story goes that during the time of the Civil War the sympathies were for the South and she went out one time and tore down an American flag that was on the porch. I don't know if she was going to replace it with a Confederate flag or not, but she got into a lot of hot water because of that. Well, she was that kind of a person, you know, she had a strong feeling and she acted on it, and a lot of people would have been afraid to do it. But she was . . . I guess you might call her either impetuous or concerned or dedicated and so forth, so she went ahead and did it, and it almost landed her in jail.
On Chopin's burial in a Catholic cemetery:
People knew that Kate had left the church, and . . . somebody remembered that they saw her coming down the steps of St. Francis Xavier Church, which is in mid-town St. Louis, and figured that maybe the reason she was in church was to go to confession, and get back into the bosom of the church again. So it's my understanding that on the basis of that little incident that they opened up the gates and allowed her to be buried where she is today in Calvary Cemetery.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese,
Emory University
On Chopin and modernism:
She was very important as one of the earliest examples of modernism in the United States or, if you wish, the cutting edge of modernism in American literature. . . .She was very much interested in Guy de Maupassant. She was a pre-eminent stylist and she was as much interested I think in how you told the story as the story itself. In that sense—perspective, point of view, craft, use of imagery, multiple perspectives— this legacy of appearance in reality which can be seen to come somewhat out of the New Orleans experience that things are not always what they seem and they seem different to different players. All of these then formed her style, the way in which she wrote and I think one reason that some of her stories were very short was because she was self-consciously experimenting with stylistic concerns every bit as much as thematic ones.
On Chopin and feminism:
Kate was neither a feminist nor a suffragist, she said so. She was nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously. She never doubted women's ability to be strong. She came from a long line of strong women whom she loved and respected, the great-grandmother, grandmother, mother affiliation. She had strong women friends including intellectual women. Her lack of interest in feminism and suffrage did not have to do with a lack of confidence in women nor did it have a lack to do with a lack of any desire for freedom. She simply had a different understanding of freedom. She saw freedom as much more a matter of spirit, soul, character of living your life within the constraints that the world makes [or] your God offers you, because all of us do live within constraints. There's no indication that for example she regretted her marriage, or regretted being a mother. Any of us can chafe at specific responsibilities and want more time for our work or for ourselves. But there's no evidence that she wanted to throw all of that away, nor is there evidence that she wanted to restructure the world. I think she was much more interested in the excitement, the civilization that came in her circle of intellectual friends. That was freedom, the freedom to explore ideas. I don't think she was someone who believed you had to act out every thing that you thought. And I suspect that she may even have believed you have greater freedom of thought if you did not believe that every thought leads to an action. Very European, very solidly of her class.
I think she was an exceptionally talented and interesting woman and if I resist labeling her feminist or suffragist, or claiming her for a specific view of what women require or what women's independence requires, women's freedom requires. I resist it because I think she's much larger and more important than that. I don't think we do her any honor or further our own understanding by tying her to a particular political cause. I think she really was a dedicated and talented writer, who worked very hard to capture ineffable, delicate ideas and feelings in a prose that would do them justice.
On Chopin's Black characters:
I think in general she came as close to seeing Blacks the way she would have seen any other human being whom she didn't know intimately as pretty much any writer of the post-bellum period in the United States. It's interesting because Grace King and George Washington Cable have some of the same talent and sensibility and they both come from New Orleans. But it seems to me there are a couple of things that are very important to understand about Chopin's treatment of Blacks. The first is that she did not normally write from a subjective perspective. She didn't normally try to put herself intimately in the head of a character, to write in first person so that her narratives are not confessional. What we know about people's feelings always come from indirection and occasional report by the narrator, by small signs of their interactions with other people. I can pick one example, it's not a Black character, but, but seems to me just incredibly telling toward the beginning of The Awakening.
Edna is coming back from the beach and she encounters her husband and they look at one another and she looks, and he looks at her hands which are ringless and brown, and she puts her hands out and he drops the rings into them. And not a word has been exchanged between those two people. And yet you know on the basis of that brief scene, so brief many critics don't even notice it, that we're looking at a marriage of several years in which there is considerable neutral understanding between the two partners. Worldless, wordless understanding. That is a very typical Chopin technique and she uses it with Black characters as well as with white.
When people think, as I think they sometimes do, that she's a bit stereotypical or not sufficiently empathetic with her Black characters, they're normally responding to her use of dialect and to the distinctions that appear between Black and white characters based on the ways in which they speak. Again, I think it's easy to miss that Chopin was above all interested in capturing how people spoke, any people. In other words, her white characters, even her upper class white characters, each has a distinct pattern of speech. There's nothing as dramatic as the dialect. And one could say. . . that she didn't always get it perfectly. But she had coolly listened and what she was trying to capture was how these characters sounded. And it seems to me that's very much part of both her talent and a certain kind of reticence or humility as an author, that in portraying characters you start from the outside, from what you can know. And you don't pretend to know more than you can at the outset. The deeper recesses of character and motivations emerge from action, conversation, or the unfolding of the plot.
On Chopin's view of the soul:
She very much wanted to understand the vagaries [and complexities] of the human soul. She had been raised a Catholic; she did understand original sin. She also knew—whatever her own faith in her later years—she had been brought up with the knowledge that God loves every one of us. . . . It's a sensibility that would take even more extreme form in Flannery O'Connor, the Georgia writer of the mid-20th Century, who looked at the grotesque. With Chopin the dark crannies of the human soul were part of what it is to be human. It was part of her war against platitudes, it was part of her sense that there's no true beauty without complexity, conflict, the friction of stone against pavement, or one of those street cars, iron against the brick railroad. Its that sense of tragedy and complexity. That is, if you look only at the surfaces or if you look only at the Hallmark card view of the world, you're not going to begin to understand what people are about. And I think it's a measure of both her talent and her character, her strength as a woman, that she didn't find the depths of the human soul, even human depravity, threatening. Part of knowing who you are for her I think is to be able to look at different kinds of experience, different kinds of people, appreciate them, empathize with them, without seeing it as an immediate call to judgement.
On Chopin's support of slavery:
It's important not to underestimate the influence of her Catholicism which was quite comfortable with the idea, in fact promoted the idea that every human person could be excellent, valuable in the eyes of God, without occupying the same social situation or standing, without playing the same social role. This is a perspective that would say that men and women can be equally valuable without being equal, in the sense of being identical and doing these same things. So I think she was very comfortable with difference in social station, that she did not spend her life feeling that it was an acute injustice that there were social classes, for example. So that's part of the general sensibility. More directly to the point . . . her [pro-slavery views and] support for the Confederacy, is not ever necessarily exactly the same thing as racism. It is entirely possible to favor slavery as a form of social organization and yet to believe that all human creatures, persons, are equally valuable. At the extreme of . . . the pro-slavery theorists argue that slavery itself was intrinsically good and that if there weren't Blacks to enslave then whites would have to be enslaved. That the virtue of it . . . lay in the nature of the social system which made capital responsible for labor which established a personal relation between the well-to-do and working people, so that no one can protest the argument. At this point, I'm not defending it. But what I'm trying to underscore is that there is no contradiction necessarily between her having been sympathetic to to the Confederacy and her being arguably much more sympathetic to Black characters, much more taking them as human beings, than many more "egalitarian" northern writers would be.
CHRONOLOGY
A chronology of key events in Kate Chopin's life.
1850
Kate Chopin (Katherine O'Flaherty) born on February 8 to Thomas O'Flaherty, an Irish immigrant, and Eliza Faris, a Creole.
1855
Kate's father dies in a rail accident. Kate begins school at Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis.
1863
Kate's great-grandmother, Victoire Verdon Charleville, dies. Kate's half-brother, George O'Flaherty, a Confederate soldier, dies of typhoid fever.
1868
Kate graduates from the Academy of the Sacred Heart.
1869
Kate visits New Orleans in the spring.
1870
Kate marries Oscar Chopin on June 9 in St. Louis. Their honeymoon in Europe is cut short by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. The couple moves to New Orleans in October.
1871
Jean Chopin, the first of Kate's six children, is born on May 22.
1873
Oscar Chopin Jr. born.
1874
The Chopins move to the Garden District of New Orleans, and visit Grand Isle in the summer.
1879
Oscar's cotton business fails, and the Chopins move to Cloutierville, Louisiana. Lelia Chopin born.
1882
Kate's husband dies of malaria.
1884
Kate moves back to St. Louis.
1885
Eliza O'Flaherty, Kate's mother, dies in June.
1888
Kate writes her first poem, 'If It Might Be,' and begins the story 'Euphraisie.'
1889
"If It Might Be" is published in the literary and political journal America. Two stories, "Wiser than a God" and "A Point at Issue" published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
1890
Kate's first novel, At Fault, is published privately.
1891
Kate unsuccessfully submits the novel Young Dr. Gosse to several publishers. She later destroys the manuscript.
1893
"Désirée's Baby" published in Vogue.
1894
Bayou Folk published. Kate writes "Story of an Hour."
1895
"Athénaise" written.
1896
"Athénaise" published.
1897
A Night in Acadie published. Kate begins work on The Awakening in June.
1898
Kate completes The Awakening in January.
1899
The Awakening is published, to scathing reviews.
1900
Kate writes "The Gentleman from New Orleans", and is listed in the first edition of Who's Who in USA.
1904
Kate visits the Louisiana Purchase Exposition on August 18, where she suffers a stroke. She dies two days later.
In this area you'll find "e-texts" of all the works featured in the documentary, including Chopin's novel The Awakening in its entirety. Also included are additional short stories not discussed in the program.
The Awakening
Chopin's major work, a novel, was published in 1899. Since she was well-established as a national writer of note, it was reviewed by all major national critics, who universally condemned it as "shocking" and "immoral." It is the story of a young matron's gradual awakening to her own sexual and individual "being," and longing for an independence that society would not permit her.
Athénaïse
A very young, inexperienced girl marries an older man, but finds married life disagreeable. Missing her own home, and especially her brother, she runs away to New Orleans. After discovering that she's pregnant, she re-evaluates her decision.
Lilacs
A former convent girl marries well and moves to Paris, but ultimately enters the world of the demimondaine. She spends a few happy days each year at the convent until the Mother Superior finally learns of her questionable life in Paris.
A Pair of Silk Stockings
A woman living in near-poverty receives some money unexpectedly, and is torn between essentials for her children and rare indulgences for herself.
A Reflection
The writer admires all those who live life energetically, without needing to reflect and analyze. As for her, she must study "the moving procession," and calls this "sinking by the wayside."
A Respectable Woman
Mrs. Baroda is a bit provoked that an old friend of her husband's will visit for a few weeks. She treats him with disdain at first. Gradually this changes. Surprised at herself, she looks forward longingly to a future visit.
Beyond the Bayou
A large, gaunt black woman had been frightened literally "out of her mind" as a child during the war by the sight of her master, bloodied and covered in mud and debris, escaping from pursuing troops. She limits her life, never leaving the wide yard surrounding her cabin, half-circled by a bayou in front and a forest behind. Years later, she is called upon leave her sanctuary when her former master's son—her favorite visitor—shoots himself while hunting.
Désirée's Baby
Désirée, an abandoned baby, is raised by a fine family. The son of a planter who lives nearby marries her. When their child's features hint of mixed blood, Désirée disappears with the child, and the father orders everything related to his life with her burned.
Ma'ame Pelagie
For the thirty years—since the war—Ma'ame Pelagie has cared for her sister Pauline and for the land and the burnt-out ruins of what was once the finest plantation house on Côte Jouyeuse. Pelagi's aim is to rebuild it, until a niece visits and states she must leave them, for their lifestyle is too circumscribed. Pelagie struggles to relinquish the past and move on.
The Kiss
A young lady is courted by a rich but unattractive man when a friend of her brother kisses her casually. After the rich man withdraws his courtship, the girl seeks him out with hopes of marrying him for his money while maintaining her brother's friend's love.
The Locket
After finding an engraved locket on the neck of a dead Confederate soldier, a priest returns the locket to the girl to whom it belonged. She resigns herself to her beloved's death.
The Story of an Hour
Knowing of Mrs. Mallard's heart trouble, friends try to soften the shock of her husband's death in a train wreck. She retires to her room, weeping, as her emotions quickly change and conflict, only to be faced with the ultimate shock.
La Belle Zoraïde
Zoraïde, a beautiful slave of mixed blood, is cherished by her mistress, who has picked out a husband for her. But Zoraïde loves Mézor, a black slave. Refusing the proposed marriage, Mézor is sold out of state, and fights to keep her child, becoming known as "Zoraïde, la folle."
Web Sites:
- An Overview of the Life and Works of Kate Chopin
- An article in Empire:Zine, a monthly Internet magazine on writing.
- The Fifth Kate Chopin Conference
- Information on the Fifth Kate Chopin Conference, held earlier this year at Northwestern State University of Louisiana.
- A Guide to Internet Resources for Kate Chopin's The Awakening
- A collection of extratextual resources available on the internet that might enrich the understanding and enjoyment of The Awakening. Compiled by Sharon Masturzo, School of Library Information and Science, University of South Florida.
- Domestic Goddesses: AKA Scribbling Women
- A moderated E-journal devoted to women writers, beginning in the 19th century, who wrote "domestic fiction."
- Kate Chopin Web Page
- A web site created by students at Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Recent Publications of Chopin's Works:
- The Awakening, New York: Avon Books, 1972.
- The Awakening and Selected Stories, edited with an introduction by Nina Baym, New York: The Modern Library, 1993.
- A Matter of Prejudice and Other Stories, New York: Bantam Books, 1992.
- A Vocation and A Voice, Penguin Books, 1991.
- Complete Works of Kate Chopin, edited and with an introduction by Per Seyersted; Foreword by Edmund Wilson, Volumes I and II, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.
- Per Seyersted and Emily Toth, eds., A Kate Chopin Miscellany, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget and Natchitoches: Northwestern State University Press, 1979.
- Forkner, Ben, ed., Louisiana Stories, Gretna, La: Pelican Publishing Co, 1990.
Selected Bibliographies:
- Bonner, Thomas, Jr. "Kate Chopin: An Annotated Bibliography," Bulletin of Bibliography, 32 (July-September, 1975) pp101-105.
- Toth, Emily, "Bibliography of Writings on Kate Chopin." In A Kate Chopin Miscellany, ed. by Per Seyersted and Emily Toth., pp212-61.
- "Kate Chopin, A Woman of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," A project of the Watson Library, Northwestern State University, Rapides Parish Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Selected Criticism:
- Arnavon, Cyrille, "Les Debuts du Roman Realiste Americain et L'Influence Francaise." in Cahiers des Langues Modernes, I Paris, Didier (1946).
- Bender, Bert, "The Teeth of Desire: The Awakening and The Descent of Man," in American Literature, Vol. 63, No. 3, Sept., 1991, pp. 459-473.
- Berry, Wendell, "Writer and Region," in What are People For? Essays. San Francisco: Northpoint Press, 1990, pp. 71-87.
- Bloom, Harold, Ed., Kate Chopin, Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
- Blumenthal, "Literature" Chapt. VI in American and French Culture, 1800-1900, pp. 174-232.
- Bonner, Jr., Thomas. "Bayou Folk: An Evaluation": a paper contributed to the Kate Chopin Seminar at the 1974 MLA Conference.
- __________, "Kate Chopin's At Fault and the Awakening: A Study in Structure." Markham Review, 7 (Fall, 1977), pp.10-15.
- __________, "Kate Chopin's European Consciousness." American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, Vol. 8, 1975, pp. 281-84.
- __________, The Kate Chopin Companion, with Chopin's translations from French fiction. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
- Boren, Lynda S. and Sara de Saussure Davis, Eds., Kate Chopin Reconsidered, Beyond the Bayou. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
- Bush, Robert, Louisiana Prose Fiction, 1870-1900 (Dissertation). State University of Iowa, 1957.
- Cott, Nancy F., The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987.
- Eble, Kenneth, "A Forgotten Novel: Kate Chopin's The Awakening," in Western Humanities Review, X (Summer, 1956), pp. 261-269.
- Dyer, Joyce, "Gouvernail, Kate Chopin's Sensitive Bachelor," in Southern Literary Journal, 14 (Fall, 1981), pp. 46-55.
- __________, "Symbolic Setting in Kate Chopin's 'A Shameful Affair'." in Southern Studies, Vol. XX, No. 4, 1981, pp. 447-452.
- Ewell, Barbara, Kate Chopin. New York: The Ungar Publishing Company, 1986.
- __________, "Making Places: Kate Chopin and the Art of Fiction." (Unpublished Paper).
- Judith Fetterley, "Introduction" in Provisions, A Reader from 19th Century Women, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. pp. 1-40.
- Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse, "Kate Chopin," in American Women Regionalists, 1850-1910 (Norton, 1992) pp. 408-412.
- Fletcher, Marie, "The Southern Woman in the Fiction of Kate Chopin," Louisiana History, 7 (1966): pp. 117-132.
- Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, "Between Individualism and Fragmentation: American Culture and the New Literary Studies of Race and Gender," in American Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 1 (March, 1990), pp. 7-29.
- __________, "The Fettered Mind: Time, Place, and the Literary Imagination of the Old South" in The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. LXXIV, No. 4, Winter, 1990, pp. 622-650. (Review Essay of Louis Rubin's The Edge of the Swamp.)
- __________, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
- Gardiner, Elaine. "Ripe Figs: Kate Chopin in Miniature." Modern Fiction Studies, 28, Autumn, 1982, pp. 379-82.
- Garietta, Anthony Paul, The Critical Reputation of Kate Chopin., Greensboro: University of North Carolina, 1978.
- Gebhard, Caroline, "The Spinster in the House of American Criticism" in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 1991, pp. 79-91.
- Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, Eds., Norton's Anthology of Literature by Women. New York, 1985.
- Howell, Elmo, "Kate Chopin and the Creole Country," in Louisiana History, 20 (Spring, 1979), pp. 202-219.
- __________, "Kate Chopin and the Pull of Faith: A Note on Lilacs," in Southern Studies, 18, (Spring, 1979), pp. 103-109.
- Jasenas, Elaine, "The French Influence in Kate Chopin's The Awakening" in Nineteenth Century French Studies, 4(1976): pp. 312-22.
- Jones, Anne Goodwyn, Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859-1936. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1981.
- Jones, Howard Mumford, "America and French Culture, 1750-1848" in Milestones in American Literary History, edited by Robert E. Spiller.
- Kate Chopin Newsletters
- Vol. 1, No. 12, Spring, 1875.
- Vol. I, No. 3, Winter, 1975-1976.
- Vol. II, No. 2, Fall, 1976.
- Vol. II, No. 3, Winter 1976-1977.
- Kazin, Alfred. A Writer's America, Landscape in Literature, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
- __________, On Native Grounds, Cornwall. NY: Cornwall Press, 1942.
- Kearns, Katherine, "The Nullification of Edna Pontellier" in American Literature, Vol. 63, No. 1, March 1991, pp. 62-88.
- Koloski, Bernard, Ed., Approaches to Teaching Chopin's The Awakening. New York: MLA, 1988.
- __________, "The Structure of At Fault"
- Kraditor, Aileen S., The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.
- Lally, Joan Marie. "Kate Chopin: Four Studies" (PhD Dissertation, University of Utah), MLA. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1973.
- Lewis, R.W.B., The American Adam, 1955.
- __________, Trials of the Word.
- __________, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, eds., American Literature: The Makers and the Making. 1973.
- Lohafer, Susan, "The Classics" in Coming to Terms with the Short Story, Chapt. 6, pp.103-133.
- __________, "Preclosure and Story Processing," in Short Story Theory at a Crossroads by Susan Lohafer and Jo Ellyn Clarey, pp. 249-273.
- Martin, Wendy, Ed., New Essays on The Awakening,part of The American Novel Series. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- Mills, Elizabeth Shown, Chauvin Dit Charleville: Mississippi State University Press, 1976.
- Oates, Joyce Carol, ed., The Oxford Book of American Short Stories: Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1992.
- O'Brien, Sharon, "The Lineaments of Antebellum Southern Romanticism," in Rethinking the South, Essays in Intellectual History, pp. 38-56.
- __________, "Sentiment, Local Color, and the New Woman Writer: Kate Chopin and Willa Cather," in Kate Chopin Newsletter, 2, (Winter, 1976-1977), pp.16-24.
- O' Connor, Flannery, "The Regional Writer," in Mystery and Manners, pp. 51-59.
- Papke, Mary E., Verging on the Abyss, The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. New York: Greenwood Press.
- Pattee, Frederick Lewis, A History of American Literature Since 1870.
- __________ "The Feminine Novel," in The New American Literature, 1890-1930.
- Perspectives on Kate Chopin: Proceedings of the Kate Chopin International Conference. Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana, April 6-8, 1989.
- Portales, Marco, "The Characterization of Edna Pontellier and the Conclusion of Kate Chopin's The Awakening," in Southern Studies, Vol. XX, No. 4, 1981, pp. 427-436.
- Potter, Richard, "Negroes in the Fiction of Kate Chopin," in Louisiana History, 12 (Winter, 1971), pp. 41-58.
- Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman, "Southern Ladies and the Southern Literary Renaissance," in The Female Tradition in Southern Literature, ed. Carol Manning, University of Illinois Press, 1992.
- Rogers, Nancy, "Echoes of George Sand in Kate Chopin, Litterature Comparee," No. 1, 1983, pp. 225-228.
- Rosowski, Susan J., "The Awakening as a Prototype of the Novel of Awakening, in Women's Experience," pp. 26-33.
- Rowe, Anne E., "Kate Chopin" in Fifty Southern Writers before 1900, pp.133-143.
- Scott, Anne Firor, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
- Seyersted, Per, Kate Chopin. A Critical Biography, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.
- __________ and Emily Toth, eds., A Kate Chopin Miscellany, Natchitoches: Northwestern State University Press, 1979.
- __________ "Kate Chopin" in American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, Vol. 3, No. 2, Spring 1970. Dept. of English, The University of Texas at Arlington.
- Showalter, Elaine, ed., The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. New York: Pantheon, 1985.
- __________, Sister's Choice, Tradition and Change in American Women's Writing. The Clarendon Lectures, 1989. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
- __________, "Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book," in New Essays on the Awakening, pp. 33-55.
- Sims, Barbara, "Emersonian Idealism and Kate Chopin's The Awakening" (Unpublished paper).
- Skaggs, Peggy, Kate Chopin. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985.
- Sloane, David E. "Kate Chopin's European Consciousness" in American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, Vol. 8, No. 3, Summer, 1975. Seminar Moderator, MLA Conference on American Literary Realism, 1975.
- Stayley, Laura, "Suffrage Movement in St. Louis during the 1870s," in Gateway Heritage, Vol. 3, No. 4, Spring, 1983, pp. 34-41.
- Stepenoff, Bonnie, "Kate Chopin in `Out-At-The-Elbows' St Louis" in Gateway Heritage, Summer, 1990, pp. 62-67.
- Stevens, Walter B. "Conde Louis Benoist" (in which Louis A. Benoist is also portrayed); "Eugene Hunt Benoist;" "Howard Benoist;" and "Lee Benoist." Brief biographical sketches in St.Louis: History of the Fourth City, 1763-1909. Chicago and St. Louis: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1909, pp. 86, 89, 400, 872-874.
- Taylor, Helen, Gender, Race and Region in the Writings of Grace King, Elizabeth McEnery Stuart, and Kate Chopin.
- Toth, Emily, Kate Chopin. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
- __________, "Kate Chopin's North Louisiana Awakening," in Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Winter, 1993, pp.12-18.
- __________, "Kate Chopin and Literary Convention: 'Desiree's Baby'" in Southern Studies, Vol. XX, No. 2, 1981, pp. 201-208.
- __________, "Kate Chopin on Divine Love and Suicide: Two Rediscovered Articles," in American Literature, Vol. 63, No. 1, March 1991, pp.114-121.
- __________, "The Independent Woman and Free Love." Massachusetts Review, 16 (Autumn 1975), pp. 647-664.
- __________, "St Louis and the Fiction of Kate Chopin," in Missouri Historical Society, 32 (October, 1975) pp. 33-50.
- Turnell, Martin, "Maupassant," in The Art of French Fiction. New York, New Directions, 1959, pp. 93-97.
- Turner, Frederick, Spirit of Place: The Making of an American Literary Landscape. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1989.
- Wilson, Edmund, Patriotic Gore.
- __________, ed., The Shock of Recognition. New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1967.
- Walker, Nancy, "Feminist or Naturalist: The Social Context of Kate Chopin's The Awakening," in Southern Quarterly, 17 (1979), pp. 95-103.
- Wolff, Cynthia G., "Kate Chopin and the Fiction of Limits: 'Desiree's Baby'" in Southern Literary Journal, 10, Spring, 1978, pp.123-33
- Wood, Ann Douglas, "The Literature of Impoverishment: Women Local Colorists in America 1865-1914" in Women's Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1972.
- Zabel, Morton Dauwen, Literary Opinion in America. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1937.
- Ziff, Larzer, The American 1890s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation. New York: Viking, 1966.
Primary Sources:
From the Missouri Historical Society:
- Kate Chopin Papers
- Kate Chopin Account Ledger with Houghton Mifflin and Co, February 28, 1902
- "Katie O'Flaherty, St. Louis. 1867" ( Commonplace Book,1867-1870)
- "Impressions 1894" (May 4,1894-October 26, 1896)
- "Leaves of Affection."
- "Leilia. Polka for Piano." Undated. Published for the author by H. Rollman and Sons, St. Louis, 1888.
- Correspondence:
- R.E. Lee Gibson to Mrs. Chopin, April 28, 1899.
- ALS. Lewis B. Ely to Mrs. Chopin, April 28, 1899.
- Lewis B. Ely to Ms. Chopin, May 13, 1899.
- L. to "My Dear Little Katie", May 16, 1899.
- Sue V. Moore (Publisher of St. Louis Life from 1890-1896) to K.Chopin, (on response to The Awakening).
- Letter fragment regarding The Awakening.
- Essays:
- "Crumbling Idols by Hamlin Garland" in Life, October 6, 1894.
- "The Real Edwin Booth." Undated. in St. Louis Life, October 13, 1894.
- "Emile Zola's Lourdes" in St. Louis Life, November 17, 1894.
- "The Western Association of Writers" in Critic, July 7, 1894.
- Logbooks
- Wednesday Club of St. Louis Reciprocity Day, "An Afternoon with St.Louis Authors," Wednesday, November 29, 1899.
- St. Louis Society Scrapbook, 1889-1906, p. 100.
From the Cammie Henry Research Center, Watson Library, Northwestern State University of Louisiana:
- Benoist, Clemence, " My Native Town," a handwritten essay about Cloutierville when she was a student at Grand Coteau (Sacred Heart Academy in Louisiana).
- Melrose Collection
- Arthur Babb Sketchbook (material on Brazeales)
- Death notices of Mrs. Marie Chopin Breazeale
- Mildred McCoy Collection
- Various materials on Kate Chopin, Oscar Chopin, Bayou Folk Museum, letters and some photographs
- Box 5 holds Oscar Chopin papers:
- (Leases, Sales, Tax papers, Mortgage Papers from Citizens' Bank of Louisiana)
- Court Case involving Oscar Chopin, Executor, Vs the U.S., No 592, French and American Claims Commission.
- "Sucession Oscar Chopin, Dec'd"
- Review of At Fault in The Enterprise in Natchitoches, December, 1890.
- Correspondence:
- Kate Chopin to the Editor of The Enterprise, in response to the review of At Fault, December 9, 1890.
- Fragment of a handwritten letter describing racial violence in Natchitoches Parish in 1876, author unknown.
From the Library of Congress:
- 19th century Guides to St. Louis:
- The St. Louis Guide, St. Louis: F.W. Benton and Company, 1888.
- Strangers' Guide to the City of St. Louis, St. Louis: T.K.Sage and Co.
From Oakland, Afton Historical Society:
- Correspondence, James Murrin to J.H. Tighe Jan 7, 1868. (Alludes to Mrs. Thomas O'Flaherty, Jennie and Katie O'Flaherty)
Stories and Poems (Handwritten or Original Publication):
- "A Little Free Mulatto"
- "Alone"
- "An Embarrassing Position" One act Comedy by Kate Chopin. Printed
- "A Scrap and A Sketch", Retitled by hand as "The Night Came Slowly"
- "The Christ Light" Original issue of Syndicated American Press Association story retitled "The Going a...of Liza..."
- "The Dream of an Hour" (Vogue, December 6, 1894)
- "Reve D'une Heure" (Translation of "The Dream of an Hour")
- "Emancipation. A Life Fable." Undated; late 1869 or early 1870.
- "The Maid of Saint Phillippe"
- "The Storm: A Sequel to the 'Cadian Ball." July 19, 1898.
- "Two Portraits"
- At Fault (Novel) July 5, 1889-April 20, 1890. Published for the author by Nixon Jones Printing Co., St. Louis, Sept., 1890.
- A Night in Acadie (Collected short stories) Chicago: Way and Williams, 1897.
- Bayou Folk (Collected short stories). Boston: Hougton Mifflin and Co, 1894.
- The Awakening, (June (?)1897-Jan 21, 1898. Chicago and New York: Herbert S. Stone and Co, 1899.
Newspaper Articles:
- "A St. Louis Woman Who Has Won Fame In Literature," in St. Louis Post Dispatch, Magazine Section, Sunday, November 26, 1899.
- Bassford, Homer, "Louis A. Benoist Quieted Bank Run Here Century Ago by Paying in Full All Who Asked Cash," in St. Louis Star and Times, May 30, 1933. (From Oakland Papers, Afton Historical Society.)
- "Dr. William Taussig tells of the Gasconade Disaster," St. Louis Republic, November 1, 1905.
- "The Gasconade," A poem in The Leader, Literary Department, November 17, 1855
- "O'Flaherty's Fatal Ride" The St. Louis Daily Times, Monday December 29, 1873 (contemporary account of the death of Kate Chopin's brother, Thomas O'Flaherty).
- Newsclippings re Death of Thomas O'Flaherty. November 10, 1855, with Ms fragment and photograph of Kitty Garesche (1870) on verso.
- "Open to Hermann," in The Leader, Saturday, December 22, 1855. p. 7 (small article on the aftermath of the wreck of the Gasconade bridge).
- "Recalls the Noted Gasconade Horror," Globe Democrat, November 2, 1913 (Missouri Historical Society Vertical File).
- "Seventeen Persons Killed!!! Great Numbers Wounded" The Leader, Saturday, November 3, 1855.
- Weil, Tom, "Historic Central Louisiana Haunted by Romantic Past," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Februrary 26, 1989, 3T.
- Wilensky, Harry, "Her Masterwork was Taboo," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Wednesday, April 24, 1974, p. 3F.
- "Wreck Survivor Writes about Gasconade Crash" (Joseph T. Keyte); appeared in the Republican (?), Nov 10-13m 1913 (Missouri Historical Society Vertical File).
- Viets, Elaine, "Author's House Still Has Spirit," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 7, 1985, F1.
- Wolfe, Linda, "There's Someone You Should Know: Kate Chopin," The New York Times, September 22, 1972.
Produced by
Tika Laudun
Lucille McDowell
Directed by
Tika Laudun
Written by
Anna Reid-Jhirad
Narrated by
Kelly McGillis
Chopin's Literature Read by
JoBeth Williams
Photographed by
Rex Q. Fortenberry
Edited by
Randy Ward
Digital Restoration and Effects
Steve Mitchum
Additional Photography
Al Godoy
Tika Laudun
Foley Artist
Rex Q. Fortenberry
Production Assistants
Mike Abel
Sally Budd
Electronic Graphics
Jodie Fontenot
Production Secretaries
Margie Heinze
Marian Lefevbre
Lucrecia Walsh
Promotions
Bob Neese
Ann Lang
Web Site Producer
John Shortess
LPB Interactive Staff
Tammy Crawford
Mike Melancon
Erica Zimmer
Production Manager
Ed Landry
Director of Educational Services
Homer Dyess
Executive Producer
Clay Fourrier
Chief Administrative Officer
Cindy Rougeou
President and CEO
Beth Courtney
Prints and Images Courtesy Of
Betty Hertzog, Magnolia Plantation
Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris
Society of The Sacred Heart, National Archives, U.S.A.
Ellen Shub
Frank & Marie-Therese Wood Print Collections, Alexandria, Va.
Historic New Orleans Collection - Williams Research Center
Bayou Folk Museum, Cloutierville, Louisiana
Tulane University
Louisiana State Museum
Missouri Historical Society
Musee Fournaisse, Ile des Impressionnistes, Chatou
Northwestern State University
State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia
Gasconade Disaster Footage Provided By
KETC, St. Louis, Missouri
Locations Assistance Provided by
Academy of The Sacred Heart
Grand Coteau, Louisiana
Afton Historical Society
The Oakland House
St. Louis, Missouri
Colonial Dames of America
New Orleans, Louisiana
Lyle S. St. Amant Marine Biology Lab
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries
Grand Isle, Louisiana
Magnolia Mound Plantation
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Magnolia Plantation
Natchez, Louisiana
Cane River Creole National Historical Park
Natchitoches, Louisiana
Bayou Folk Museum
Cloutierville, Louisiana
The Gallier House-Herman Grimma House
New Orleans, Louisiana
Historic Natchez on the Mississippi
Convention and Visitors Bureau
Office of the Sheriff
Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana
Jim Bailey
The Cottage Plantation
The Creole Cottage
St. Genevieve, Missouri
The Anglo-American Art Museum and
The Hill Memorial Library
Louisiana State University
Louisiana Office of State Parks
Audubon & Mansfield State Commemorative Areas
Special Thanks to
Jean Bardot
American College in Paris
Ann Chopin
St. Louis, Missouri
Per Seyersted
Oslo, Norway
Jesse Poesch
Newcomb College
New Orleans, Louisiana
Pat Bacot
Louisiana State University
Catherine Tatge
New York, New York
Music Credits
"Nocturne C Sharp Minor" (Frederick Chopin)
performed by Nanette Olivier
"Bamboula, Opus 2" (Louis Moreau Gottschalk)
from the "Congo Square" CD, courtesy of
Percussion Incorporated, 1991. Performed by Moses Hogan
"Solitude, op. 65" and "La Savane" (Ballade Creole) from SELECTED PIANO MUSIC OF LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK, performed by Lambert Orkis
©1988, Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved. Used by permission
"Spirit Seeking Light and Beauty" (Gaelic: Dombnach Trionoid)
performed by pianist, Willis Delony;
vocalists, Elaine Simmons and Third Grade Music Class of
The Academy of the Sacred Heart at Grand Coteau, Louisiana
"Prelude No. 4 in E minor, Opus 28" (Frederick Chopin)
performed by Willis Delony
"Leilea Polka" (Kate Chopin)
performed by Nanette Olivier
Bamboula drumming from the "Congo Square" CD, courtesy of
Percussion Incorporated, 1991.
Drummers: Kenyatta Simon, Aaron Kufru Mouton, Luther Gray
"Donnez Moi Pauline" (Dennis McGee & Michael Doucet)
performed by Michael Doucet and Beausoleil
Courtesy of ARHOOLIE RECORDS, El Cerrito, California
Étude in G Minor (Stephen Heller)
performed by Gina Watson of
The Academy of the Sacred Heart at Grand Coteau, Louisiana
"Blues Acadiens" (W. Perry - B. Carriere - M. Doucet)
performed by Michael Doucet and Beausoleil
Courtesy of ARHOOLIE RECORDS, El Ceritto, California
"Grand Mamou" (PD)
performed by Michael Doucet and Beausoleil
Courtesy of ARHOOLIE RECORDS, El Ceritto, California
"Nocturne No. 2 in E Flat, Opus 9" (Frederick Chopin)
Performed by Willis Delony
© 1998
Louisiana Educational Television Authority
Funding for this program was provided in part by grants from
The Louisiana Division of the Arts
and
The National Endowment for the Humanities
Art & Travel Auction 2013_thumb.png)
Sunshine by the Stars: Celebrating Louisiana Music
Antiques Roadshow in BR
Against the Tide: The Story of the Acadian People
Forever LSU
Morris Lessmore and the Amazing World of Moonbot Studios
