Désirée’s Baby
By Kate Chopin
- Release Date: 2015-09-22
- Genre: Short Stories
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Désirée’s Baby is a short story by the American writer Kate Chopin, published in 1893. It is about miscegenation in Creole Louisiana during the antebellum period.
Désirée is the adopted daughter of Monsieur and Madame Valmondé, who are wealthy French Creoles in antebellum Louisiana. Abandoned as a baby, she was discovered by Monsieur Valmondé lying in the shadow of a stone pillar near the Valmondé gateway. She is courted by the son of another wealthy, well-known and respected French Creole family, Armand. They marry and have a child. People who see the baby have the sense it is different. Eventually they realize that the baby's skin is the same color as a quadroon (one-quarter African)—the baby has African ancestry. At the time of the story, this would have been considered a problem for a person believed to be white.
Because of Désirée's unknown parents, Armand immediately assumes that she is part black. Désirée tries to deny the accusation. Madame Valmondé suggests that Désirée and the baby return to the Valmondé estate. Armand, scornful of Désirée, rejects her and insists that she leave. She takes their child and walks off into a bayou, never to be seen again. Armand burns all of Désirée’s belongings, even the child's cradle, as well as all of the letters that she had sent him during their courtship. With this bundle of letters is also one written from his mother to his father, revealing that Armand is the one who is part black, by his mother's ancestry. Désirée's ancestry is never defined.
Excerpt from Wikipedia, ‘Désirée’s Baby'
