BIBLIOGRAPHY

Green, Suzanne Disheroon, and Caudle, David J., eds. Kate Chopin: An Annotated Bibliography of Critical Works. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 274 p.

Comprehensive survey of criticism on Chopin published between 1976 and 1998, including annotated entries for books, essays, dissertations, biographical studies, and bibliographical works.

BIOGRAPHY

Toth, Emily. Kate Chopin. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1990, 528 p.

Biography that questions long-held views on Chopin's life and writing; includes appendices, photographs, and a select bibliography.

CRITICISM

Black, Martha Fodaski. “The Quintessence of Chopinism.” In Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou, edited by Lynda S. Boren and Sara deSaussure Davis, pp. 95-113. Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.

Black discusses political and cultural influences on Chopin's feminism in her writing.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: Kate Chopin. New York: Chelsea House, 1987, 138 p.

Reprints seminal writings on Chopin's works from early commentary to more recent critical views.

Ewell, Barbara C. “Kate Chopin and the Dream of Female Selfhood.” In Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou, edited by Lynda S. Boren and Sara deSaussure Davis, pp. 157-65. Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.

Ewell examines the notion of American individualism in Chopin's works.

Jones, Suzanne W. “Place, Perception and Identity in The Awakening.” Southern Quarterly 25, no. 2 (winter 1987): 108-19.

Views the two locales in which The Awakening is set, New Orleans and Grand Isle, as enabling “Chopin to expose not only the confusion that arises when a woman experiences a new place, but also the way in which a social setting controls thought and determines identity.”

Koloski, Bernard. Kate Chopin: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996, 165 p.

Surveys Chopin's short stories and reprints reviews and essays on Chopin's life and work as a short story writer.

Petry, Alice Hall, ed. Critical Essays on Kate Chopin. New York: G. K. Hall, 1996, 257 p.

Reprints early reviews and later essays devoted to Chopin's works as well as including original essays examining The Awakening and several of Chopin's short stories.

Schweitzer, Ivy. “Maternal Discourse and the Romance of Self-Possession in Kate Chopin's The Awakening.” In Gendered Agents: Women and Institutional Knowledge, edited by Silvestra Mariniello and Paul Bové, pp. 161-91. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.

Contrasts the protagonists of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter with Chopin's The Awakening based on the fact that Edna Pontellier had the experience of motherhood while Hester Prynne did not.

Wershoven, C. J. “The Awakening and The House of Mirth: Studies in Arrested Development.” American Literary Realism 19, no. 3 (spring 1987); 27-41.

Contends that Chopin's The Awakening and Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, while evidencing numerous dissimilarities, are in fact “related in patterns of conflict, grouping of characters, development of protagonists and, more subtly, in a cluster of images that reflect desperate and dangerous polarities.”

Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. “Un-Utterable Longing: The Discourse of Feminine Sexuality in Kate Chopin's The Awakening.” In The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era, edited by Aliki Barnstone, Michael Tomasek, and Carol J. Singley, pp. 181-97. Hanover, New Hampshire: The University Press of New England, 1997.

Considers elements of modernist and minimalist techniques in The Awakening and “the relationship of between these elements and Edna Pontellier's personal tragedy.”

Additional coverage of Chopin's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: American Writers Supplement,Vol. 1; Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Vol. 33; Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography, 1865-1917; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 104, 122; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 12, 78; DISCovering Authors; DISCovering Authors Modules: Most-studied Authors and Novelists; DISCovering Authors: British; Exploring Novels; Exploring Short Stories; Feminist Writers; Literature and Its Times, Vol. 3; Literature Resource Center; Modern American Women Writers; Novels for Students, Vol. 3; Reference Guide to American Literature, Ed. 4; Reference Guide to Short Fiction, Ed. 2; Short Story Criticism, Vol. 8; Short Stories for Students, Vols. 2, 13; Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vols. 5, 14; and World Literature Criticism Supplement.