Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays (review)

In her introduction to this volume, Heather Ostman takes New Orleans as a starting point. She draws an analogy between the realization that New Orleans in the post-Hurricane Katrina era is very different from the city in which Chopin lived during the 1870s and the awareness that the experience of reading Chopin's work has also entered a new period: "We read her work as readers trained in academic literary approaches or as readers who appreciate her work as art (or both), but we also read her work self-consciously as readers within a twenty-first century context. In other words, we read with the knowledge that much has drastically changed since the turn of the new century, and our old frameworks for understanding texts may be less than adequate." After briefly tracing the arc of scholarship on Chopin, Ostman suggests her selections offer "newer, and at times bolder or even competing, ways of thinking about Chopin's works," promising that the central theme of the collection is "the exploration of the new in Chopin criticism."

The first three essays are loosely united by the theme of culture. Donna and David Kornhaber argue persuasively that New Orleans theater was socially significant in the cultural milieu in which Chopin wrote, though their claim of its influence on Chopin's stories is less substantiated. While the arguments with regard to "A No Account Creole" and "In and Out of Old Natchitoches" are well reasoned and set forth with interesting contextual research, the paucity of actual references to the theatre detracts from the thesis. The piece is most convincing when it reads class differences in the protagonist's emotional enjoyment of a play in "A Pair of Silk Stockings." In a fine essay, Jane F. Thrailkill explores the relationship between Chopin's fiction and the importance of natural rhythm in unorthodox spiritual practices of the late nineteenth century. After citing William James among a variety of contemporaneous spiritual theorists, Thrailkill argues that "In Chopin's fictions, rhythmical actions are rarely the result of theorizing a need for autonomy or self-expression. Rather, these sensory explorations are themselves the practices that constitute new geographical regions of experience: they are, as in the case of Edna, at once 'of her body and her soul.'" Observing that ten of the stories collected in A Vocation and a Voice appeared first in Vogue, Heidi Johnsen explains the aesthetic and place of Vogue among magazines of the day. Particularly notable are her comments on the specific fiction by other authors that appeared in Vogue alongside Chopin's stories.

The next three essays deal with religion, race, class, and gender. Garnet Ayers Batinovich maintains that much of Chopin's work implies that "religion is the primary source of women's oppression." Contending that this subtext has been overlooked, Batinovich makes her case with regard to At Fault, The Awakening, and several short stories, often pointing out the antireligious possibilities in ambiguous fictional moments. Lisa A. Kirby reads "At the 'Cadian Ball" and "The Storm" as stories that, despite challenging conventional gender roles, ultimately reinforce the social hierarchies of race and class. Meredith Frederich's close reading of "The Godmother" sees the motif of fire as representative of spiritual devotion. Fire is thus central to a host of Christian images depicting Tante Elodie's sacrifice for her godson and her resulting fall from grace.

Two essays dealing with issues of privilege round out the collection. Rebecca Nisetich surveys criticism on race in The Awakening and concludes that it has "tended towards over-generalization and simplification." Nisetich takes on the issue with regard to The Awakening with supporting sociological and historical evidence and brings in several of Chopin's stories for alternative readings, arguing that the shorter fiction provides "conflicting impressions of Chopin's perspective on racial issues." Li-Wen Chang extends feminist criticism of The Awakening by finding economic significance in the actions of Edna Pontellier...