Desiree's Baby Means To Me Research Paper

This essay will focus on the short story by Kate Chopin and its use of symbols, setting and characters. Desiree’s baby was perhaps one of the best stories I’ve ever read. Analyzing it was not easy at all. Its use of symbols was very hard to comprehend. At first, it doesn’t make sense. But as you think critically, all the symbols, and setting and the characters in this literature plunge together in one amazing story.

Sometimes the hardest thing for an individual to do is taking a stance against the culture they live in, and sometimes the people who take the stance are underappreciated. Sadly, this is story of a talented writer named Kate Chopin; who took a stance against her environment with her writing, most notably in her short story, “Desiree’s Baby”. Chopin’s short story “Desiree’s Baby” uses the themes of naturalism, realism, and the usage of irony to expose the hypocrisy of racism.

In the short story Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin, the titular character is the wife of slave owner Armand and the new mother of a baby boy. The story follows Desiree as she finds out that her baby is of mixed ethnic background, and the aftermath of having a mixed-race baby in the 1800’s. In regards to the relationships between Desiree and other supporting characters, only one aspect remains constant; tension. While the relationships between Desiree and her husband, her mother, and her son are all extremely different, personal tension is featured often enough to be noteworthy.

Kate Chopin was born on February 8, 1850 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the daughter of an Irish immigrant and a Creole born mother. The couple had two children, Kate and Thomas Junior (Rottgering 16). Kate’s father was a successful business owner and provided well for his family. Sadly, at the age of five, Kate’s father died and left her mother to inherit the businesses and leadership role of the family. Kate grew up in a matriarchy household that consisted of her great grandmother, grandmother, and mother (58 Larabee).

“Désirée’s Baby” is a story of love, prejudice and rejection, a story with noble beginnings that

Thesis statement: During the 19th century social class was more important than values, as the story focuses on Armand being ashamed of his baby due to his color, which creates conflict for him.

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.

I love you I love you, Oh I feel it all it my stomach! Many times, people think that love is suppose to be a certain way. Who are you to say what love is or how it should be? A lot of romance happen in stories. In “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, Armand and Desiree loved each other the way they wanted to love each other, who puts a definition on love? One day things can be bad and the next day things can be good. In the story “Desiree’s Baby” everything about Armand and Desiree love was great until he found out that she was biracial and not completely white. I told you love does not have a specific definition because if so he would’ve loved her no matter about the color on the inside or outside of her skin. Love shouldn’t have a race and this

     In Kate Chopin’s short story, “Desiree’s Baby”, she demonstrates how racism played a major part in people’s lives in the 1800’s. Kate Chopin is extremely successful in getting her readers to feel disturbed by the events in the story. Through words and images, the reader feels touched by the story, either by relating to it at some points or when confronted with things we frequently decide to ignore in the world: the evil some human beings are capable of possessing.

This essay will focus on the short story by Kate Chopin and its use of symbols, setting and characters. Desiree’s baby was perhaps one of the best stories I’ve ever read. Analyzing it was not easy at all. Its use of symbols was very hard to comprehend. At first, it doesn’t make sense. But as you think critically, all the symbols, and setting and the characters in this literature plunge together in one amazing story.

Differences between people create conflicts between people.  This is especially true between men and women, since throughout history society has viewed women as subservient to men.  Kate Chopin’s feminist short story, Desiree’s Baby, illustrates man’s domination over woman.  Since Desiree meekly accepts being ruled by Armand, and Armand regards Desiree as his possession, the master/slave relationship that exists between Armand and Desiree is undeniable.

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

     Two hundred and twenty-five years ago, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. The words he wrote were, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness (Jefferson 685). “…created equal…,” those are very powerful words. Equality, meaning being the same, on the same level, no one higher or lower than the other, but can we honestly say that racism is no longer prevalent in our country? Of course not, the recent incidents, such as Rodney King, James Byrd, Abner Louima, and Amadou Diallo, proves that. In an article entitled, “Racism Down But Not Out in the US Government Study Finds”, published on September 22, 2000, Assistant Secretary of State, Harold Koh reported to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, “America’s struggle to secure racial equality remains incomplete. The residual effects of slavery and institutionalized racism can still be seen in the lingering disparity between blacks and whites in income, levels of education, and health care and rates of incarceration in our nation’s prisons”. Koh too, mentioned the recent incidents that have happened saying that, “we have not yet met the challenge of creating a color-blind society” (Husain 1).

"Desiree's Baby" is not a mere tragic short story by which a reader may be entertained by its ironic and catastrophic ending. It is a story of a crime and brutality against women of all generations to come, depicting vividly how a woman may suffer and conceal her anguish for the sake of others. It is a story of innocence slain mercilessly by the unscrupulous power of harshness that directly governs human societies.

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.