Cultural Study Of Bayou Folk

Bayou Folk is a short story collection by Kate Chopin published in1894. Written in a style of simplicity, Chopin vividly presents southern Creole life. The twenty-three stories in this collection give account of the life of Cane River residents living in Louisiana, the southern state of America, where people have different skin colors and cultural backgrounds, and live in racial and cultural collision. Chopin’s stories reveal cultural diversity and complexity. Currently, critical study of this story collection can only be found in a few stories, lacking a systematic in-depth interpretation.Chopin was a novelist of local color in the19th century. Chopin’s rebellious women character living a scandalous lifestyle upset her contemporary audience, and as a result her writings were not enthusiastically embraced. With the development of feminist criticism in the20th century, Chopin’s novels, which have a unique female perspective, attract critical attention. The rise of post-colonial criticism since the1960s has aroused critics’interest in the complex racial relations and multicultural collision of Creole society in her works. Chopin’ seemingly romantic Creole stories conceal serious cultural issues, open to various interpretations. Anglo-American Chopin studies and domestic studies as well have long focused on only a few stories of hers. Stories such as The Awakening,"the Story of an Hour","Desiree’s Baby" and "A Respectable Woman" have been much studied but her other stories have not been given due attention. Current Chopin studies are either post-colonial or feministic. In view of the narrow range of critical studies of Chopin’s stories and limited critical perspectives, I choose the much neglected Bayou Folk as the object of my study and explore the subtle and rich cultural connotations in the story collection.This paper conducts a cultural study of Bayou Folk, centering on patriarchal culture, racial culture and the Creole culture. Due to the limit of space and research time, for each topic I choose the representative stories in Bayou Folk for discussion; meanwhile, Chopin’s view on women’s situation and racial issue and the element of multicultural ism will be explored. Chopin’s women stories reveal the oppression and self imprisonment of women in patriarchal culture. These women internalize patriarchal values and become docile "angels of house," lack of self-awareness, self-repressed and unable to control their destiny. Chopin’s rebellious women, though awakened, fail to break free of patriarchal bondage. Their rebellion usually ends in failure, death, silence or compromise. The fate of women in Chopin’s works reveals the all-too-powerful patriarchal structure and its deep-rooted ideology. The women rebels though achieving awakened feminist consciousness still live in patriarchal enslavement. Chopin’s women consciousness is thus ambivalent, both subversive and conventional. Chopin, a white woman writer, was born in a slaveholding family, grew up in the south after the Civil War, and lived in the middle class of Creole society after her marriage. Because of such background, her view of racial relation has duality as well. On the one hand, she exposes the absurdity and barbarity of racism from the view of humanitarianism; on the other hand, she is not free of white supremacy and fantasizes racial harmony between the blacks and whites; in such relation, the blacks look up to the whites admiringly. While criticizing racism, Chopin romanticizes black-white relation. Though free in law after the Civil War, the blacks and other colored people are still far from achieving economic independence and independent identity in the racist post-bellum southern society. Chopin’s racial stories reveal racial tension and her condescension in racial issues. Besides complicated patriarchal and race culture, Bayou Folk also presents complex social classes and cultural diversity in Creole society. The Civil War devastated southern economy and brought about the decline of slaveholders, who have lost their privileges and feel disoriented in Reconstruction. Nostalgic of the lost world and helpless before the drastic changes, they struggle to come to terms with the New South. Chopin’s stories of local color faithfully capture special cultural characteristics of Creole society, which could be found in her use of language. Her unique use of Creole language vividly transfers the mental outlook of this region and the diversity of its ethnicities, cultures, and classes.This thesis studies Bayou Folk as a whole and delves into various cultural aspects of her Creole stories so as to reveal their subtle cultural messages. It is hoped that this paper could contribute to a comprehensive understanding of Chopin’s works and broaden academic discussion. Besides the parts of introduction and conclusion, this paper consists of five parts:The first chapter introduces Chopin’s life and critical reception of her works including Bayou Folk, gives a survey of Chopin studies at home and abroad, introduces the use and purposes of critical perspective, and summarizes thesis statement and significance.The second chapter studies the patriarchal culture of Southern Creole society, focusing on the fate of female characters in Bayou Folk. These women are classified into two types, conventional women and rebellious women. By studying these women’s life and frustration, this paper reveal the powerful patriarchal culture and comes to the conclusion that Chopin’s women consciousness is ambivalent and contradictory.The third chapter explores the racial culture reflected in Bayou Folk. Louisiana is a multiethnic and multicultural dwelling place, where inhabit the descendents of French and Spaniards, Indians and African immigrations. This chapter focuses on the tragedy caused by racist culture and mental slavery of the already freed blacks. It also points out the duality of Chopin’s racial concept.The fourth chapter gives a further discussion of cultural collision described in Bayou Folk, focusing on the drastic changes wrought by the Civil War, conflict of Old South and New South and diversity of Creole society. Racial, cultural and class diversities are represented in linguistic diversity.The fifth chapter summarizes the main ideas of the thesis and the characteristics of Chopin’s works.