Essay on Desiree 's Baby By Kate Chopin

“Desiree awoke one day to the conviction that there was something wrong in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp” (Kate Chopin 3). As one of the characters in Kate Chopin’s 1893 short story “Desiree’s Baby,” Desiree struggles to make sense of all the commotion going on around her. However with many people going to and from her home visiting her husband, Armand, and their newborn baby she starts to conceive that there is something wrong. Chopin illustrates the racial animosity between whites and negroes in the marriage of Desiree and Armand through the use of the setting, plot and foreshadowing. The story takes place in the mid-1800s with marital stress among Desiree and Armand whom gave birth to a boy. The couple had little knowledge of one another’s family history. In this dominantly white family Armand becomes distant as his baby’s skin darkens around the third month of life. It becomes apparent to Desiree of her husband’s lack in the relationship and she finally comes to terms with the correlation of baby and the slave boy. Eventually she and her baby disappear and Armand destroys all of their belongings. In this setting of white superiority the weight of hate toward negroes portrayed an integral part in this story in matters that destroyed one’s family. This story’s setting in the mid-1800s help us to understand the reason as to why one would remove his own blood and disown them completely. A mother’s love was slow to see any problem…