Preview

Desiree's Baby Literary Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
386 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Desiree's Baby Literary Analysis
“ Desiree's Baby” “Desiree’s Baby,” is a fictional story written by Kate Chopin. The story features Desiree who is a young broken-hearted, desolate, and blameless woman. Desiree disappears into the woods, but why? Could her husband, Armand, be the one to blame for her vanishment? From the very beginning, Desiree is a girl who has a very mysterious birth because no one knew about her origin.
One day, a woman named Madame Valmonde found the infant Desiree near her “big stone pillar.” Madame Valmonde, not being able to have children of her own, takes her in and raises her as her own.
Desiree grows up to be a beautiful young girl and one day a man named Armand Aubigny sees the 18-year-old Desiree and falls in love with her.
Armand and Desiree

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In “Desiree’s Baby”, Desiree is just the wife and the mother of Armand’s child that he ends up denying. Women did not have a say so at all during this time. Armand is the very strict slave owner, but he is also the “breadwinner”, but he makes Desiree feel complete when he is showing her his soft side. When he starts to disown the baby that’s when Desiree becomes weak because he blames her for him being mixed blood. That is when she tells her mom “My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand tells me I am not white. For God’s sake tell them it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy, and live” (Chopin 5). After Armand tells her to take the baby and leave, Desiree becomes depressed and does not want to live…

    • 846 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    ”And the way he cries,” went on Desiree,” is deafening. Armand heard him the other day as far away as La Blanche’s cabin”(2), this is a strange line in the story and makes the reader question why Armand was in La Blanche’s cabin and what he was actually doing while he was…

    • 779 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Initially, Armand is the picturesque face of a beautiful relationship, a man of "passion…swept along like an avalanche…drives headlong over all obstacles" (141). When Madame Valmonde asks Desiree what Armand thinks of the baby, she paints him as a most proud father, whose hostility towards the slaves has been weakened with each and every smile from the little one. Three months into the baby's life, the painting rots. Desiree cannot comprehend the reasons behind his awful transformation, but the reader can infer that the baby's blackness is becoming evermore visible. During these times, to be black was to be ugly; Armand's built-up anger and frustration toward his situation finally climaxed amidst his wife's pressing questions, and another instance of prejudice against minorities is exposed. "It means that the child is not white; it means that you are not white" (143). Emotionally ravished and bent over with false guilt, Desiree storms out of the house, the baby in arms, and permanently disappears among the banks of the nearby…

    • 530 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    You can feel the tension in the air between Desiree and Armand. They loved each other with pure passion, Desiree and Armand had a beautiful baby together and as well loved her unconditionally. This was until Armand found out about Desiree’s upcoming as a child and heritage. This was in a time where blacks and whites were not considered equal, and blacks were treated unfairly to the rest of society. Armand found out that his beloved wife is black, “ 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…

    • 697 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Desiree's Baby Analysis

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The light in someone’s life could always be turned to darkness in the snap of a finger and destroy all elation. In the story “Desiree’s Baby”, Kate Chopin uses visual imagery to convey the happiness in life being torn apart by a darkness within the presence of a home.…

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Doll’s House consists of two examples of foiling. One being Nora Helmer to Christine Linde. At the start of the novel it seems that Nora has it all, a loving and wealthy husband, a few children, and she doesn’t have to work. All she has is some debt that she pays off with her allowance. Unlike Nora, Christine has had a life of hardship. She works for a living and has no family because she is alone. By the end of the novel, it seems as if the two have switched places. Nora has become alone and deserts her family. While Christine has discovered her love with Krogstad, and hopes for a happy family. But in what ways do Nora and Christine differ? They differ simply because they’re opposites of eachother. Ways Nora and Christine differ are Christine has to grind her life out and Nora lives simply, Nora is wealthy and Christine lives on low-income; lastly Christine is content…

    • 651 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the era Chopin wrote "Desiree's Baby" sexism was a major point in the lives of women, permitting them from being able to speak for themselves. Chopin later reveals that Armand was the one who truly was of black dissent and he was the one who had passed those genes down to the baby. But Desiree who has all the right in the world to defend herself cannot simply because of her sex. She is accused of the "unconscious injury she had brought upon [Armand's] home and his name"(244). Although Chopin states that Desiree is whiter than Armand and the baby, because of the setting of the story she cannot defend her honor in saying she isn’t black. Peel writes that, "Desiree is immersed in her husband's value system and never stands up to [Armand], not…

    • 332 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the short story, Kate Chopin portrayed the character Armand to be prideful and have impetuous actions, thus leading to the demolishing of a once joyful family. Chopin shows Armand’s impulsive actions in the beginning when Armand falls in love with Desiree saying, “ The passion awoke in that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.” (Chopin 1).The way he falls in love with Desiree foreshadows and explain his instant hate for her once he believes that she is the one cursed with the black heritage.When…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, the character Desiree--who is carrying her child--purposely walks into the swamp and never returns. Although she wanted to keep her and her baby safe and not have an unhappy future, Desiree’s decision to walk into the swamp is wrong because suicide is never the answer, murder is wrong, and she had other options.…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Race is a major issue in the short story. Armand tried to figure out his past and the person he really was and assumed that Desiree was the actual reason that resulted in the mix racial status of their baby. In addition, Armand felt like his wife’s race, which he always assumed was black, was the main reason for the change in everything; this is because his wife did not live with her biological parents and that she did not even understand her ethnicity “that is, the girl’s obscure origin” (Chopin 1).…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.…

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the story of “Desiree’s baby”, there are discriminations lead to Desiree’s death which are racism and gender discrimination. In 17th century, women had low status and they cannot get enough respect. Story told “‘Good-by, Armand’, she moaned. He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.”(Kate Chopin 6) This sentence shows the indifferent attitude of Desiree’s husband, which is a pervasive social problem. Desiree’ husband found out that their baby was not white and he asked Desiree to leave. Desiree could not revolt, though her husband used cold violence treatment to her. Desiree still could not do anything to refute. That means at that time woman had really low status in the society. When they met unfair treatment they had nothing to do but be silent. Besides that, there is another essential factor which is racial discrimination. The period background of the story is 17 century, black in America suffered maltreatment from their white owner. Obviously, miscegenation could not be accepted by the public. When Armand found his baby was not white, it’s symbolized the disaster and death of Desiree and her baby. As the story told “My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not white. For God 's sake tell them it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy, and live.”(5) That is the hopeless accuse of Desiree to Armand, to the society and Louisiana of 17century America. When the plot developed to climax, an unexpected turning appeared. “Night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery.” (7) In fact, Her husband had black blood relationship, but Desiree beard this for him alone. If Desiree had black…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Desiree’s Baby: The title refers to one of the main characters, Armand Aubigny, not claiming his child after finding out that the child as of different race; therefore giving all ownership of the baby to the mother, Desiree.…

    • 2934 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    and their family because in his eyes they have broken his rules. For Armand these rules and social standards keeps his life from falling apart. Without it he is nothing so he must burn everything in order to bring back the old him or so he thought. As well as conserving order he hates Désirée now for the fact that she tainted his family name with her blackness. Yet just as he wanted to destroy his new life with he finds out new information about him that he will never forget. This shows the huge mistake that he has made and claims him responsible for the destruction of his own…

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Analysis of Desiree's Baby

    • 1502 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Korb, Rena. “Critical Essay on “Desiree’s Baby”” Lieterature Resource Center. N.p., 2001. Web. 25 Sept. 2013.…

    • 1502 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics