Desiree's Baby, By Kate Chopin

When Desiree was fully grown Armand one day saw her and instantly fell in love, and they were married despite her unknown background. When Madame arrives she is surprised at how much the child has grown in four weeks, and Desiree tells her how much Armand has changed. She says that Armand is so proud to be a father that he stopped frowning as much and hasn’t punished the slaves once since the baby was born. His happiness makes Desiree feel ecstatic.

In “Desiree Baby” Chopin shows how one skin color defines social class, and determines the value and identity of another (Cummings).For the majority of the story, Armand is clearly looked upon as a white male of class and wealth, until the end of the story. He owns land in L’ Abri, and he has a plantation full of African Americans working for him as slaves. Armand have slaves to do his work for him. He also expresses an individual class between the races of the slaves. The lighter slaves worked inside with his

Desiree?s words show that her life depends on the race, notions, and social class of her husband and consequently, she feels obligated to obey his every desire. Desiree is presented as vulnerable to whatever Armand wants and tells her to do when she says, ?Do you want me to go?? (177). Desiree displays through her actions that in many ways, her happiness only comes from pleasing her husband. Therefore, Desiree must decide whether to live completely separate from Armand, or to live with him in constant fear and unpleasantness. Desiree achieves personal freedom and independence from Armand when ?she disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thing along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; she did not come back again? (177). It is not even an option and is unheard of that Armand, being a male holding a respectable background, could possibly be black. Consequently, Desiree feels compelled to leave because she wants to please him. When Desiree decides to kill herself and her child, she shows that she is sensitive and vulnerable to her husband?s thoughts and actions.

when she is recovering from giving birth to her child and she is “in her soft white muslins”, that is an example of symbolism being used to represent Desiree as white and pure. In the other hand Armand is mostly compared to the darkness and obscurity such as when Desiree is describing her love for Armand and then it is stated, “Armand’s dark, handsome face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the day he fell in love with her” (Chopin 2). “In certain ways, Desiree’s baby is atypical of Chopin's body of work; it is the only story to concern miscegenation; it is the only story to feature a stereotypically "cruel" Southern master; it does not explore issues of female sexuality” (Korb 1). When Desiree notices that her baby resembled one

Yet it is not until Armand believes that Desiree is black that he fully dominates her simply by thinking that he is superior.  At this point, “when he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out” (317).  Armand feels that he is too superior to Desiree to devote his full attention to her.  Since he no longer expresses his love for Desiree, she feels further pushed into a slave-like position in the relationship, and, “was miserable enough to die” (318).

What sets Desirée apart in terms of her subjugation by Armand? It is not race, but the lack thereof. Desirée is unable to hide anything about herself because her origins are unknown (Chopin 401). She is a willing captive to Armand as a result of her love and her marriage, but she is not an unwilling captive to race; she is an unwilling captive to her otherness. She does not have doubts about her race, but must live with the reality that “Armand has told me I am not white” (Chopin 404). Because her origins are unknown and she does not have a name, she must acquiesce to the whims of Armand, who had at first decided to be unconcerned about “the girl’s obscure origins” (Chopin 401). Armand is the power here. He makes all of the decisions regarding the lives of those within his circle of power, and he does so because he is allowed to do so. Madam

In Kate Chopin’s story, “Desiree’s Baby” she tells of a story set in Louisiana in the mid-nineteenth century on a white plantation some time before the Civil War when slavery was still legal. Readers will see the unraveling of a marriage because of assumptions and hatred that will lead to heartbreak. In this story, the readers will explore the impacts of racism and racial inequality and how the racial tension of the time effected the lives of Desiree and her husband Armand.

In the short story, “Desiree’s Baby,” Kate Chopin exposes the harsh realities of racial divide, male dominance, and slavery in Antebellum Louisiana. Although written in 1894, Chopin revisits the deep-south during a period of white privilege and slavery. Told through third-person narration, the reader is introduced to characters whose individual morals and values become the key elements leading to the ironic downfall of this antebellum romance. As Chopin takes the reader through the unfortunate circumstances and unexpected twists of Desiree’s life, a Southern Gothic tale emerges. While Armonde is Chopin’s obvious villain, one should not assume that the other characters are not antagonists themselves, as

The story by Kate Chopin called Desiree’s Baby (1894) focuses on the slavery days of America. It takes place during Antebellum in Creole Louisiana. Kate Chopin’s purpose in this story is to show how too much emphasis on skin and racial heritage could destroy a loving family. Lying is never an okay thing to do, especially during the days when race could make or break you. Armand’s parents did wrong by lying to Armand, making him believe he was white. This caused the self-destruction of his family, owning with harsh treatment of slaves and lived a life as someone he never was to begin with.

Kate Chopin is the author of many works of literature pertaining to feminism, one is Desiree’s Baby. In Desiree’s Baby, she often uses dark motifs for personification and exaggeration and her light motifs for description and referencing dark motifs. In the story, one of the main themes is: “despite society's expectations, it is not always best to go with their views especially those pertaining to racism, sexism, and love.” Desiree’s Baby Chopin uses motifs to help foreshadow the consequences of the questionable background of Sandrine and add emphasis on the importance of societal reputation to a man like Armand. As Armand was a man who had ignored his wife, Desiree’s, background, directly entering a relationship with her.

She uses Armand, Desiree, and LeBlanche to explain the issue that race and gender present throughout the Antebellum era. Kate Chopin uses many different literary devices throughout her writing, but two of the most prominent devices in this story include irony and symbolism. She used the slaves as a way to exhibit the harsh treatment of people due to their race. Armand was very harsh in the matter of racism and gender bias. Race not only attributes to social class as gender stands a big part also; Kate Chopin makes this evident by using symbolism and irony in her short story “Desiree’s Baby” exhibiting several messages such as both racial and gender identities on social judgement. In the end Chopin presents that Armand was wrong about his prejudices about Desiree’s lineage and he had no right to treat her poorly or unjustly based on his own

In Kate Chopin’s Desiree’s Baby, Chopin uses a story of an established American family to criticize the role racism has in the 19th century. The idolization of whiteness and what this represents leads the Aubigny family to their destruction. The story becomes realistic by its presentation of the characters as well as the reactions they have to finding out they are not part of the American ideal. Chopin uses her language and the plausibility of the story to create a shocking effect to readers and discuss issues of miscegenation and how it had its effect on the characters involved.

When Désirée tells Madame Valmonde that “Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his name; though he says not, - that he would have loved a girl as well. But I know it is n’t true. I know he says that to please me” (Chopin 540). The statement demonstrates that although there was love between Armand and Désirée, still Désirée knew that Armand was egoistic and selfish that he would only care if the baby was a boy and not a girl. As claimed by Skredsvig, “the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves” (Skredsvig 97). The quote suggests that an evil spirit or Devil took place inside Armand that he start treating his workers worse than slaves because he was so much angry by the fact that his own new born son was partially black. But then it was all about Désirée’s strength and courage in the story and not Armand (Skredsvig 98). According to Skredsvig, “Désirée’s Baby is not merely a local color story of life in patriarchal, racist Louisiana, but, more importantly, a chronicle of one woman’s inscription in that social space” (Skredsvig

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.

Back in this era of time the most respectable job for a woman was to be a loving wife in her husband’s household. In the short story “Desiree’s Baby” written by Kate Chopin, we have this setting of this older woman named Madame Valmondé is on her way to visit her adopted daughter Desiree who has recently given birth to her son by her husband Armand Aubigny. Everything seems to be going well at the plantation due to master of the house being so thrilled about having his son being born. As time progresses, Armand become very angry over the few months and eventually Desiree comes to notice that her son looks very similar to a young slave boy who who is one fourth black. Armand is angered and accuses his wife of not being completely white and most likely has black in her blood. Despite her pleas of being white, Armand claims that she is mixed race and will have to leave the plantation. Madame Valmondé expressed that she still loves her daughter and begs her to come home but instead Desiree takes the child and walks off into the swamps never to be seen from again. Eventually we come to find out that Armand is the one who has black in his blood and not his wife. Chopin offers a compelling critique of the class-based and racial prejudice that permeated the attitudes of the antebellum South. In addition, through the relationship between Désirée and Armand, Chopin explores the precarious status of both those without a family and those of biracial descent. Désirée is unlucky