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Desiree's Baby Theme

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In “Désirée’s Baby” we see racism as an over-arching theme in the short story. “Désirée’s Baby” takes place in Louisiana during the mid-nineteenth century on a plantation owned by a white man. Désirée herself is a white woman, who was abandoned as a child and raised by someone other than her biological mother. Désirée was asleep on a stone pillar, and when Armand rode by he was immediately over taken with her beauty. It was love at first sight, and the pair marry not long after. Désirée falls pregnant, and Armand is over joyed. Upon the birth of Desiree’s baby Armand becomes gentler towards his slaves. Before the birth of his child Armand was incredibly physically abusive towards them, and afterwards he softens up on the beatings. Not only …show more content…

Armand treats Désirée very nicely through the short story by buying her lavish clothing, and supporting her financially. This exemplary treatment only occurs while Armand believes Désirée is white. However, his entire demeanor shifts the moment the baby begins to seem to have black blood. Before the joys of fatherhood Armand treated the slaves terribly, and for the first months before his baby appeared to be something other than white, Armand would not beat them. However, with his own child beginning to appear black he goes back to abusing them. This is a bit unsettling because if he truly believes his own child to be part black you would think he would have some compassion towards his slaves, but instead it makes him even angrier at them. Armand is ashamed of blackness, this is seen by him when he rejects his own child and Désirée out of the shame he feels. The only things that causes this shift is Armand’s racism towards African-Americans. He views them as inferior property, not as living breathing humans with emotions too. In his mind, having a mixed baby is incredibly shameful and embarrassing to his name, which in why he asks Désirée to leave. If it weren’t for Armand’s racism, this story would have turned out with a much more positive ending. Because of Armand racist world views, he was unable to be a decent human and take responsibility for the child he conceived with Désirée. His racism causes him to act unkindly towards his wife, child, slaves, and I think to himself now that he knows he himself is part

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Surely, only an opposing, selfish, and insensitive person could send their wife and child away upon realizing that they both were mixed race. In Kate Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby”, however, protagonist, Desiree, is altered over just a few days as she goes from being thankful from the happiness of her husband and baby into saddened and betrayed by her lover. The story eventfully shows how racism and denial both play a part in the way the future may turn out. From the time that the story begins, one can see that the love between Armand and Desiree is what they say to be a dream come true. It’s the love that everyone asks for.

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With the denial of his past and of his race, comes hatred and racism into Armand’s heart and actions. This goes hand and hand with the denial aspect with the usage of characterization from Chopin’s part. Racism ran high in most people’s characteristics of this time because Chopin put this story’s in pre-Civil War times. With the treatment of his slaves, you can really see how Armand feels about others from the race that he sees as less than, even though he is really one of them. The substandard treatment of Armand’s slaves only stops once Desiree gives birth to the baby, but when there was a chance of Desiree being of an African descent, Armand sent her and their child away without thought, saying “Yes, I want to go” with no emotion showing in his voice or actions (3).

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Desiree’s Baby is a short story by Kate Chopin. “Desiree’s Baby” takes place before the Civil War in a time when black people were neglected and mistreated by the whites. Desiree was abandoned and left behind by her parents when she was a toddler by a big stone pillar. She was found and declared adopted by Madame and Monsieur Valmonde. Armand a man that was really harsh to blacks falls in love with Desiree and gets married with her without knowing anything about her ancestry.

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During the era in which this short story was written, southern authors had a major influence on the way the culture was going to grow with racism, and also the way people loved each other. Kate Chopin, a traditional author who believed in southern ways, exemplifies how race and the characteristics of conditional love played a role in her story. In “Desiree’s Baby,” the author, Kate Chopin, provides an illustration of conditional love exemplified by the character, Armand, towards his wife and child; furthermore, Chopin provides instances of irony, elements of surprise, foreshadowing, and symbolism to prove that Armand’s love for both of them was not the unconditional love typically felt and portrayed by women, such as Desiree, during this era. Throughout the story, the readers notice different times where Chopin uses elements of surprise. One major surprise is when Armand opens the letter from his mother and finds out that he has African American in his bloodline.

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The irony of this short story was that it was Armand who was of mixed raced and not his wife. He was the one who tainted the baby, he found out after fining a letter from his beloved mother that was written to his father (Chopin). Irony is a surprising interesting twist at the end on a story. I am sure that after he read this letter that he soon figured out why his father was so kind to the slaves and how it was wrong of him to treat his wife the way he did and immediately regretted his choices. Thus, she was no longer there and he could not get her back, he thought she went back to live with her stepmother, and if he goes to look for her or the stepmother went to look for her and the child they would both find that Desiree never went to her original destination.

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