Kate Chopin and Local Color :: Expository Essays

Kate Chopin and Local Color The background setting of most of Chopin's stories is the Creole culture of southern Louisiana. Southern Louisiana was far more French than American as a large portion of the culture was Creole -- those being the descendants of French and Spanish colonists. This Creole society was united in its Catholicism, and the French language and therefore became a "cultural subgroup which had little in common with, [and] was often in conflict with, Anglo-American society" (Walker, 97). This region of Louisiana was referred to as a "Southern Babylon" (Walker, 97). And it was this backdrop of society that Chopin used in her work which earned her the label of being a local-colorist. Consequently the term local-color is generally "taken to mean that the work has only a narrow appeal as a "novelty= piece" and are "noted more for skillful regional description than for insight into human nature" (Bourn). One common characteristic of the local color movement is the intermixing of the languages of the area, being in Chopin's stories: English and French. Yet the use of dialect, also being part of the realist tradition, "reveal[s] the various ethnic groups and ... provide[s] some regional color" (The New Laurel Review). The use of language is important to Chopin's character's status in society: for example, the higher up the character's status is the less his/her accent is discernible; while the "'lowest'" character in the story, speaks an exaggerated mix of Creole dialect and black dialect" (Bourn). However the "dialect [used] does not become a central focus obscuring the more imaginative aspects of [Chopin's] stories" (The New Laurel Review). Yet Chopin surpasses the limitations set by the local color movement, such as being novelty pieces and having a narrow appeal, because the ethnic characters that she creates "are individuals first and members of a race or nationality second" (The New Laurel Review). Chopin is "not [there] just to record the lives of people in an area, but to show how people in these places encounter and deal with issues that have universal value" (Bourn). And therefore, in direct contrast to "a local color novel ... [being] one in which the identity of the setting is integral to the very unfolding of the theme, rather than simply incidental to a theme that could as well be set anywhere" (May, 216).