Chopin attended a St. Louis Catholic girl's school, Academy of the Sacred Heart, from ages five to eighteen. There, the nuns continued the female-oriented education begun at home by her great-grandmother, providing a forum for their students to express their thoughts and share their opinions.
After finishing her education at Academy of the Sacred Heart, Chopin entered St. Louis society, where she met Oscar Chopin, a French-born cotton factor (the middleman between cotton grower and buyer). She married Oscar in June 1870, and they moved to New Orleans. Between 1871 and 1879, she had six children. Like Edna and Léonce Pontellier, the Chopins vacationed during summers on Grand Isle, to avoid the cholera outbreaks in the city of New Orleans. Also like Edna, Chopin took long walks alone in New Orleans, often while smoking cigarettes, much to the astonishment of passersby.
When Oscar's cotton brokerage business failed due to drought and his mismanagement, they moved to the small French village of Cloutierville, Louisiana where Oscar had family and a small amount of land. Chopin was distinguished in this tiny town by her habit of riding horses astride rather than sidesaddle, dressing too fashionably for her surroundings, and smoking cigarettes — all of which were considered unladylike. Many of the locals found their way into her later stories.
Oscar ran a general store in Cloutierville until he died in 1882 of malaria. Upon his death, which left his family in great debt, Chopin ran the store and their small plantation, a highly unusual move for widows at the time. Not until 1884 did Chopin take the usual course for widows, when she and her children moved back to St. Louis to live with her mother. Before she left Cloutierville, Chopin had an affair with a local married man who is said to be the prototype for Alcée Arobin in The Awakening.
