The French-American City: The Two Worlds of Chopin Fiction

New Orleans is well known as the “Queen of the Mississippi,” but it is also known as the most European city of America. Much of that is due to its multiplicity of cultures stemming from European origins—and particularly dating from its early settlers’ origins from Spain and then France. Although the influx of immigrants over the centuries competed for space and linguistic and cultural influence, French culture found a home in the city. There is no way to overestimate the influence French culture and language had on Kate Chopin. Given her own French family ties, it is not surprising that this French influence appears in much of Kate Chopin’s short stories and even in her two published novels, At Fault and The Awakening. Her father, Thomas O’Flaherty, an Irish immigrant, new to St. Louis, married Eliza Faris, a native St. Louisian whose lineage drew from France. Chopin’s maternal grandmother, who took on the responsibility of her French education, tutored Chopin until it was time for her to enter school at the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart in 1855.