“Catholic Modernism” and the Short Stories

Abstract

The lens shifts slightly in the fourth chapter of this study, when the critical gaze turns to explore Chopin’s fiction through the perspectives of Modernism and naturalism, as both movements began to transform American literature at the end of the nineteenth century. In a step away from the emphasis on local color fiction, the chapter emphasizes Chopin as a new kind of Catholic writer, whose use of a Catholic aesthetic complemented the experimental approaches she began to take with short fiction. With close readings of stories such as “A Vocation and a Voice,” “At the ’Cadian Ball,” “Ma’ame Pélagie,” “Lilacs,” “An Idle Fellow,” “Two Portraits,” and several others, this chapter positions Chopin as a protomodernist, who anticipated the literary direction at the turn of the century and used Modernist elements to construct new possibilities for the representations of spiritual experience in her work.