Through her stories, Kate Chopin wrote her autobiography and documented her surroundings; she lived in a time when her surroundings included the abolitionist movements and the emergence of feminism. Her ideas and descriptions were not true word for word, yet there was an element of nonfiction lingering throughout each story. Chopin took strong interest in her surroundings and put many of her observations to words. Jane Le Marquand saw Chopin's writings as a new feminist voice, while other intellectuals recognize it as the voice of an individual who happens to be a woman. Marquand writes, "Chopin undermines patriarchy by endowing the Other, the woman, with an individual identity and a sense of self, a sense of self to which the letters she leaves behind give voice. The 'official' version of her life, that constructed by the men around her, is challenged and overthrown by the woman of the story." Chopin may have been using her creative writing skills to express a point of view regarding her belief in the strength of women. The idea of creative nonfiction might be seen as relevant in this case. In order for a story to be autobiographical, or even biographical, Marquand writes, there has to be a nonfictional element, which more often than not exaggerates the truth to spark and hold interest for the readers. Kate Chopin may have felt just as surprised by the contemporary characterization of her work as feminist as she had been in her own time by the stamp of immorality. Critics tend to regard writers as individuals with larger points of view addressed to factions in society.