At Fault characters Place-du-Bois characters: Thérèse Lafirme, owner of the Place-du-Bois plantation Uncle Hiram, employee of Thérèse Aunt Belindy, cook for Thérèse Betsy, household employee of Thérèse Mandy, household employee of Thérèse Grégoire Santien, nephew of Thérèse; his brothers Hector and Placide appear in Chopin stories "In Sabine," "A No-Account Creole," "In and Out of Old Natchitoches," and "Ma'me Pélagie" David Hosmer, manager of the sawmill on the Place-du-Bois plantation Melicent Hosmer, sister of David Joçint, employee of Hosmer at the sawmill Morico, father of Joçint Aunt Cynthy, Suze, Mose, Minervy, Araminty, employees and relatives of employees at Place-du-Bois Sampson, employee of Thérèse assigned to work at Fanny's home Marie Louise, called Grosse tante, Thérèse's childhood nurse and attendant Pierson, employee of Thérèse Joseph Duplan, owner of Les Chênières plantation; he appears also in Chopin short stories "A Rude Awakening," "After the Winter," "A No-Account Creole," and "Ozème's Holiday" Mrs. Duplan, wife of Joseph; she appears in "A No-Account Creole" and "A Rude Awakening" Ninette Duplan, daughter of Joseph and Mrs. Duplan; she appears in "A No-Account Creole" Rufe Jimson from Cornstalk, Texas Johannah, household servant of Melicent Hosmer Nathan, employee who manages the ferry on the Cane River Aunt Agnes, employee on the plantation a teamster crossing the Cane River St. Louis characters: Fanny Larimore Hosmer Belle Worthington, friend of Fanny Lorenzo Worthington, husband of Belle Lucilla Worthington, daughter of Belle and Lorenzo Lou Dawson, another friend of Fanny Jack Dawson, husband of Lou At Fault time and place At Fault is set in the late nineteenth century in Louisiana and St. Louis, Missouri. Except for the few chapters in St. Louis, the novel plays out on the Place-du-Bois plantation on the Cane River in northwestern Louisiana, near Natchitoches, not far from the Texas border. As in Kate Chopin's short stories, the characters in the novel, like many of the people living in Louisiana at the time, are Creoles, Acadians, "Americans" (as the Creoles and Acadians call outsiders), African-Americans, Native Americans, and people of mixed race. Except for Thérèse Lafirme, David Hosmer, and their families, most of the Louisiana characters are poor, because the area has yet to recover from the devastation of the Civil War. Many of the Louisiana characters speak French and Creole as well as English and the novel contain phrases in French and Creole. At Fault themes Many readers and scholars think of At Fault as a divorce novel, one of the first novels in the United States to focus on the ethics of divorce. Other people explore the book's emphasis on economic and technical restructuring in the American South after the Civil War, on racial undercurrents in the book, or on the subjects of alcoholism or violence. Some readers find elements of sentimentality in the novel, while others find solace in its hopefulness and its celebration of married love. You may want to look at the questions and answers below. And you can read about finding themes in Kate Chopin's stories and novels on the Themes page of this site. When Kate Chopin's At Fault was written and published The novel was composed between July 5, 1889, and April 20, 1890. Chopin sent the manuscript to Belford's Monthly, a magazine in Chicago that published a novel in each issue, but after the editor turned it down, she had a thousand copies printed privately by the Nixon-Jones Printing Company in St. Louis in September 1890. She sent copies of the book to newspapers in several cities, but the critics were not impressed with the work, and their reviews were in general tepid.