26 pages • 52 minutes read
A Respectable Woman
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Background
Authorial Context: Kate Chopin
Kate Chopin (née O’ Flannery) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 8, 1850. Her father was an Irishman, and her mother was from a French family. After her father died in an accident when she was five years old, Chopin was raised by a household of widowed women: her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She was formally educated by nuns at Sacred Heart Academy, an academically sound Catholic school.
Chopin was nurtured by intelligent women who lived independently during an era of great restriction on women’s choices and their ability to direct their own lives. In addition to shaping the author’s early development, these female figures may have inspired her complex female characters, many of whom struggle for autonomy and agency amid Victorian constructs of womanhood, which were defined primarily through marriage and maternity. This conflict between external compliance and internal rebellion can be observed in some of Chopin’s best-known characters, such as Mrs. Baroda in “A Respectable Woman,” Edna Pontellier in The Awakening, and Louise Mallard in “The Story of an Hour.”
Chopin’s young adulthood was also shaped by the US Civil War (1861-1865). While St. Louis was a blend of both Union and Confederate supporters, Chopin’s family was pro-Confederate. The reality of racial tension and national conflict would also influence Chopin’s life and writing, and many of her stories’ settings are contemporaneous with the Civil War. Among the most noteworthy of these is “Desiree’s Baby,” which examines American Southern racial tension with a level of nuance unusual for the author’s era and locale.
The period of the author’s life most influential to her writing was likely her 12 years of marriage to Oscar Chopin, who, like the character Gaston Baroda in “A Respectable Woman,” was a Louisiana planter. The couple met in St. Louis, wed in 1870, and soon moved to Louisiana, living first in New Orleans and later on one of the family plantations. During this time, the couple seemed to have a very happy marriage and had six children. According to secondhand accounts, Chopin retained a sense of independence in terms of her lifestyle, sense of dress, witty humor, and spirited attitude. She also became a keen observer of Creole culture and New Orleans society, which later played a significant role in her writing.
It wasn’t until after Chopin was widowed in 1882, at age 32, that she began to write seriously, taking inspiration from many of her life experiences to produce two novels, At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), and approximately 100 short stories and essays. Though she returned to St. Louis after her husband’s death, a significant portion of her writing highlights Louisiana and Creole culture, independently-minded women, and the complexities of marriage. “A Respectable Woman,” written 12 years after the death of Oscar Chopin, contains all these elements.
Literary Context: Romanticism and Realism
Literary Realism, which reflected a greater trend throughout all the arts during the late 1800s, marked a turn from the previous century’s Romanticism. Romantic works typically idealized the natural world and dramatize human experience, foregrounding aesthetic sublimity and individual passion, but Realism sought to depict life without sentiment or exaggeration. Where the Romantics exalted the imagination, Realists prized accuracy. The latter movement impacted American writing most notably after the Civil War—the same period when Chopin began her writing career—and much of Chopin’s work portrays quotidian realities from a uniquely female perspective.
“A Respectable Woman” uses both Romantic and Realist elements to craft the protagonist’s conflict as it relates to the two male characters. A quality of Realism primarily surrounds the character of Gaston and the married couple’s interactions. For example, in the two instances of truly interactive dialogue, the conversation is between the couple and has a casual, intimate tone that conveys ease and tenderness. For example, their first conversation occurs while they are “making a bit of a toilet sociably together in Mrs. Baroda’s dressing-room” (Paragraph 11)—they are chatting while they get ready for the day, an extremely ordinary marital occurrence that indicates closeness.
The Realism of the Barodas’ marriage contrasts with the Romanticism of Gouvernail’s character. Both literary movements focused on the “common man,” but Romanticism emphasized the beauty of nature, independence, psychological interiority, and the special connection between the poet and the natural world. These are clear traits in Gouvernail’s characterization, and some of them are apparent in Mrs. Baroda’s as well. By juxtaposing Gaston’s unadorned Realism against the visitor’s Romantic allure, Chopin accentuates Mrs. Baroda’s temptation to lose herself in the excitement of novelty and passion.
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