Comparison of Kate Chopin and Frida Kahlo
Abstract
Both Kate Chopin and Frida Kahlo were great women who were phenomenal in their areas of profession and whose works are still recognized to date. Kate Chopin was a renowned American author and contributed a lot to literature through her literary prowess. Besides her involvement in literature, she was also a great influence through her personality. As a woman in the early 20th Century, Kate Chopin was living ahead of her time. During these times, women had little rights with the law. Kate was among the first women to start voicing their issues against men. Frida Kahlo was also a renowned artist whose artworks as well as personality had a great influence on society. Her artworks have continued to appeal to a vast number of people all over the world. Both Chopin and Kahlo have gained a lot of recognition from their works since they convey and talk about conscious themes in society, such as feminism and contemporary political issues. Although both are in two different lines of profession, there are noticeable similarities in their works that make them comparable. However, each still has their distinct styles and personalities. Both artists lived in a time when the world was male-dominated. They were, however, able to overcome the issue through the use of their works.
Frida Kahlo Artistic Works
The artistic work of Frida Kahlo is being appreciated by many. It has been acknowledged by many since her existence. She made numerous distinctive and stylistic images about herself. She made a significant number of pictures to portray her real and pure being. She had made a painting of two Fridas holding each other’s hands and analyses them. She got married in 1929 and described the dress she had on that day in one of her works. Her visual arts would mostly try to evaluate Mexican life. She made one of the most known works and one of the most substantial works earlier. It was the “Las dos Fridas,” she called the art. In this art, she revealed much about her inner being, both as one or many. Frida was born in Mexico in the middle months of 1907. She died in 1954 in the same country. In this paper, we shall see and evaluate more on the artistic works done by Friday Kahlo (Corrêa, D. R. D. T. 2016).
In the las dos art, there sit two Frida’s. One unique thing about Frida is that she never made paintings of others excluding herself. She always was the central theme. In her early life, she did encounter an accident that left her at the bed. In her early childhood, she suffered from polio. This made her have several difficulties in her walking. Her left leg appeared and became shorter than her right leg. Due to this, she walked while limping. After a short while still in her childhood, she was involved in a car accident. This was fatal and left her seriously injured. Due to this, she had to undergo many surgeries in her lifetime. At this time, she spent much of her time at the bed, where she recovered slowly from her injuries. This is the time she took and started making paintings.
She would read much and study much about arts, and this led her to make her paintings. Four years later, she got married to Rivera. After marriage, she changed even her picture and personal styles. Her paintings mostly would contribute to the pain she was going through and the people that were around her. Regardless of her state in childhood, she still made paintings that always showed how strong she was and focused on the works she did. She accomplished a lot, and this made her famous in Mexico at this time. In her works of art, she always portrayed her physical and psychological pain. She made art that did show her wearing a thorny necklace that left her wounded, and blood drops seen to fall off. Many people from Mexico loved her paintings very much. At a time, many thousands of people would come to her museum to have a look at her artworks done earlier on (Herrera, H. 2018).
She would look hurt a very sorrowful about thinking about some lifestyles of people. She was very hurt inside physically due to what was happening to her at this time. Her paintings appeared to describe more pain that she was going through in her life. She was disabled but still sought to discover more about human behaviours at different times. Her images seem more involved and not self-explaining themselves. She portrays her life, appearing destroyed and even suffering so much. At the same time, she explains herself full of joy and feeling born again. This mostly appears in her painting named Las dos.
At this time of her injuries made by accident is where she concentrated much on reading and reviewing other people’s artwork. Her works would explain many themes all together but with a specific lesson. At some time, she touched on the subject of religion. An art made was with a woman who was sitting wearing clothing and other gadgets showing that the woman was a catholic. Her technique with a necklace that was thorny also was used to indicate the trauma of suffering she was going through at every time she faced this (Budrys, V. 2006).
At the accident, she also had her spine fractured. This was entirely much suffering because it hindered her life so much that she couldn’t even bear a child or work for herself outside. After she got married, she started wearing long skirts that were Mexican based. She explained the theme of family in this and other artistic works. She would talk about a family of two, where the husband would torture the wife. This could as well be taken as the theme of family violence. By wearing these long dressed, she would explain her Mexican identity.
She also explained more about political life, making art on it. Later on, she would divorce with Rivera and show the among the two Fridas in the Las dos. She said that Rivera loved Frida from the right and did not love the one from the left. This entirely was irony. In this art, Frida explains herself as two Fridas, but in a real sense, she is one. Therefore, this was to tell more about the revolving characteristics of Frida. Some were loved by Rivera, and some were not. This was a sense feeling of imperfection (Garber, E. 1992).
Economically, politically and psychologically, her paintings would address issues in all these three perspectives. In one of the pictures she made, she portrayed much about the political state of a country. Since she was Mexican, she did mostly on it. She would clearly show in them how people are being mistreated and expected to fulfil much when the people in power just pushed to torture them and do total injustice to them. Her paintings are said to be very expensive today. Some of them range to even more than 8 million dollars. This is very costly for them. They are this and much more worth it because they were very appealing.
Kate Chopin Writings
Kate Chopin was a renowned American author who has contributed to literature through her many short stories and novels. Aside from her literary prowess, what made her into a memorable figure is her efforts as one of the forerunners of American 20th Century feminist authors, who belonged to more conservative backgrounds, like the Catholic or Southern backgrounds. As she actively worked to represent her community, her works were well received during the 1980s and went as far as to be published by some of America’s most prestigious magazines, such as Vogue, the Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s Young People, to name a few.
Kate Chopin was born on February 8, 1850, to her parents of French and Irish descent. She was an emotionally reserved woman and would write stories about humans and their love life. She lived her life around the Civil War that took place in America, which she exploited to publish her work. She knew that her work would gain attention, as it focused on portraying women from a time in which they were most oppressed and were taught to always be quiet. The ways she would talk about these women in her fictions was received poorly during her lifetime. It was only after her death that scholars started noticing the sensitive, graceful, and poetic depictions of women’s lives in Chopin’s works, that she got the attention she deserved (Koloski, Bernard). Chopin got married and had three kids, but was unhappy with her marriage, which led her to having an affair with another man before the death of her husband. Seeing these moments in her life, scholars have made the connection that Chopin’s background and history are very well associated with the stories she writes. This helps us better understand the personality and thinking that Chopin had.
Being a feminist writer in the 1800s when women had fewer rights, many of Chopin’s works were also subject to being condemned. Her famous work The Awakening was widely condemned by the public, as critics claimed it was disagreeable, morbid and highly vulgar. Many other well-known writers of the 20th Century, such as Willa Cather, also made comments on her work and labelled it as ‘trite and sordid’ (Koloski, Bernard). One of the reasons for such backlash is because the work talks about a woman who becomes aware of her oppressions and seeks freedom and individuality. Through the perspectives of this woman, Chopin talks about the limitations that women face in the society of her time. As a result, many people saw Chopin’s work as a form of propaganda that would dissuade women from taking up their typical Victorian age responsibilities and try to break the social norms and traditional standards of the time (TaninMarghi).
While Chopin was not well received during her lifetime, her works are very well known in today’s modern-day and age. Readers of today are better able to understand the message that Chopin wanted to give to the audience and how she worked for the feminist rights in 19th Century America. It was due to the help of a 20th Century author, Per Seyersted, who included many of her works in his biography, which allowed the world to truly understand the beauty of her writing. Since then, she has attracted great attention from scholars and students and has had her works translated in various other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Turkish, German, and French, to include a few. This rise to her popularity after her death shows how she was well ahead of her time and saw that the way that women were treated during the Victorian age was unjust and undeserving (Bektas, Sena).
Conclusion
In conclusion, Kate Chopin was a feminist author that was able to become conscious of the injustice and inequality that women of the Victorian era had to face at the hands of their male counterparts. While she was not able to make a substantial change to such societal norms in her life, her works are still available to us, as inspiration and to better understand the struggles that women have gone through. Likewise, we have evaluated the artistic works of Frida Kahlo from different perspectives. She was a brave woman who always looked at various issues in her way. She explained her points using her own life. Most of Kahlo’s works displayed very strong feminist ideas. This also shows that she was an open-minded artist. On top of that, she told more about her physical and psychological pains. She was a successful artist in her own time.
References
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Koloski, B. (n.d.). Biography, Kate Chopin, The Awakening, The Storm, stories. Retrieved from https://www.katechopin.org/biography/
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Budrys, V. (2006). Neurological deficits in the life and works of Frida Kahlo. European neurology, 55(1), 4-10.
Corrêa, D. R. D. T. (2016). Arte educação e saúde mental: A relevância da arte como abordagem terapêutica na construção dos sujeitos (Master’s thesis).
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Herrera, H. (2018). Frida: The Biography of Frida Kahlo. Bloomsbury Publishing.