“Desiree’s Baby”

1)    What is the significance of the title?  Armand denies child

2)    What is Madame Valmonde’s attitude toward baby Desiree (and her history)?  She accepts child as gift of Providence—does Chopin agree with this?  Religion, according to Chopin, is a opiate to avoid reality, justification, ignore reality

a.     ALLUSION: Moses found in bulrushes—adopted by Pharoah—Moses (raised outside his original ethnic group—Hebrews—as part of the dominant Egyptian culture—Moses is able to reassume cultural birth identity

b.    IRONY: Desiree and her baby are unable to do what Moses did, even in Judeo-Christian culture

3)    What details revail Armand’s character? pistol-shot love=impulsive, emotional, reactive—

4)    stone pillar?  symbol?  Desiree is found there as baby and Armand sees her there and falls in love—immovable, inflexible object (stony law/tradition/cultural bias/prejudice}

5)    what does the big house reveal—gloom and doom—tragic setting, funeral

6)    How does Armand treat his slaves?  he treats them as property, subhuman—IRONY: when you treat another as less than human, what happens to you—you become less than human

7)    yellow—light-skinned mulatto—nurse—house servant

8)    attitude toward slaves—Zandrine and Negrillon (caste system)—playing into stereotypes (the high yaller mulatto; scamp slave)

9)    Why is a mulatto a problem?  reinforces caste system; undermines the whole foundation of racism of slavery

10)                      Armand’s “dark, handsome face” clue; her hand lighter than hers

11)                      La Blanche—mulatto—has Armand been having sex with her and fathering quadroon children?

12)                      how is “white” defined? not a single drop of “black blood”

What happens to Desiree? Leaves as mysteriously as she comes—back to wilderness, back in time

Is Armand burning the evidence, his memories?  Shows his impulsiveness (Chopin shows not tells)

IRONY—difference between expectations and reality

Situational irony—ironic situation

Verbal irony—where a word means or suggests something different than expected

Dramatic irony—where the audience knows something that the characters don’t

Armand

What happens to Armand next? Will he keep it a secret?  How will he live with the knowledge?  Will he come to terms and accept his ancestry?  How will he treat his slaves?  Project his anger/self-hatred on slaves

How is Armand a symbol of white society both ante- and post-bellum? 

Social rejection of anything different—fear of “blackness”—fear of cultural change—is a form of self-hatred and projection onto an “other”

Race is a social construction—has no biological basis  (nature vs. nurture)—used to maintain power structure of their society

Compare this to The Leopard’s Spots becomes Birth of a Nation (1915)