The main themes in Dsire’s Baby are racism, gender, and hypocrisy. Racism: Armand’s cruelty, both toward Dsire and those he enslaves, is based on entrenched ideas of race. Ironically, Armand himself turns out to have Black ancestry.

Kate Chopin’s short story Dsire’s Baby examines the arbitrary hierarchies of race, gender, and class in the antebellum South. Dsire, an abandoned orphan who was adopted by wealthy plantation owners, has married Armand Aubigny, who owns a neighboring plantation.

Dsire’s face became suffused with a glow that was happiness itself. Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his name; though he says not,that he would have loved a girl as well.

In grief and fear, Dsire takes the baby into the bayou, where they presumably die. In this sequence of events, the baby symbolizes both innocence and powerlessness.

Dsire is the adopted daughter of the Valmonde family. Madame and Monsieur Valmonde have raised Dsire since she was a toddler when they found her by the plantation’s front gate. Despite the fact that her ancestry is unknown, Dsire has grown up to be the idol of Valmonde. She is a sweet, kind, affectionate girl.

Dsire is Monsieur and Madame Valmond’s adoptive daughter. No one knows who her family is, but we learn that she has straight brown hair, white skin, and gray eyes. She’s described as ‘beautiful and gentle, affectionate and sincere. ‘ She loves her husband Armand and the infant son they have together.

People who see the baby have the sense it is different. Eventually they realize that the baby’s skin is the same color as that of a quadroon (one-quarter African)the baby has African ancestry. Because of Dsire’s unknown parents, Armand immediately assumes that she is part black.

In Desiree’s Baby, Chopin demonstrates through Armand’s conflicts how weak humans conform to environmental norms. Armand is shown to be a weak character by his internal conflict himself. Armand’s weakness is initially shown by the way he treats his slaves.

At the age of eighteen, he falls in love with Desiree. They soon get married and she gives birth to a baby boy.

Desiree’s death is necessary for her because she feels the shame and pain of her unknown origins and therefore believes that she is the reason that the baby has African features.

The story ends with a twist of situational irony: Armand discovers too late that it is he (and not his wife) who has black heritage. Armand acted upon the misjudgment that Dsire, and her unknown past, were to blame for the appearance of their baby.

In Dsire’s Baby, La Blanche is a slave who is the mother of a quadroon boy who acts as a servant for the family. She may also be the mistress of Armand, who visits her cabin.

What does Madame Valmonde do with the baby when she sees it for the first time in four weeks? She lifts the baby and walks it over to the window, scanning it narrowly.

When she and her husband Armand have their first baby, it is slowly revealed that the baby resembles a slave who is one-quarter African. It is determined, therefore, that the baby is part black. It meansthat the child is not white; it means that you are not white.

What does Madame Valmonde exclaim when she first sees the baby? The is not the baby!

What truth does Armand later discover in an old letter? His mother was of African descent.

Armand is a white plantation owner who is angered when he finds out that his son is black. He has come to this conclusion based on the baby’s skin color alone. He accuses his wife, Desiree, of being black and lying about her race.

The narrator says that, one day, years ago, Monsieur [Valmonde] in riding through the gateway of Valmonde [plantation] had found [Desiree] lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar. The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for Dada.

However he finds the remnant of an old letter from his mother to his father, in which his mother reveals that she is thankful to God for her father’s love and for the fact that their lives were arranged in such a way that Armand never came to know that his mother was black.

The main characters in Dsire’s Baby are Dsire Valmond Aubigny, Armand Aubigny, and Madame and Monsieur Valmond. Dsire Valmonde Aubigny was found and adopted by the Valmonds as an infant. She disappears with her child after her husband, Armand, accuses her of being of Black descent.

What is Armand’s reputation in the way he treats the slaves? Armand’s treatment of his slaves is directly related to his own personal happiness. He is presented as being a harsh man who works his slaves hard, yet when he has his child, he is so happy that he softens in his attitudes towards everybody.

Kate Chopin, ne Katherine O’Flaherty, (born Feb. 8, 1851, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.died Aug. … In June 1870 she married Oscar Chopin, with whom she lived in his native New Orleans, Louisiana, and later on a plantation near Cloutiersville, Louisiana, until his death in 1882.

In 1870, at the age of twenty, she married Oscar Chopin, twenty-five, and the son of a wealthy cotton-growing family in Louisiana.

54years (18501904) Kate Chopin / Age at death Louis World’s Fair on August 20, 1904, Chopin suffered a brain hemorrhage. She died two days later, at the age of 54. She was interred in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.

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antebellum New Orleans Dsire’s Baby, short story by Kate Chopin, published in her collection A Night in Acadie in 1897. A widely acclaimed, frequently anthologized story, it is set in antebellum New Orleans and deals with slavery, the Southern social system, Creole culture, and the ambiguity of racial identity.