Identity In Desiree's Baby

Like Desiree, Edna also suffers in her marriage with Leonce. The narrator often says that Edna and Leonce’s marriage was “purely an accident” and was “the climax of her fate” (Chopin 45). As mentioned earlier, women’s goal was to get married (Goldman 372). In this case, the word “fate” the narrator uses means marriage. Through their marriage, or fate, there was “no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection” (Chopin 47). Their marriage was not love, but it was definitely concealing Edna’s identity. For example, in the beginning of the novel, Edna comes home with sunburn and Leonce looks “at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage” (Chopin 4). This sentences

According to Derek Foster and Kris LeJunne, being a mother to her baby is important to Desiree because it is part of her role as a character (156). She is extremely focused on taking care of her baby and she depends on being a great mother to her baby. This causes Desiree to lack her own identity because she is too focused on taking care of the baby and not focused on herself. Peel furthermore states “Desiree creates nothing but a baby” (235) meaning she is only useful for procreation and is not useful for anything else. For example, she has no other role throughout the story. Her only role in the story is to take care of the baby and readers see that she takes great pride in her role as a mother when she says, “look at his legs, mamma, and his hands and fingernails-real finger-nails” (Chopin 1520). This shows she is glad to have a healthy baby and is able to take care of him. Another instance of how the baby conceals Desiree’s identity is when “Madame Valmonde drove over to L’Abri to see Desiree and the baby” (Chopin 1519). Chopin seems to showcase this sentence by titling Desiree’s identity as “Desiree and the baby.” For example, throughout the story, Chopin structures Desiree’s name as “Desiree and the baby” (1519). This phrase is used another time on page 1520, when “Madame Valmonde had not seen Desiree and the baby for four weeks” (Chopin). This suggests that Desiree and the baby’s identities are joined together, causing them to be one individual identity. Another example of their identities being linked together is when Armand says, “that the child is not white; it means that you are white” (Chopin 1521). Armand’s accusation implies that Desiree and the baby are the same; he sees no difference between them. They are not individualized. Instead, they are viewed as the same identity. Therefore, this shows that part of