"Free! Body and soul free!" Those are the great words written by the great American author, Kate Chopin in "The Story Of An Hour" in 1894. Her real life stories were her biggest influences in her literature and her unique themes. Perhaps one of her most famous works was her first novel, The Awakening. Some of her other works include "The Storm," "Lilacs," Madame Celestine's Divorce," and "Desiree's Baby." What is Chopin's writing style? What traits are recognizable in all of her stories including the ones mentioned above? More importantly, was feminism a valuable subject in her themes and her life or was she just a normal woman who believed in equality? The answers to these and more questions lie ahead so just sit back and enjoy the ride.
             To understand Kate Chopin's writing style, you must first understand her life. She was born Katherine O'Flaherty in 1850 to an Irish and French family In St. Louis, Missouri. Her grandmother and great-grandmother lived with them and were great influences in her life and later in her writing. Chopin learned French and female endurance from living in a house full of women. Her great-grandmother also told her stories about her own grandmother, who ran a ferry service and was very promiscuous. She told her stories about women who were daring and women that didn't marry.
             When she married Oscar Chopin at the age of twenty, the two took a three-month-long honeymoon in Europe where she began writing a journal. They lived together in a small town in Louisiana, which included a community of a lot of different races. She liked to observe different people that lived around her and this soon became one of the main details in her stories. When her husband died, she took over their plantations and ran their store, a bold step for a woman of her time to take (Howard). All of these events in her life can be fo...