Kate Chopin: Adversity and Criticism Tragedy, death, adversity and criticism can one or a combination of these circumstances influence the path you take? Enduring the death of loved ones, facing critical abuse and public denunciation as an immoralist, Kate Chopin is considered among the most important women in the nineteenth-century American fiction. (Scarsella) Katherine (Chopin) O'Flaherty was born of Irish-French descendants. There is some controversy over the actual date of her birth. Kate stated her day of birth as February 8,1851. There was another listed date, July 12, 1850. Most biographers