...Kate Chopin: Desiree’s Baby Kate Chopin, born Katherine O’Flaherty was an American writer who is best known for her major work The Awakening which was published in 1899. Chopin was born in St. Louis to her father an Irish immigrant, and her mother whom was of French descent. Although Chopin’s father died in a train wreck when she was four years old, she grew up surrounded by “loving, intelligent, and independent women” (Baym and Levine 420). At the young age of nineteen, Kate married Oscar Chopin and moved to New Orleans Louisiana. Less than a decade later, Oscar's cotton business failed and they moved to his family's plantation in the Natchitoches Parish of northwestern Louisiana, where Oscar “opened a general store and managed a family cotton plantation” (Baym and Levine 420). When Oscar passed away in 1882, the widowed Kate was left to raise her six young children on her own. Chopin chose to contribute to the local market and “fashioned a literary career out of her experience of the Creole and Cajun cultures she had come to know” (Baym and Levine 420). Chopin’s stories of Louisiana rural life earned her national recognition as a writer of local color fiction. In Desiree’s baby, Chopin’s ability to foreshadow and build up suspense allows the reader to engage in the doubtfulness and uncertainty which keeps the reader unaware. Desiree’s Baby is a story of love, mystery, and suspense. Published in 1893, Desiree’s Baby, was centered on the controversial subject of...
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...In “The Story of an Hour” published in Vogue in 1894 author Kate Chopin wrote about a woman named Mrs. Mallard who is given bad news that her husband has been killed in a railroad disaster. In a second story by Kate Chopin “The Storm” published in Louisiana State University, in 1969 Chopin writes about a woman named ‘Calixte’ who had an affair on her husband with a past lover during a storm. The last story by Kate Chopin “Desiree Baby’s” is about an orphan who got married and had a baby by a well-known and respected man whose attitude towards her changed due to the skin color of their son. These three stories have many similarities and differences in the type of male dominated oppression and relieve each woman felt in their marriage. For instance,...
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...The era that Kate Chopin wrote this story in was the mid-19th century when slaves worked on plantations and women in the south were beginning to fight for freedom. An analysis of Kate Chopin’s story “Desiree’s Baby” uses plot structure to build up suspense for the climax, to get the audience situated on the same suspicion, and to create an ironic ending, so that she can show the audience her point of view on how women always seemed to be the culprit. Kate gives a brief description of each characters, but the way she describes Desiree makes the audience immediately aware that her past might affect her in some way down the line. Chopin built up this suspense for the climax of the story. “The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans”. (80-81) Chopin explains that Desiree’s past remains unclear and since it is not concrete, it leaves her past open to discussion. Chopin builds suspense...
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...Analysis of “The Story of an Hour” written by Kate Chopin The story under analysis is written by Kate Chopin. Kate Chopin was an American author of short stories and novels. She wrote for both children and adults. She is considered as a forerunner of feminist author. Unlike many of the feminist writers of her time who were mainly interested in improving the social conditions of women, she looked for an understanding of personal freedom. She put much concentration on women’s lives and their continual struggles to create an identity of their own personality. Her stories were not accepted by the public of that period. Through her stories Kate wrote her own autobiography and documented her surroundings. She is the author of such works as “The Awakening”, “A Night in Arcadie”, “Désirée’s Baby”, “At Fault” and “The story of an Hour”. The action of the “The story of an Hour” takes place in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, in the middle of 19 century. In a bourgeois family. I’d like to remark that at that time the situation was different from the current state of things in modern world. Women were supposed to obey their husbands, devoting themselves fully to raising a baby and taking care of their house. No time for their personal needs, hobbies, interests and work. Women lived all their lives in the shadow of their husbands. “The story of an Hour” begins with sad news. Mrs. Mallard’s sister Josephine and her husband’s friend Richards try to inform her husband’s death. During the...
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...Advanced Placement English Language and Composition Advanced Placement English III First Six Weeks – Introductory Activities: ▪ Class rules, expectations, procedures ▪ Students review patterns of writing, which they will imitate throughout the course: reflection, narration and description, critical analysis, comparison and contrast, problem and solution, and persuasion and argument. ▪ Students review annotation acronyms, how to do a close reading, literary elements and rhetorical devices. Students also review the SOAPSTONE (subject, occasion, audience, purpose, speaker, tone, organization, narrative style and evidence) strategy for use in analyzing prose and visual texts along with three of the five cannons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement and style. ▪ Students learn the format of the AP test, essay rubric and essay structure. ▪ Students take a full-length AP test for comparison purposes in the spring. Reading: The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne Writing: Answer the following question in one paragraph. Use quotes from the novel as evidence. Some readers believe that the elaborate decoration that Hester embroiders on the scarlet letter indicates her rejection of the community’s view of her act. Do you agree or disagree? Explain your position using evidence from the text. (test grade) Writing: Write a well-developed essay addressing the following prompt. Document all sources using MLA citation. Compare Hester to a modern...
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