Essay On Desiree's Baby By Kate Chopin

In Kate Chopin’s Desiree’s Baby, she portrays the average southern Creole society where women are obviously below men and black people are even lower. The racist mindset that was common during the time is prominent throughout the novel, which is shown by the way colored or mixed people are treated. The amount of African descent a person had dictated which jobs they were assigned to on the farm or estate they belonged to. The ones that were lighter were permitted to work in the house, because those were the ones that the owning family would even consider looking at or being served by. During this time, there were many mixed children in society, which was most likely the result of having affairs with slaves. It was decided that if a child’s

By marrying her, he took a gamble on the skin tone of his children, because although two parents may seem white, their kid can turn out to be dark if one or both of the parents are part black. However, it was difficult to predict whether or not this would happen, because race was very ambiguous during the time. Chopin describes Armand as falling in love with Desiree as instantly as a bullet leaving a gun, but despite this strong love for her the reader see that as their child is aging, Armand’s love for Desiree is slowly turning to disgust. As children with dark complexion age, their skin starts light but grows darker. The reader can assume that Armand’s change in attitude toward Desiree is due to the realization that his child’s skin is growing darker proving that it is not fully white. When Desiree makes this discovery herself, she is horrified, because she knows the consequences of having a black child. She discovers her child’s complexion when she sees that her son is the same color as the quadroon boy working for her, and it shocks her to see similarities with her son and a slave. She society would not accept her son, and would only look at him as a