Kate Chopin Archives

Kate Chopin

Madame Célestin’s Divorce

March 7, 2019 By Kate Chopin in Old Stories Tags: marriage, Kate Chopin

A youg woman sweeps the porch in front of a white clapboard house.

Madame Célestin always wore a neat and snugly fitting calico wrapper when she went out in the morning to sweep her small gallery. Lawyer Paxton thought she looked very pretty in the gray one that was made with a graceful Watteau fold at the back: and with which she invariably wore a bow of pink ribbon at the throat. She was always sweeping her gallery when lawyer Paxton passed by in the morning on his way to his office in St. Denis Street. A woman contemplating divorce piques the interest of a local judge. Kate Chopin’s story appears in her [Read More]

A Respectable Woman

February 8, 2019 By Kate Chopin in Old Stories Tags: marriage, Kate Chopin, trust, friendship, affair, louisiana

A portrait of writer Kate Chopin dressed in riding habit, clutching a crop.

Mrs. Baroda was a little provoked to learn that her husband expected his friend, Gouvernail, up to spend a week or two on the plantation. They had entertained a good deal during the winter; much of the time had also been passed in New Orleans in various forms of mild dissipation. She was looking forward to a period of unbroken rest, now, and undisturbed tete-a-tete with her husband, when he informed her that Gouvernail was coming up to stay a week or two. Readers familiar with Chopin’s classic short story “The Story of an Hour” will be similarly charmed, puzzled, [Read More]