Emancipation: A Constant Theme in Kate Chopin’s Short Stories

Abstract

Kate Chopin is an American author of the late nineteenth century, who started her career as a short story writer of the Local Color school, but soon moved on to the treatment of more timeless matters. She has written some of the boldest and best stories written in America before the 1960s. In her works we find a great variety of themes, some of which were taboo in her time. Themes such as alcohol, divorce, miscegenation and even female sexuality. But a constant theme throughout her whole oeuvre is emancipation. First as a spiritual emancipation and later also in the field of the senses. The Aim of this paper is to analyze this theme in several short stories written by Kate Chopin, where some of her strong female characters seek emancipation by defying conventions and deciding over their own lives.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n4p248