At Fault (1890) is a novel by American author Kate Chopin. Published
at the author's expense, At Fault is the undervalued debut of a
pioneering feminist and gifted writer who sought to portray the
experiences of Southern women struggling to survive in an era decimated
by war and economic hardship.
Thérèse Lafirme is a Creole widow whose husband's death has made the
Place-du-Bois plantation on the Cane River in northwestern Louisiana her
sole responsibility. Struggling to survive in a region that, following
the fall of the Confederacy, has failed to recover from the devastation
of defeat, Lafirme agrees to sell her land's timber rights to a recently
divorced businessman named David Hosmer. As the two begin to fall in
love, Hosmer's sawmill causes tension in an agrarian community
unaccustomed to modern industry. Hosmer proposes to Thérèse, she is
forced to consider the prospect of marriage against the opinion her
community as well as her own moral and religious values, to set her
personal desires aside in order to appease tradition. When Fanny,
Hosmer's alcoholic ex-wife, re-enters the picture, trouble ensues that
threatens to ruin Lafirme's reputation as an honest, hardworking woman.
At Fault, like much of Chopin's work, went largely unnoticed upon
publication, but has since garnered critical acclaim as a work that
explores the lived experiences of women and racial minorities during a
period of political and economic upheaval. Both fictional and
autobiographical--Chopin was a widow of French heritage who struggled to
provide for her family following her husband's death--At Fault is an
underappreciated masterpiece of nineteenth-century literature.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript,
this edition of Kate Chopin's At Fault is a classic of American
literature reimagined for modern readers.
