Désirée ’s Baby by Kate Chopin

“Désirée ’s Baby” is a mix feelings story. It is an intriguing, captivating, and sad short story which reflects her experience among the French creoles in Louisiana (Chopin). I used “sad”, because it shows the level of hatred the white has towards black. The story is about two two families in Louisiana: the Valmonde and the L’ Abri. The story focuses on human relationships; the lives and characters of both family members are subtly portrayed in comparison. The story tells about love, slavery, and racism. Hypocrisy of patriarchal society, gender conflicts, and injustice of racial prejudice are depicted in the story. In the story, racism victimizes everybody without equivalent consequence. The story is heaped with ironies. The narrator uses symbolism and irony to convey the themes of half-blood, racial hatred, unequal gender roles, and social ladder. Irony and symbolism are also used to enhance the story, captivating the minds of the reader until the very end.

At the beginning of the story, the kind of love that exists between Armand and Désirée can never be overlooked. They share love that is; beautiful, giving, and smiling. According to the narrator “passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.” (Chopin, 708) Initially, Armand did not know about her hidden origin, this makes him care-less about her identity. “What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana? He ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he could until it arrived; then they were married.”(708). Despite the intensity of Armand’s love at the beginning,...

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... of mixed origin, he would not have hated his wife. The story recorded that he brought out the letter from the same drawer where he had kept Desiree’s letter since their courtship. He must had been going to the drawer often because the narrator says that it was “a tiny bundle of letters.”(711). Careful reading of the end part of this story, one can easily find the right answer for the topic of this passage which says “love or race?”. “No matter where you come from, no matter your condition, we are one, and so let us live as one.” This is a song I learnt from my country Nigeria which wraps and tells the information the story is passing across to the audience.

Works Cited

Schilb, John , and John Clifford. "Desiress's Baby." making literature matter. 5th ed. Newyork: Bedford/St.Martin's, 2012. 707-711. Print.