Desiree 's Baby By Kate Chopin

The story “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin’s involves romance that gets crumpled up and burned with racism. It all begins when Madame Valmonde went to go visit Desiree (her adopted daughter) and her baby. Realizing after taking the baby to a window that was the lightest and scanning the baby while looking at Zandrine (an African American slave), the baby shares similar features to Zandrine. It was that moment where everything began to go down hill. This story was not just about one small, happy family, but instead, it was about prejudice, love, and racism. Racism does not come from within, it is manmade or taught.

In the story “Desiree's Baby” Kate Chopin uses Slavery and Racism in the theme for this story. In Desiree's baby, the servants noticed how the child had something wrong with the skin tone and that caused the conflict between the mother and the father. The author uses human vs human conflicts while also including racism and sexism to the theme.

In Desiree’s Baby, Kate Chopin shows how over valuing of white race and status can destroy a relationship and a family. Race and status are intangible ideas humans make up to segregate one another and should not be valued higher than a human life, but this is not the case in "Desiree’s Baby.”

How can racism and arrogance destroy a whole family? In the short story "Désirée 's Baby" written by Kate Chopin reflects on how racism played a huge role before the American Civil War. Désirée was abandoned by her family when she was young and was adopted by, Madame Valmonde, a rich white family. One day Armand Aubigny was passing when he saw Désirée next to a stone pillar, where he falls in love with her instantly . They get married and have a baby boy. After three months later, her husband discoveries that the baby is not white and assumes that Désirée is from a black family. Armand didn 't want to bring shame to his family lineage and decides to kick Desiree and her baby out. One day while he was trying to burn Desiree things, to destroy memories and evidence, he discoveries a letter that was from his mom to his dad stating that his real mom is a black woman. Chopin 's short story "Désirée 's Baby" shows how judging people, being arrogant and selfish, and the consequences of racism could ultimately lead to the destruction of Désirée 's family.

The story, Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin takes places in the late 19th Century in Louisiana, where racial separation and inequality is very prevalent. The white landowners are often in a family whose name equates to high status. The African American’s are slaves to the landowners and are often whipped and beaten during their work. They hold no status and this is solely due to the fact of their race. In Kate Chopin’s Desiree’s Baby, it is evident that race and social identity is equated directly with character status in this time period, as shown through Armand’s changes in behavior when the baby is born, as well as Desiree’s fall of status with her new baby.

The short story, "Desiree's Baby", written by Kate Chopin, set in Louisiana's 1892 slave era, was influenced by the irony of love and prejudices. In the story, Chopin depicts how racial bias overthrows the love a man had for his wife and child. An analysis of the story proves the irony by illustrating judgment on appearances, through racism, and self-destruction.

The story, “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin offers insight on racial prejudice as well as class distinction in Southern America during the late 1800s. Desiree, a new mother is accused of having slave blood by her husband, who treated slaves poorly. The irony of the situation is that Desiree was not the one who had an ancestry of slaves, but it was her husband, Armand. This story offers both an interesting plot as well as factual elements that can be related to the history at the time, making it the perfect story to teach in American Literature.

“Desiree’s Baby” provides insight into the application of the hypodescent rule in plantation-era Louisiana, depicting individuals of mixed race who are marked and assigned to the subordinate social group. In her short story, “Desiree’s Baby,” Kate Chopin addresses the practice as it was applied to the “one-drop rule,” the notion that an individual with white complexion may be deemed black by society given the presence of any African ancestry. Desiree, the story’s protagonist, is eloquently placed at the intersection of the two races, victimized in order to highlight the flaws and inadequacies of the rule. Desiree’s ultimate removal from white society and possible death may indicate a text working to criticize racial prejudice; however,

B1 Create a new setting and describe how it would change either the plot, the characters or the mood of the story.

Throughout time, humans struggled with issues of conformity and individuality. In the modern world, individuality is idealized, as it is associated with strength. Weak individuals are usually portrayed as conforming to society and having almost no personal ideas. In “Desiree’s Baby”, a short story, the author Kate Chopin deals with the struggles of African descendants in the French colonies during the time of slave labor. The protagonist is a white woman named Desiree who is of unknown origin and birth as she was found abandoned as an infant at an aristocrat’s doorstep. Eighteen years after her discovery, she and a fellow aristocrat, Armand Aubigny, fall in love and get married. They soon have a child, yet conflict arises when the child

“Desiree’s Baby” a short story by Kate Chopin.The setting of the story is in the mid 19th century before the Civil War during slavery. The story is about a wife (Desiree) and husband(Armand) who had a dark skin son and Armand was mad because he thought the wife had the gene in her background. But, at the end they found out that the husband was the one who had black relative in his background.In “Desiree’s Baby”, Kate Chopin uses tone, mood and irony to develop the theme of the story.

In the fictional story “Desiree’s Baby”, written by Kate Chopin, An orphaned girl named Desiree falls in love with a rich, well known, slave owner names Armand. Everything was going swell at the beginning until their child ages a few months and Armand realizes his son is from the forbidden color and his name is going to be dragged in the dirt for it. Armand’s careless actions foreshadows the theme of love should supersede any prejudice or racist ideology to develop an engaging plot. Early in the story, the reader learns that Desiree is an orphan; she was left lying asleep in the shadow of a big stone pillar as an infant.

In the story “Desiree’s Baby,” by Kate Chopin, the contrast of gender roles, race and wealth is used to depict the extreme differences in class. This is critical to this particular short story because of the era in which it was written. The struggle for class/race equality was a main focus for the under privileged.

Kate Chopin’s “Désirée 's Baby” was set in the days before the abolition of slavery, at a time when the ownership of another person was not only acceptable, but also economically impactful in the south. It was normal to see big plantations owned by whites and tendered by black slaves. We see all of this and more in “Désirée’s Baby”. One of the characters, Monsieur Valmonde finds an abandoned baby one day while out riding. His wife, Madam Valmonde, does not have a child of her own so she takes the baby in and names her Désirée. Madam Valmonde and her husband, Monsieur Valmonde raises the child, until she is old enough to become married. Her attractiveness and especially white skin attract Monsieur Armand Aubigny, a plantation owner, and they immediately become married and have a child. Désirée and Armand both originally associate themselves with the white class, but once the plot unveils their black heritage they are faced with uncertainty, and ultimately their lives become meaningless and not worth living. Throughout the story, Kate Chopin uses symbolism to convey her themes of racial biasness and social ladder in a society. The characters and the setting in this short story help provide the readers with more understanding of how racially charged our society was at that time.

Kate Chopin’s Desiree’s Baby is a short story about a girl named Desiree who is abandoned, then adopted into a wealthy family. Young Desiree soon grows up and falls in love with a slave owner, Armand,with whom she conceives a son with only to discover that her child's appearance consists of African descent characteristics. Chopin narrates the issues of oppression and loss of identity during a historical period of time through Desiree’s character. Derek Foster and Kris LeJeune's critique, focusing on the feminist standpoint of Desiree’s Baby, attempts to demonstrates how Desiree’s act to flee into the bayou is her first accomplishment of independence.