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Unveiling Kate Chopin (review)

In her new book, Emily Toth, widely recognized as the leading Chopin scholar in America, updates her 1990 biography of Chopin. In that earlier volume,Kate Chopin: A Life of the Author of ‘‘The Awakening,’’ Toth wrote, ‘‘[I]n the story of her life there are still gaps, and opportunities for speculation and reinterpretation. So much about Kate Chopin remains unknown, and perhaps unknowable—and so she remains, for me, what one of her contemporaries called her: a woman of ‘mysterious fascination’ ’’ (10). Since the publication of Toth’s first Chopin biography, however, significant manuscripts have been discovered and published, along with Chopin’s diaries and letters, as Kate Chopin’s Private Papers (ed. Toth, Per Seyersted, and Cheyenne Bonnell, 1998). Unveiling Kate Chopin (which coincides with the centennial of the publication of The Awakening) draws from these discoveries and fills many of the gaps left open in the 1990 biography. As Toth says, she hopes in the new biography to examine Chopin’s life and work ‘‘with new materials and a different set of inquiries’’ (xxii), but as in 1990, she is primarily motivated by one question: ‘‘How did Kate Chopin know so much, in 1899?’’ (xxi). Unveiling Kate Chopin is an engaging book with a strong narrative that provides as compelling a read as Chopin’s own best work. From the book’s opening through its crowning conclusion, Toth admirably shows the development of Chopin’s interest in issues concerning women (especially domestic violence) as well as the simultaneous growth in her writing about such issues. Drawing from the recently discovered manuscripts and from Chopin’s diaries and letters, Toth provides the fullest view to date of this pioneering woman writer. Aside from its clear prose and lively narrative style, the outstanding achievement of Unveiling Kate Chopin is Toth’s tireless and thorough research. Throughout the footnotes, the impressive bibliography, and the text itself, it is clear that Toth has carefully read every extant piece Chopin wrote (both public and private). Marring the book at times is Toth’s repeated insistence on stretching far too thinly the often skimpy available evidence about Chopin’s life. Similarly, her frequent overreading of Chopin’s texts to find hidden references to real-life personalities and events distracts from the otherwise solid analysis she provides. Many key moments in Chopin’s life are described from the vantage point of Toth’s questionable speculations, and thus Toth threatens her own considerable credibility. Toth’s goal in Unveiling Kate Chopin is to go beyond the consideration of ‘‘the content of her life’’ to focus instead on the ‘‘the content of her character’’ (xxii). In so doing, she ‘‘unveils’’ the woman who, one hundred years ago, wrote The Awakening, a novel almost unthinkable at the time. Despite Toth’s tendency to speculate too freely at times, Unveiling Kate Chopin is an