Although she enjoyed only modest success during her lifetime, Kate Chopin is now recognised as a unique voice in American literature. Her seminal novel, The Awakening, published in 1899, explored new and startling territory, and stunned readers with its frank depiction of the limits of marriage and motherhood. Chopin's aesthetic tastes and cultural influences were drawn from both the European and American traditions, and her manipulation of her "foreignness"...

"The author 'provides careful analyses of Chopin's two volumes of published short stories ("Bayou Folks" and "A Night in Arcadie"), the stories of her unpublished short volume, "A Vocation and a Voice," her uncollected short stores, poems, and essays, as well as her two novels, "At Fault" and "The Awakening." A thorough critical study of interest to both general readers and scholars.'" Booklist.