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Before Ptsd: Combat Trauma In The Civil War Short Stories Of Kate Chopin, Adam Kotlarczyk

Faculty Publications & Research

“The Civil War,” writes Robert Penn Warren, “is, for the American imagination, the single greatest event of our history” (3). Indeed, it has been estimated that the American imagination has been inspired to the tune of some 60,000 historical books on the subject (Lafantasie). Kate Chopin, probably best known for The Awakening and short stories like “The Story of an Hour,” spent her adolescence in a divided and tumultuous St. Louis during the Civil War. Like the women in her family with whom she lived, including her mother, grandmother, and two aunts, young Kate was a southern sympathizer (Ewell 7). …