A Pair of Silk Stockings

American writer Catherine “Kate” née O’ Flaherty was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 8, 1850. Her father was killed in a railroad accident in 1855, and so Kate was raised by her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother: all of them widows. In 1870, she married Oscar Chopin, a wealthy merchant from Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, and the couple settled in New Orleans after a lengthy honeymoon in Europe. Within the first decade of their marriage, Kate gave birth to six children. In 1879, a difficult economy compelled Oscar to shut his business. He died of malaria in 1882, leaving Kate in debt and a single mother at the age of 32. Two years later, she was compelled to move back to St. Louis to live with her mother. Five years later she began her writing career with the publication of a poem, “If It Might Be” (1889), creating income to support herself and her children.

In some ways, Chopin’s situation mirrored that of Mrs. Sommers, who is left with at least four children in her husband’s unexplained absence. She pushes to make ends meet, putting her children’s needs before her own.