Symbolism In Desiree's Baby By Kate Chopin

Naked Circumstance When you look deep into almost any story there is bound to be symbolism, which is why I enjoy reading so much. The hunt for what message the author had hidden is exiting, and this idea extends to the story "Desiree's Baby" by Kate Chopin. Chopin uses many symbols to get across her message about racism and women's worth. The symbols that stuck out the most for me when I was re-examining the story was the clothing in the scene where Desiree made the connection of her child's ethnicity. Two characters were half naked while the third had on a dressing gown, called a peignoir. The clothing choices in that scene carry much symbolic meaning about shame, innocence, circumstance, and vulnerability. The outer wear of the quadroon

At the time any percentage of black heritage made you an inferior person, whether that was distance relatives or a parent did not matter. This quadroon was a quarter black, and that fraction made his skin darker than a white person's, making him less of a human in the eyes of those with light skin. This ethnicity and the life that he was born into was out of his control and leads to the thought that he was ashamed of his background. He regarded a Desiree as "his mistress"(234) putting her as more important than himself. The fact that he was half naked was no frivolous

Like the quadroon the child was also partially black, most likely the baby was a quadroon as well because his grandmother was African American. The baby shared an ethnic background with the quadroon boy who was fanning him, as both would have been a quadroons. Also both had no control over the situation they were born into. The baby had absolutely no chance to try and better his life and to grow up and migrate to a place where he could be accepted. This baby ended up dying, along side his mother, due to the color of his skin, a variable out of his