This book explores the Catholic aesthetic and mystical dimensions in KateChopin's fiction within the context of an evolving American Catholicism in thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a close reading of hernovels and numerous short stories, Kate Chopin and Catholicism looks at theways Chopin represented Catholicism in her work as a literary device that servedon multiple levels: as an aesthetic within local color depictions of Louisiana, as atrope for illuminating the tensions surrounding nineteenth-century women'sstruggles for autonomy, as a critique of the Catholic dogma that subordinatedauthenticity and physical and emotional pleasure, and as it pointed to thedistinction between religious doctrine and mystical experience, and enabled thearticulation of spirituality beyond the context of the Church. This book revealsChopin to be not only a literary visionary but a writer who saw divinity in thenatural world.