Chopin, Kate - John A. Staunton (essay date autumn 2000)
John A. Staunton (essay date autumn 2000)
SOURCE: Staunton, John A. “Kate Chopin's ‘One Story’: Casting a Shadowy Glance on the Ethics of Regionalism.” Studies in American Fiction 28, no. 2 (autumn 2000): 203-34.
[In the following essay, Staunton considers Chopin's attitude toward regionalism and local color fiction and discusses her short fiction as regionalist writing.]
In Kate Chopin's first two critical essays, both written in 1894, the same year her first collection of short fiction, Bayou Folk, was published, the St. Louis-born writer—who was best known for her Louisiana fictions—demonstrates the ambivalence with which many nineteenth-century American authors approached terms like regionalism and local color. The essays are brief but incisive accounts of the strengths and weaknesses of regional writing and offer a quick glance at the literary conflicts at the end of the century. The first reports on the Western...
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