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Kate Chopin House, also known as Bayou Folk Museum or Alexic Cloutier House, was a house in Cloutierville, Louisiana. It was the home of Kate Chopin, author of ''The Awakening'', after her marriage. ==Overview== The house was located on Main Street (Louisiana Highway 1) in Cloutierville, in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. The home was built by the town's founder, Alexis Cloutier〔Schmidt and Rendon, p. 34.〕 and is constructed in a combination of handmade brick, hand-hewn cypress boards, and bousillage.〔Baldwin, p. 66.〕 Its construction, done through the use of slave labor, dates to between 1806 and 1813.〔Baldwin, p. 64.〕 Kate Chopin moved here with her husband Oscar and their five children in 1879. Her sixth child, a daughter named Lélia, was born here shortly after the family's arrival.〔Leeper, Clare D'Artois. ''Louisiana Place Names: Popular, Unusual, and Forgotten Stories of Towns, Cities, Plantations, Bayous, and Even Some Cemeteries''. Louisiana State University Press, 2012: 69. ISBN 978-0-8071-4738-2〕 Oscar set up a general store and ran the business end of the family plantation. Shortly after their arrival in Cloutierville, he inherited a quarter of the family property.〔Baldwin, p. 65.〕 Chopin would later describe the neighborhood in her 1891 short story "For Marse Chouchoute" as "two long rows of very old frame houses, facing each other closely across a dusty roadway".〔Toth, p. 82.〕 Neighbors, mostly of French-Creole descent, did not approve of Chopin's fashion and tendency to smoke cigarettes, play cards, and go for walks alone.〔 Local gossip also suggested that Chopin lifted her skirt higher than necessary when walking, showing her ankles.〔 Kate Chopin only lived here for about four years when her husband died.〔Schmidt and Rendon, p. 35.〕 Oscar Chopin had suffered from malaria and overdosed on quinine, leading to his wife Kate to take over the business.〔 However, she soon left the home and relocated to St. Louis, Missouri by mid-1884 to be with her mother. She left her sons with the family of her husband in Cloutierville.〔Toth, p. 100.〕 Chopin used some of her experience in the town for inspiration for several of her writings, including ''Bayou Folk'', ''A Night in Acadie'', and ''The Awakening''.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kate Chopin House (Cloutierville, Louisiana)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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