At Fault

by Kate Chopin

Overview

At Fault (1890) is a novel by American author Kate Chopin. Published at the author’s expense, At Fault is the undervalued debut of a pioneering feminist and gifted writer who sought to portray the experiences of Southern women struggling to survive in an era decimated by war and economic hardship.

Thérèse Lafirme is a Creole widow whose husband’s death has made the Place-du-Bois plantation on the Cane River in northwestern Louisiana her sole responsibility. Struggling to survive in a region that, following the fall of the Confederacy, has failed to recover from the devastation of defeat, Lafirme agrees to sell her land’s timber rights to a recently divorced businessman named David Hosmer. As the two begin to fall in love, Hosmer’s sawmill causes tension in an agrarian community unaccustomed to modern industry. Hosmer proposes to Thérèse, she is forced to consider the prospect of marriage against the opinion her community as well as her own moral and religious values, to set her personal desires aside in order to appease tradition. When Fanny, Hosmer’s alcoholic ex-wife, re-enters the picture, trouble ensues that threatens to ruin Lafirme’s reputation as an honest, hardworking woman. At Fault, like much of Chopin’s work, went largely unnoticed upon publication, but has since garnered critical acclaim as a work that explores the lived experiences of women and racial minorities during a period of political and economic upheaval. Both fictional and autobiographical—Chopin was a widow of French heritage who struggled to provide for her family following her husband’s death—At Fault is an underappreciated masterpiece of nineteenth-century literature.

This edition of Kate Chopin’s At Fault is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781420944792
Publisher:	Digireads.com Publishing
Publication date:	04/25/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was an American writer. Born in St. Louis, Missouri to a family with French and Irish ancestry, Chopin was raised Roman Catholic. An avid reader, Chopin graduated from Sacred Heart Convent in 1968 before marrying Oscar Chopin, with whom she moved to New Orleans in 1870. The two had six children before Oscar’s death in 1882, which left the family with extensive debts and forced Kate to take over her husband’s businesses, including the management of several plantations and a general store. In the early 1890s, back in St. Louis and suffering from depression, Chopin began writing short stories, articles, and translations for local newspapers and literary magazines. Although she achieved moderate critical acclaim for her second novel, The Awakening (1899)—now considered a classic of American literature and a pioneering work of feminist fiction—fame and success eluded her in her lifetime. In the years since her death, however, Chopin has been recognized as a leading author of her generation who captured with a visionary intensity the lives of Southern women, often of diverse or indeterminate racial background.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xiii
	Acknowledgments	xv
	Editorial Practices	xvii
	Introduction	xix
Part 1
Chapter I.	The Mistress of Place-Du-Bois	3
Chapter II.	At the Mill	7
Chapter III.	In the Pirogue	11
Chapter IV.	A Small Interruption	16
Chapter V.	In the Pine Woods	19
Chapter VI.	Melicent Talks	24
Chapter VII.	Painful Disclosures	29
Chapter VIII.	Treats of Melicent	35
Chapter IX.	Face to Face	40
Chapter X.	Fanny's Friends	45
Chapter XI.	The Self-Assumed Burden	50
Chapter XII.	Severing Old Ties	53
Part 2
Chapter I.	Fanny's First Night at Place-Du-Bois	63
Chapter II.	"Neva To See You!"	68
Chapter III.	A Talk Under the Cedar Tree	72
Chapter IV.	Therese Crosses the River	76
Chapter V.	One Afternoon	81
Chapter VI.	One Night	89
Chapter VII.	Melicent Leaves Place-Du-Bois	95
Chapter VIII.	With Loose Rein	100
Chapter IX.	The Reason Why	105
Chapter X.	Perplexing Things	110
Chapter XI.	A Social Evening	114
Chapter XII.	Tidings That Sting	121
Chapter XIII.	Melicent Hears the News	125
Chapter XIV.	A Step Too Far	130
Chapter XV.	A Fateful Solution	134
Chapter XVI.	To Him Who Waits	142
Chapter XVII.	Conclusion	146

Editorial Reviews

"Therese had not reached the age of thirty-five without learning that life presents many insurmountable obstacles which must be accepted, whether with the callousness of philosophy, the revolt of weakness or the dignity of self-respect."

― Kate Chopin, At Fault

From the Publisher