Kate Chopin

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Desiree's Baby

Desiree's Baby is a short story by the American writer Kate Chopin, published in 1893. It is about miscegenation in Creole Louisiana during the antebellum period. (wikipedia)"

Eloise

Not a review, more like an analysis.

"Désirée's Baby" points out the absurdity of attempting to classify human beings neatly into distinct racial categories. To the characters in the story, a person is "not white" if they have even a tiny amount of African heritage. But some people clearly appear white in spite of such heritage. Status is not conferred on people because they earn it or because they look a certain way; it comes through the circumstances of birth. People assume Armand is white, even though his mother was not, because his father was white and well-respected and, most importantly, because his father treated Armand as his son. In contrast, some light-skinned people in the story are enslaved merely because their mothers were enslaved. One woman, La Blanche, has a name meaning "the white one," suggesting that she is light-skinned, but she lives as a slave on Armand's plantation. La Blanche's children are also light-skinned and are probably Armand's children. Kate Chopin shows one of La Blanche's boys forced to labor at caring for Désirée's baby—possibly his own brother while the baby naps on a luxurious bed. The obvious disparities between the two boys' lives emphasize that it is social acceptance, not any other quality, that allows one to live in privilege while the other lives as a slave.

Kate Chopin subtly reinforces this point with her choice to refrain from describing the baby's physical features. Instead, she shows her characters' reactions—Madame Valmondé's suspicion and surprise, Désirée's horror, and Armand's fury. The author only hints at what causes all these emotions until Armand says the reason out loud: "It means ... that the child is not white." But even he does not say how the child is different from white people. He simply states the problem and rejects the child forever. The consequences of this are so enormous that Désirée appears to give up on life, apparently choosing to kill herself and her baby rather than go on living.

It is absolutely clear that the baby is an innocent victim of racism. It is absurdly cruel for his father to reject him and his mother to likely kill him because they and others see mixed-race features in him. By making this cruelty a focal point of her story, Kate Chopin may be suggesting that it is also absurd to exclude a mixed-race child from high-status society.

noha

3.5

Whoa! one of the saddest stories i've read till now and it contains an absolutely brilliant plot-twist

Desiree's Baby Includes MLA Style Citations for Scholarly Secondary Sources, Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Critical Essays (Squid Ink Classics)

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