The Antebellum South In Desiree's Baby By Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin's short story "Desiree's Baby" can been interpreted for its authentic portrayal of the antebellum South that clings to the evils of a slave system. The antebellum era, was a period in which the economy and the society was based in slavery. The story talks about the relationship of Armand, a powerful cotton landlord in Louisiana, and his wife Desiree, the adoptive daughter of the Valmondé who has unknown origins. They had a perfect marriage until their first son started to show mulatto characteristics. This amazing story of Kate Chopin uses race as a focal point. She wrote about subjects that were sensitive during her lifetime, giving the readers a realistic scenario of what was happening. In "Desiree's Baby", she critiques the racial prejudice that was common in the South in the eighteenth century by exploring the relationship of Desiree and Armand.
In the story, Chopin describes the historical era in which Desiree and Armand lived. She uses the attitudes of the characters to demonstrate how the people treat blacks. Armand is a white powerful landowner that own a great number of slaves. The negroes that he have under his control “had forgotten how to gay” (Chopin) because he is a strict master. Therefore, when he realize …show more content…
An era in which whites controlled everything, and blacks were treated worse than garbage. Period in which people that had mix blood were consider blacks. The way Chopin detail the characters gives the story some verisimilitude of the era in which the story takes place. In "Desiree's Baby", Kate Chopin critiques the racial prejudice that was common during the eighteenth century in the South, by exposing the marital problem that Desiree and Armand experience after they realize their son is mulatto. Armand`s racism and the social pressure creates a distancing in his marriage that ends with the catastrophic death of Désirée and his