The Works of Kate Chopin
Women writers in the late 19th century struggled with their voices,their characters, and their writing, just as all writers do. However, manyalso had to struggle to be taken seriously by predominately malepublishers, and such was the case with Kate Chopin. Throughout her career,"Chopin wrote three novels, eighty-five short stories, twelve essays,twenty-five poems, and one play, although she never earned enough money tosupport herself from her writing" (Nelson, 1995 p. 234). The key here is"support herself." It is still quite difficult to support oneself fromfiction writing, and Chopin encountered this throughout her career. Quitesimply, short stories sold more quickly than novels, and took less time towrite, so Chopin could create more marketable works in a shorter amount oftime, and see the monetary results much sooner than she would from a novel. As one writer noted, "The market for conversion and happily-ever-afterstories for Christmas and Easter was immense. It was also one of the bestsources of income and recognition for professional writers" (Toth, 1999 p.125). Indeed, Chopin consistently made more money from her short storiesthan her novels. She received only $102 as royalties f
or "The Awakening,"but at the same time was earning as much as $50 for only one short story(Toth, 1999 p. This illustrates the difficulties with publishing novels,especially when you are a new, unknown writer. Another historian states, Early in her career, when she wrote charming Creole stories with happy endings, she had little difficulty finding publishers. Clearly, as her voice expanded, her audience diminished, and Chopin did notface these problems with most of her short stories. After 1894 Chopin attempted to be more daring in her short fiction; concurrently she had more difficulty finding publishers (Cutter, 1999 p. Thesemagazines were inexpensive, and so they reached a large portion of thepopulation. She also wrote very quickly, and often her short stories werepublished with very little editing. These themes were easily explored in short stories, and shortstories were extremely popular in the women's periodicals of the day. Her first short stories were publishedin 1889 in small magazines, and she published her first novel in 1890, ather own expense. In addition, Chopin's writing explored many issues women faced everyday, from motherhood and marriage to the struggle for identity and a senseof self. Chopin wrote for these magazines to earn a living and givevoice to her ideas, but she also wanted to reach many readers, and thewomen's magazines of the day gave her that opportunity, too. Fiction was exceedinglypopular in women's magazines of the day, and as more magazines sought tocapitalize on the women's market, more fiction was needed to fill theirpages, and so the opportunities for short story writers were quite good.
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