“Désirée’s Baby” by Kate Chopin is a short story that is set in Louisiana, in the southern United States. The story is about a young upper class married couple before the American Civil War, but it was written after it. “Désirée’s Baby” was written in 1892 and published in Vogue in 1893. It was later reprinted in the Bayou Folk collection of stories in 1894.
The story highlights race identity as the determining factor for belonging to a social class and having power in the late 19th-century of Southern American society.
The goals of this text are to show that Chopin is a Realist writer and that her work describes the racism that exists in certain people during that time period.
Realism emerged as an opposition to Romanticism. In the United States, Realism began in the mid-19th century and was present in the early years of the 20th century. It was a time of change for the country. From the industrial to the cultural. Realism took care of depicting social realities and everyday life of ordinary people.
“Désirée’s Baby” depicts the life of plantation owners in the southern U.S. where there were big houses with lots of land, and slaves who served the owners. The treatment of black people was very offensive, and their only option was to obey their owners if they did not want to suffer terrible consequences.
This story begins when Madame Valdomé visits her daughter Désirée and her grandchild. There are flashbacks to the past, when the sweet and tender Désirée came into the life of the Valmondé family. No one knew how she appeared in that place, they only knew that she was lost and they believed that maybe people from Texas left her there. The text says, “The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Maïs kept, just below the plantation (Chopin, 1).” The origin of Désirée was unknown, but that was not an impediment to her soon winning the love of the Valmondé family. Madame Valmondé had no children, so she raised her as a daughter and gave her love, care and education. The sweet girl grew up and became a beautiful young woman. “Désirée name means ‘the wished-for one,’ ‘the desired one’ (Peel, 224).” Years passed and Désirée married Armand Aubigny, owner of L’Abri. She was the daughter that Valmondé wanted so much and the perfect wife for Armand. She was good, sweet, beautiful and white. Foreshadows exist in the text that tell us that something may happen later in the story.
Love is strong in the story. Désirée was very happy, happier than she could imagine. She and her husband had already known each other since they were children. From the first moment that Armand saw her, he fell in love with her and did not care about her origin, that did not matter because when she married him, she would inherit one of the most important surnames in the region, Aubigny. Désirée was happy because the behavior of her husband had changed towards the slaves. After the birth of her child, her husband was no longer so cruel to them. He used to treat slaves very badly, but his fatherhood had made him tolerant and less offensive to them. In addition, his child was a male, another reason to be happy, since in those times having a male child meant the continuation of the family last name. It was something that was given high value and but which is almost irrelevant today. When Madame Valdomé looked at her grandchild and her daughter her concern was to know that her daughter was treated well by Armand. Also, when Madame Valdomé looked at the baby, she noticed that he has changed a lot. “Madame Valdomé amazement is explicitly acknowledged “‘This is not the baby!’-She exclaimed in startled tones (Gibert, 41).” In the story it doesn’t describe more about her reaction, but we can assume that Madame Valdomé noticed that baby was changing his physical appearance and not looking white.
Then, Madame Valdomé felt peace of mind when her daughter said “Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his name […]. (Chopin, 1)” But like life itself, this story will take a turn and not everything will be love and this love will not be eternal or strong as it was thought. This story written in third person, and some words in the French language shows foreshadows, flashbacks, and many dualities. For example, there is the theme of love versus hate or care versus indifference. Peel says, “The story takes place in an antebellum Creole community ruled by institutions based on apparently clear dualities: master over slave, white over black, and man over woman (224).”
In those days, slave owners had all the rights over them, and it is not surprising that some owners took sexual possession of their female slaves. It is not stated directly in the text, but it is hinted that there is a certain similarity between La Blanche’s son and Désirée’s baby. Since after Désirée observed him several times, her blood “turned like ice in her veins” and she cried.
Then, there are some hints in the story that make us think about the baby’s skin color. For example, when Zandrine cuts the baby’s fingernails, and Désirée’s mom searches for Zandrine since she may notice some racial origin. “Fingernails would clearly indicate people’s black ancestry no matter how white they might look. Most nineteenth-century readers would grasp the semiotic load of this detail (Gibert, 42).”
The author creates surprises in the story. The first one was when Désirée’s baby changed color after three months and started showing black skin, and the second one was the rejection of Armand towards his wife and baby because of the baby’s skin color.
Désirée cannot stand to hear her husband say that she does not have white blood. She replied, “‘It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my eyes are gray, Armand, you know they are gray. And my skin is fair,’ seizing his wrist. ‘Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand,’ she laughed hysterically (Chopin, 1).” But her husband coldly and cruelly replied, “‘As white as La Blanche’s,’ he returned cruelly; and went away leaving her alone with their child (Chopin, 1).”
In this story, Chopin describes and classifies people according to colors. For example, she calls some people, “quadroons, yellow, blacks and negroes (Griffin, 1).” The author shows how critical and judgmental the society was at that time. People did not accept others who were not white in the upper-class society.
The story turned even more dramatic when Désirée couldn’t tolerate the rejection of her husband, and lack of love he had for his own child because of the skin color. “When she is rejected by her husband, Armand, she takes the infant, disappears into the bayou, and does not return. Armand later finds out, however, that he himself is black, on his mother’s side. Désirée, though unintentionally, has devastated him by means of these two surprises, one concerning her supposed race and one concerning his own (Peel, 224).” Some critics of “Désirée’s Baby” story say that Armand didn’t find out his real origins. Some critics believe that in fact, he always knew his black roots and was pretending not to know them. Chopin is an author that always leaves readers thinking about diverse possibilities.
The ending makes us wonder whether Armand actually found out about his origin or if he found out much earlier but denied confessing it. Let us remember that he was a child when his mother died in France. Unlike the US, at that time, France had already abolished slavery after the French Revolution, and it was likely that Armand’s parents were married without any problem or impediment despite Armand’s mother’s skin color. Armand’s baby was a mulatto because, the one with black genes was him.
The irony of this story is that Armand Aubigny, a person who treated slaves so badly, actually had black blood in his veins. His hunger for power was stronger than the love he claimed to have for his wife and his child. He took it as an offense from Désirée that she did not give him a white son. Skin color was so important at that time because only whites could access important positions, be free and own land in the United States. The color of the race could be synonymous with power or oppression in society.
At the end of the story, there was a bonfire in the yard where some things from Désirée and the baby were burned. Among the items, he pulled a letter from a drawer and read it. In the letter from his mother it said, “But above all,” she wrote, “night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery (Chopin, 1).”
Therefore, we can affirm that the story of “Désirée’s Baby” is part of American Realism literature and that this story has elements that make us realize how strongly racism existed at that time.
Works Cited
Campbell, Donna M. “Realism in American Literature, 1860-1890.” Literary Movements. 2015. Dept. of English, Washington State University. https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/howells/realism.htm Accessed October 10, 2021
Chopin, Kate. The Kate Chopin International Society. 2016. https://www.katechopin.org/desirees-baby-text/ Accessed October 16 2021
Gibert, Teresa. “Textual, Contextual and Critical Surprises in ‘Desiree’s Baby’.” Connotations, vol. 14, no. 1-3, Jan. 2004, pp. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsglr.A317309770&site=eds-live&scope=site Accessed 20 Sept. 2021
Griffin Wolff, Cynthia. “Kate Chopin and the fiction of limits: ‘Desirée’s Baby’.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, spring 1978, pp. 123+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A131896931/AONE?u=nhc_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=c0bf8eda Accessed September 20 2021
Peel, Ellen. Semiotic Subversion in “Désirée’s Baby.” American Literature. 1990;62(2):223-237. doi:10.2307/2926914 Accessed September 20, 202137. doi:10.2307/2926914 Accessed September 20, 2021
Ericka Koehler 