Born Catherine O'Flaherty on July 12, 1850, in St. Louis, Missouri, Kate Chopin was the daughter of an immigrant Irishman, who was very successful in many business ventures. Kate was the youngest of three children that resulted from the union of Thomas O'Flaherty and a French-American woman, Eliza Faris. By all accounts, Kate was a happy child. However, in 1855 Thomas O'Flaherty died suddenly, forcing a five year old Kate to reshape her concept of herself and her world, which at that time largely revolved around the father figure as the center of the household. After her father's death, Kate's family included her widowed mother, her widowed grandmother and her widowed great-grandmother.
             Her personal community included her brothers, her sister and assorted other relatives and people. Records indicate that the O'Flaherty household usually abounded with people during Kate's childhood and adolescence. However, in this happy domestic scene, one begins to get a glimpse of what would ultimately so greatly influence Kate Chopin as a writer-- the lack of male role models and men as central figures in her life as she matured. This lack would also prevent her from experiencing what was basically a fundamental social concept of her time--the tradition of submission of women to men in all social spheres, but especially that of marriage.
             In June 1868, Kate graduated from the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart. Being a young debutante, she entered into the St. Louis social scene and was one of the acknowledged belles of St. Louis. As a young, southern debutante, she would have been thrown together with young men of her social class and preparing for her expected role of wife and mother. However, her upbringing in a household of women and her education by nuns in a school for girls, may not have prepared her to completely accept the societal limitations of such a role. While it is true that she would have been instructed in the basic duties of ...