36 pages • 1 hour read
Kate ChopinDesiree's Baby
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Themes
The Unnatural and Irreconcilable Rules of Race
In “Désirée’s Baby,” and in the antebellum Southern American society it reflects, the rules of race delineate who lives as a free person and who lives as an enslaved person. The punishments and rewards of one’s racial identity are extreme and non-negotiable. However, the rules by which one’s racial identity is defined are fluid and untrustworthy. One’s race, it seems, is not only defined by one’s ancestors or by one’s physical appearance, but by the fickle and fragile perceptions of one’s physical appearance.
This perception of racial identity is best exemplified in the scene in “Désirée’s Baby” wherein an enslaved woman’s child fans Désirée’s child to cool him off: “The baby, half naked, lay asleep upon her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with its satin-lined half-canopy. One of La Blanche’s little quadroon boys—half naked too—stood fanning the child slowly with a fan of peacock feathers” (Paragraph 19). A “quadroon” is an antiquated term describing a person who is one-quarter black, which the reader knows by the end of the story, describes Désirée’s baby just as accurately as it describes La Blanche’s baby. Despite their similarities in appearance and racial ancestry, La Blanche’s boy is enslaved, and Désirée’s child is depicted as a prince. The perception of Désirée’s baby’s whiteness is only thing setting him apart from La Blanche’s boy. At the same time, certain people in the household already perceive Désirée’s baby’s “blackness” while Désirée does not. This speaks to the artifice, as opposed to the naturalness, of racial classification.
This same unreliability of skin color to decide race appears when Désirée begs her husband to interpret her fair skin as evidence of her whiteness, saying “Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand” (Paragraph 25). He retorts that her skin is “as white as La Blanche’s” (Paragraph 26), meaning as white as a non-white enslaved person’s skin. Armand’s retort betrays the flaws in using skin color to determine one’s race and, consequently, one’s personhood under the law. If it’s true that Armand’s skin is darker than Désirée’s, and Désirée’s is the same as La Blanche’s, then Armand’s skin is darker than La Blanche’s. When this use of skin color as a proxy for ancestry fails, so fails the entire system for classification—but Armand can’t see this, and he perpetuates discrimination and enslavement anyway. It’s the subjection of humans to race-based slavery that creates a need to classify race in the first place, and “Désirée’s Baby” illuminates how the rules for defining “race” fail over and over again—an inhumane aspect of an inhumane system.
The Destructiveness of Hatred Versus the Salvation of Love
In “Désirée’s Baby,” love is a saving force. Armand’s love for Désirée literally changes his personality: “Marriage, and later the birth of his son had softened Armand Aubigny’s imperious and exacting nature greatly” (Paragraph 17). The love between Armand’s father and mother, as described through the letter he finds, appears to have been so strong as to transcend racial bigotry; Armand’s father lived in France to be with his wife, away from the dangers an interracial couple would have faced in the American South. Madame Valmondé’s love for Désirée, too, is offered as salvation when Désirée is no longer welcome in Armand’s home. Madame Valmondé’s love is a lifeline, though Désirée doesn’t take it.
Just as Chopin demonstrates that love is a rescuing force, she underlines how hatred, love’s opposite, is a destructive force. When Armand recognizes “non-whiteness” in his son, and when he interprets that “non-whiteness” through the lens of racial bigotry and hatred, he changes back: “When he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He absented himself from home; and when there, avoided her presence and that of her child, without excuse. And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves” (Paragraph 18). This hatred leads to the demise of Désirée and the child, as well as to the unspoken but presumed future violence against the enslaved people living at L’Abri. The bonfire at the end of the story, in which Armand burns all evidence of love (including love letters), is a symbol of the destructiveness of hate.
The Cruelty of Slavery
“Désirée’s Baby” reflects the tragedy of slavery as perpetuated in the American South in the decades prior to the Civil War. Not only are the enslaved characters in the story victims of the institution of slavery, but so are the main characters, even though they are perceived (at least for much of the story) to be white.
Armand Aubigny is known for being strict with the people he enslaves. His cruelty is such a force in his household that Désirée tells her mother how happy she is in its surprising absence. Then, when Armand grows angry and resentful toward Désirée and the baby, he takes up his old cruel habits toward the enslaved people at L’Abri. His treatment of oppressed people varies according to his emotional whims, which makes the lives of the enslaved people under his rule particularly precarious. Chopin paints this picture of selfish cruelty to condemn Armand, but it’s also a condemnation of a system which would legally place people at the mercy of people like him.
Other results of the cruelty of slavery include Désirée’s demise, her child’s demise, and the inability of Armand’s mother to reveal herself to her son. The cruel reality of slavery is what gives stakes to the events in “Désirée’s Baby.”
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By Kate Chopin
