From local colour to realism and naturalism

Regionalism and local color fiction (1865 - 1895)

Local color or regional literature

local color or regional literature is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography and other features particular to a specific region
readers wanted to know about other sections of the country, so many writers specialized in describing places (detailed descriptions), events, manners, and even the speech of specific regions
writers frequently used a frame story in which the narrator hears some tale of the region

According to the Oxford Companion to American Literature

the local-color literature one finds the dual influence of romanticism (nostalgia or sentimentality, idealizing their subjects and setting) and realism, since the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description

Regional writers

Kate Chopin (1851 - 1904)

Life

she was born in St. Louis, daughter of an Irish immigrant
her father died when she was four, and she was raised by her Creole (descendants of the French and Spaniards who had colonized Louisiana) mother's family
she received convent schooling
in 1870 she married Oscar Chopin, a cotton broker, they lived in Louisiana (New Orleans and large plantation near Cloutierville - a region whose varied people - Creoles, Cajuns, Blacks - she was later to write about
after her husband's death (widowed at thirty-two) she moved with her six children back to St. Louis
Chopin died at fifty-three of a brain haemorrhage

Chopin's writing

At Fault - first novel (she was nearly forty years old)
her stories began to appear in Century and Harper's Magazine
two collections of stories: Bayou Folk (1894), A Night in Arcadie (1897)
working steadily from 1889 to 1901, she published two novels, thirteen essays, translations of Maupassant, poems, and over a hundred stories
her last major work is The Awakening (1899)
she admired woman writers of her day, such as the Maine realist Sarah Orne Jewett
Chopin also read Maupassant Zola, and other new (scandalous) French naturalist writers
she stopped being a Catholic and accepted the Darwinian view of human evolution

The Awakening (1899)

it is Chopin's masterpiece
it shocked reviewers and readers throughout America
in St. Louis the novel was taken out of the libraries, and Chopin was denied membership in the St. Louis Fine Arts Club
her third collection of short stories was rejected by her publisher at the end of 1899; Chopin felt herself a literary outcast; she wrote very little in the last years of her life
Edna Pontellier - seeks sexual and professional independence
she withdraws from her marriage and her place in society; is her suicide a failure, tragedy or triumph?
Edna's suicide is an occasion for exploring consciousness; it is an act of complexity and significance

What affronted the reviewers and readers of the 1890s?

Chopin wrote frankly about women's emotions in their relations with men, children, and their own sexuality
she wrote freely on the subject of sex and love
Chopin began to bring into American fiction some of her hard-eyed observation and passion for telling unpleasant truths