Desiree's Baby

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Desiree’s Baby The short story “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin takes place in Louisiana before the American Civil War. The story is about love, prejudice, rejection, and self- hatred. It is a story of a noble beginning that slowly revealed an unattractive side of relationships; and where a young mother, Desiree, and her newly born son had been loved, hated, and casted away by her son’s father—her husband—Armand Aubigny, because he questioned his wife’s ethnicity. Desiree is in a dilemma because she is accused (by Armand) of belonging to African American blood, since their child’s complexion was dark. The thought of being partly ‘Negro’ causes her to hate herself. What is not clear in the story is that do Armand and Desiree prefer their love for family or for identity? One hypothesis is that identity holds many mysteries, and in Armand’s case, its pride. He is so full of pride that he cannot see anything but his family name in golden words. The second hypothesis is that love in this story has different meanings. For some, it is a form of passion and for others, its identity. The first hypothesis states that throughout this story, Armand is portrayed as the man who had it all. He figured that because of his family name which he thought was, “…one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana” (Chopin 1). The fact that Armand was a slave owner and came from a family whose name was well known he used his family name as another way to feel like a king besides owning slaves. Armand’s pride came first before his family because he felt like he had to protect the family name and history at any cost. He could go to any measure to do so. For this, he did not want anything to destroy who and what he was—a well known slave owner. Therefore, he told his wife and baby to leave, since he assumed that she was black. Armand did not want people to frown upon him or make him
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