Bio vs. Lit Response

Kate Chopin has a very unique life that is not heard of by many. She was extremely intelligent, but had been through so much her whole entire life. Her whole family was infected with the satanic disease we all must carry, yet it swept through her family like wildfire leaving her as a lone wolf: death. She carried all of this pain through her and channeled it into her heartwarming literature. The biography uses a contradicting, yet balanced amount of information to describe how she wrote, and what affected it. Her, pain, her passion, her emotion was directed to her writing.
To begin, Kate was always surrounded by intelligence and this is how she picked up her distinctive personality. She was constantly around “smart, independent, single women,” which gave the reason for the constant use of women in her short stories (Wyatt 2). The women used in her stories are a reflection of the intelligence she possessed, including the source of these gifts of knowledge. The Story of an Hour gave a glimpse of this knowledge when the woman who lost her husband realized that she was now free. This refers back to the cult of true womanhood which was going strong at this time. She followed all her duties as a true woman, yet she had nearly no authority, but when her husband died, she obtained this liberty and she knew it. In Desiree’s Baby she once again reveals this, but adds a tone of passion and love, a woman willing to accept the cult of true womanhood. Desiree cared for and loved her husband even though he ostracized her because of her unknown and false identity as being black. What do these women have in common besides the cult of true womanhood? They both knew what had to be done and they did it. They both coped through the good and bad times and stuck it through as women to make their lives able to deal with. Unfortunately both of these women died and suffered much throughout their lives.
Another relation to the tales Chopin writes and her life is her distress. Ever since birth she had been through a large amount of death. Her father died, and she was the only child out of 5 to live past 25 (Wyatt 1). Not to mention the loss of her husband 12 years after marriage, the passing away of every other person in her family besides her kids and the loss of her only friend known of by us, Kitty. This added to the writing she used also. As stated before both women in the examples of her stories died. Desiree committed suicide when her husband denied her a woman because of the suspicion of being black. Louise died of heart failure when a piece of her heart was ripped out of her. This is another direction to the cult of true womanhood. They both followed this belief, yet died according to it. It describes the view Kate has on that belief. It is a belief that should be hated by all women, and something that they cannot live with, yet they do. She also believed that they deserved their credit for putting up with it and their freedom from this curse. Her biography brings together the ideas in her writing and the events in her life.
Chopin truly shared the happiness and grievances of her life by using it in her writing. There was a paradox in many of her passages as well: love and hate. Both short stories used happiness and love, but it soon turned into hatred and their demise. The biography gave a clear link to the many things used in her writings and how, like many of the characters in her novels, wanted acceptance from society, preferably without the cult on their backs and like them, her journey was cut short.