Intro
Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
1 Introduction
2 Chopin and Catholicism in America, 1850-1904
Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century America
Slavery, the Civil War, and Catholicism
Reconstruction
Nuns, Women, and a New Age
Kate Chopin as Catholic Writer
3 Social and Religious Critique and Transformation through the Short Fiction
Local Color Fiction
Chopin and a Catholic Critique
After the Winter
A Matter of Prejudice
With the Violin
At Chêniere Caminada
A Sentimental Soul
"Love on the Bon-Dieu"
Madame Célestin's Divorce

Madame Martel's Christmas Eve
4 "Catholic Modernism" and the Short Stories
Charles Darwin and the New Sciences
Chopin as Protomodernist
A Vocation and a Voice
At the 'Cadian Ball and The Storm
Ma'ame Pélagie
Lilacs
Visions, Illusions, and the New World Order
Portraits in Contemplation and Spirtual Ecstasy
5 At Fault: Catholic Doctrine and Social Issues
The Catholic Presence
Critical Perspectives
Moral Questions
Divorce
Something Higher Than Love
6 The Awakening: Challenging Authority and Rewriting Women's Spirituality
The Protestant Outsider

Levels of Consciousness
Music and Spiritual Consciousness
Release from the Temporal Realm
Rewriting Spirituality
7 Mysticism in Chopin's Fiction
Mysticism
Historic Mystics
Mysticism and Women's Experience
Transformative or Conversion Narrative
Release from Earthly Attachment
Visions
Ecstasy
8 Conclusion
Works Cited
Index