She rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that she could see into the room. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too but-the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she had only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.9 The fire burned with such blessed influence it warmed so delightfully. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. "Rischt!" how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it.8 She drew one out. Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered together.5 Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her father she would certainly get blows,6 and at home it was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags.7
THE STORY OF AN HOUR ANNOTATIONS WINDOWS
From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was New Year's Eve yes, of that she thought.
The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful curls around her neck but of that, of course, she never once now thought. She crept along trembling with cold and hunger4-a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing! Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day no one had given her a single farthing.3 She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. One slipper was nowhere to be found the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. When she left home she had slippers2 on, it is true but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn so large were they and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast. Although her work was relatively unpopular at the time of her death, her legacy as both an important American novelist in her own right, and one of the first female authors to address gender inequality, has only grown.MOST terribly cold it was it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening- the last evening of the year.1 In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet.
Chopin died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in 1904, leaving behind three novels, two collections of short stories, and one play.
Her writing often championed the kind of female independence she had become notorious for in Cloutierville her first novel, At Fault, for instance, controversially examined the idea of divorce and paved the way for the fearless independence of her later works such as The Awakening, which was critiqued and banned by libraries and bookstores alike. Louis to live with her mother and began writing short stories for popular American magazines. Eventually, in 1884, she moved back to St. This move went against what was considered normal and acceptable for women at the time, and Chopin was widely judged by her surrounding community. There, her husband owned and ran a general store until he died in 1882, at which point Chopin rather unconventionally took over the shop’s operation, thereby becoming a self-sufficient widow. Together they had six children and lived in New Orleans until eventually moving to the French town of Cloutierville, Louisiana in 1879. At the age of 20, Chopin married the son of a successful family in the cotton industry. An Irish immigrant, her father was a prosperous businessman, while her mother came from the well-respected French community of St. Louis, Missouri by well-off, socially established parents. Born Catherine O’Flaherty in 1850, Kate Chopin was raised in St.