Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850, one of the five children but the only one to live through her twenties. Her father, Thomas O’Flaherty died when she was five, and she spent her childhood among women: her mother, Eliza; grandmother; great-grandmother; and the nuns who ran her school. In 1870, Chopin married Oscar Chopin and moved with him to New Orleans, where they had six children. Chopin was an independent spirit who smoked cigarettes, walked alone through the city, and argued passionately with others about politics and social problems, much to the dismay of the other New Orleans housewives in her social circle. Not long after the family moved to Cloutierville, Louisiana, Oscar died unexpectedly. Chopin mourned his death deeply but eventually embraced her independence, even going so far as to having an affair with a married man. Chopin soon returned to St. Louis, where she would spend the rest of her life. She published her first novel, At Fault, in 1890, when she was forty. The novel was well received, and she went on to publish short stories and essays addressing similar topics. She published two collections of short stories, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Arcadia (1897) and became known as a writer with a keen eye for local culture. “The Story of an Hour” was published in 1894 and, along with “The Storm” (1898), is among Chopin’s most famous stories. Although Chopin’s female protagonists act in unconventional, even scandalous ways, readers accepted this as a simple part of the storytelling and didn’t suspect Chopin of moralising or trying to insert her personal opinions into her work.