Unraveling the Southern Pastoral Tradition: A New Look at Kate Chopin's At Fault

Nine years before Kate Chopin unveiled The Awakening (1899), she self-published her first novel, At Fault. The novel, considered by critics as a worthy piece of fiction, established Chopin as a new and talented writer. The story of a widow running a plantation in the Natchitoches Parish of Louisiana, At Faultreflects Chopin's own life. After two years of widowhood and successfully running her husband's business, Chopin left the Natchitoches Parish for St. Louis in mid-1884, partly because of her involvement with Albert Sampite, a married man. ¹ After a year in St. Louis and shortly after her mother's death, Chopin began writing for publication. ² Like Thérèse in At Fault, Chopin faced a decision between love and traditional ethics in her relationship with Sampite. Because Sampite was a southern Catholic, he could not divorce. In Louisiana when a couple did divorce, civil law prohibited either partner from marrying a lover. Consequently, Chopin had reason to question what she called an old southern "code of righteousness" that prevented her as well as her female protagonist in At Fault from happiness.

At Fault (1890) exhibits the same genius and skill characteristic of all Kate Chopin's writing. Yet, despite the revitalization of interest in Chopin's works during the twentieth century, Chopin's first novel has been, for the most part, forgotten in academic study. Still, At Fault is no exception to Chopin's authorial skill through which she elegantly addresses society's flaws. Since the plot of At Fault appears on the surface to be contrived or stereotypical, some scholars have dismissed the novel as a weak attempt by Chopin to gain recognition as a new writer. What is not immediately apparent in At Fault is Chopin's careful manipulation of nineteenth-century southern pastoral conventions in the novel to address flaws in southern society.

Southern pastoral, a genre addressing southern political issues, was popular during Reconstruction. Educated and well read, Chopin would have been familiar with the southern pastoral literary conventions of her time. Sidney Lanier, Thomas Nelson Page, and Joel Chandler Harris had all published southern pastoral fiction by the time Chopin completed At Fault. And like writers before her, Chopin provides enough information in At Fault for her reader to determine that the novel is southern pastoral. Like a traditional southern pastoral, At Fault opens with the rural and secluded setting of Place du Bois that contrasts to an urban world encroaching from the outside. Even in the opening chapters when Thérèse first assumes her husband's role, change is implied at Place du Bois. For instance, a new railroad "squats" at the edge of the plantation (5). Moreover, the southern pastoral setting is altered throughout the novel until the setting is no longer traditionally pastoral.

Like the setting, characters in At Fault are also shaped in a pastoral mold. Yet the pastoral gender roles in At Fault, such as the pastoral love interest of the master of the plantation, invert when the female protagonist assumes the traditionally male pastoral role. Jane Hotchkiss, in her "Confusing the Issue: Who's 'At Fault'," suggests the possibility of gender reversal in At Fault by applying Carol Gilligan's study of gender-based ethics to Chopin's characters. According to Hotchkiss, the male ethical character follows what Chopin described as a "code of righteousness" of what is right and wrong to "deal out judgements," while the female ethical character observes the individual circumstances of each moral dilemma before making a conscientious decision (34). Hotchkiss asserts that Thérèse embodies a male ethical character while Hosmer personifies a female ethical character (34). What Hotchkiss does not consider is how her assertions are related to Chopin's use of pastoral conventions. While Chopin associates male ethics with an old pastoral ideal, she relates female ethics to a contemporary...