Desiree\'s Baby Formal Paper PDF

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Brandon Colon Elida Deklein ENG201-1221[4522] 16 October 2018

Reading “Desiree’s Baby” a short story by “Kate Chopin” we learn of Desiree and Armand, a married couple during slavery. During this time Armand, a “white” male is a slave owner to many people of color. As for Desiree she is woman with no last name, a total mystery of her origins, not even a last name. Armand and Desiree conceive a baby together and within three months after the baby’s birth his attitude suddenly changes, once he takes notice of the Baby’s strange complexion. He becomes a more aggressive and restless that he feels that he allowed a person of color enter his powerful bloodline, so he takes it out on his Slave, and on Desiree; For his slaves he treated them more aggressively and punished them more as for Desiree he completely ignored her and the Baby for he blames her for muddying up his child with her “mixed blood” even if she is lighter than Armand. This makes me believe, Armand sees the race of his slaves an unholy abomination even if their the same race of his loved ones. Three months after the baby’s birth the baby’s pigmentation began to change to that of one of his slaves he starts to slowly distance himself from both the baby and Desiree, along with being more aggressive towards his slaves. He was described as “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.”(2). From this we can say he treated Desiree and the baby as if they were abominations because he cannot even look at his whole family, He spoke to them without eye contact and

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pretty much gave her the cold shoulder. He even disappeared to just avoid his own home in general, just to not be within the presence of his family. Armand is also described as being possessed by Satan when dealing with his slaves which means he starts pushing his slaves further, his anger towards these people of color is only fueled by the fact he now has a mixed child and he blames his wife for that without the questioning of his own racial background. He simply blames Desiree for her ambiguous racial background instead. “Dagmar Pegues” further elaborates this point in “Fear and Desire: Regional Aesthetics and Colonial Desire in Kate Chopin’s Portrayals of the Tragic Mulatta Stereotype”. “This dimension is clearly traceable to the convention of nineteenth-century American regionalist literature and its presentation of the white racial anxiety”.(5, Pegues) Armand becomes completely devoid of anything related to Desiree once his big fear of his bloodline being sullied by the same blood of his slaves, and Armand chose not to acknowledge this cognition of his fear which was Desiree. Blinded by his what we can now call his greatest shame he continues to ignore her even telling to leave. He even began to think some very selfish and overall very damning thoughts, his thoughts being “He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he was paying him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife's soul. Moreover, he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name.”(4). He literally blames Desiree’s and their Baby’s color on god just being cruel and unfair to him only because of her ambiguous racial background. He calls the bombshell an unconscious injury upon his home and name meaning his pride as a powerful “white” male, his bloodline, and his home felt tarnished and venomous. This is now the reason his love for her now is non-existent. This is further supported by “Cynthia Griffin Wolff’s” excerpt called “Kate Chopin and the Fiction of Limits”. Cynthia explains “Armand has crossed

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that shadowy, demonic boundary between mercy and kindness on the one hand and cruelty on the other”(129 Griffin,Wolff,). Which we see that with how quickly he turns on Desiree and this more aggressive cruelty towards his slaves. It seems truly that his portrayal of god hitting him in the soul with this bombshell released some form of cruelty and evil from him. Armand now begins to purify his home by burning all of Desiree’s and the Baby’s personal belonging. He made a spectacle of this purification which was described as “Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L'Abri. In the centre of the smoothly swept back yard was a great bonfire. Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway that commanded a view of the spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the material which kept this fire ablaze.”(4) He burned everything belonging to his wife and child to erase and banish her presence making his home clean again. The slaves were commanded to see what happens when he is ever crossed it displayed his power over them too. This event can be described as Armand’s power to erase the abomination and filth from his house committed by his Wife and Child who are people of color as displayed in front of his own slaves who are also people of color. To add some perspective “Ellen Peel” makes a valid point in “Semiotic Subversion in “Desiree’s Baby.” “ She makes about how quickly Armand rejected the idea he was Black by saying “When he found a black mark on the screen, he rejected it. Now he has learned that the mark was a reproduction of his own blackness”.(229 Peel) This blackness he rejected was by bonfire along with Desiree’s belongings he also burned anything else that would reflect to him as his true racial background. In conclusion we see Armand’s true feelings towards people of color. Blaming god that he had suffered such a blow to his pride and status as a slave owner and powerful man by delivering Desiree, this woman of ambiguous background and creating a family that sullies his

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good name so. Feeling as if her presence was evil lurking in his home and himself feeling defiled. So much so he burns her presence away by lighting her items and whatever remnants of her and his child’s life in his home. And displays this in front of his slaves to show he has the power to rule them. This action shows Armand’s true colors about what he thinks of people of color.

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Works Cited Chopin, Kate. “Desiree’s Baby.” The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005. Pegues, Dagmar. “Fear and Desire: Regional Aesthetics and Colonial Desire in Kate Chopin's

Portrayals of the Tragic Mulatta Stereotype” The Southern Literary Journal, Volume 43, Issue 1, 2010, 1-22. Griffin Wolff, Cynthia. “Kate Chopin and the Fictions of Limits:” ”Desiree’s Baby”, The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring, 1978), pp. 123-133 Peel, Ellen. “Semiotic Subversion in “Desiree’s Baby” “, American Literature, Volume 62, Number 2(Jun…, 1990) pp.223-237...