Introduction: Kate Chopin and the City—The New Orleans Stories

New Orleans is a city governed by its own sense of direction. Unlike other cities—other places on Earth, really—the cardinal directions are rarely used. Residents do not direct newcomers to travel north, south, east, or west. Instead, urban travelers are pointed upriver or uptown, downriver or downtown, toward the lake (as in Lake Pontchartrain) or toward the river (as in the Mississippi). Its streets reflect not the geometric grid and order found in other major American cities, but the geography of the natural landscape that predated its urban transformation.